Daniel Ricciardo, Australian Formula 1 driver, admitted to going “a little too deep and a little too lost” while analysing his struggles at McLaren. He mentioned his struggles with the team over the past two seasons.
The Australian concluded his engagement as a driver with McLaren after the season finale, Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
During his stay with the team for two struggling years, Ricciardo scored the Monza Grand Prix victory in 2021. Nonetheless, he failed to match his team-mate Lando Norris pace throughout his time at Woking outfit.
The mismatched expectations and performances led to the early termination of three-year engagement between the two. Oscar Piastri, fellow Australian driver, is set to replace him at McLaren.
Ricciardo shared his struggling experience at McLaren over his tenure. However, he admitted overthinking about pace led him to change his natural driving style. It resulted in poor performance.
“It’s something that I’ve certainly thought about,” he said.
“I feel that now the season has ended I’ve already slowly let it go. But I’m sure I’ll still think about it over time, because it is a little bit of a… I don’t want to say a mystery, but the kind of continuous struggles I had were, at least for me, very foreign.
“We all have our bad races, but to have the amount that I did, and the level that it was at times, like a second a lap off the pace, I’d scratch my head.
“I think already last year, during the summer break, it occurred to me that I was driving very consciously. It wasn’t natural anymore. I was one step behind.
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“That was where I was like, ‘I think we’re trying to do too much’.
“One thing I keep thinking back on is my very first qualifying with McLaren. I out-qualifed Lando.
“I still didn’t really know the car and I don’t know how many times I out-qualified him over the two years. But it wasn’t much.
“To have done it when I was probably just driving more off feel and instinct and a lack of knowledge about the car, that was when I was probably better off.
“That’s not a knock on anyone or anything. It’s more like, okay, did we overanalyse our bad weekends and then get caught up in a way where it was like, ‘we need to start driving like this or setting the car up like that’?
“For sure, at some point, we would have got a little too deep and a little too lost.”
