Why McLaren doesn’t doubt Ricciardo can escape his ‘dark’ place? (A thread)

While these are not easy times for Ricciardo, one thing is patently clear: This situation is viewed by the team very much as a temporary glitch, rather than the trigger for alarm bells to ring about whether or not the right man was chosen to replace Carlos Sainz Jr.

This isn’t a question of F1’s paddock vultures circling and McLaren casting eyes elsewhere to see if someone else can do a better job. Instead, the team knows that Ricciardo has what’s needed to turn things around and do exactly what they want him to.

Team boss Seidl says: “Of course he's the one who is probably disappointed the most, because he knows he has it in him. And he's disappointed that he can't extract the performance of our car yet.”

“But at the same time, he's very experienced. I think we are also very experienced on the team side. It's simply important to stay calm, work through this integration or adaptation process together as a team. I think he feels very comfortable and happy in the team.”

“I think he's also very happy with how together we deal with this current challenge, together. And I'm 100% sure it is just a matter of more time and then we will see Daniel back to the performance that we all know.”

So why have things been so difficult for Ricciardo? There is no single answer to the situation, but there is definitely a combination of factors that have come together to hurt him.

2021 has proved to be a year where those drivers who switched teams have been on the backfoot more than they would in previous seasons. The carryover of 2020 meant that those staying on have started from a higher baseline of knowledge of understanding the details of their cars.

The adaptation process for the new boys has also been made much trickier by such limited pre-season testing. With a driver like Ricciardo getting just one-and-half days of running before the first race of the season, the lack of mileage has been a huge hindrance.

Ricciardo is also being hurt by having a driving style that is actually counter-intuitive to going quickly at places like Imola and Portimao where grip levels are low. His strength under braking is obvious for all to see, thanks to his brilliance at overtaking...

... and he’s had the knack in the past of making up lap time by grabbing more speed on the entry and then coping brilliantly to collect everything to the apex. But when track grip levels drop, and he has a lack of confidence in what the car and tyres are going to do...

then trying to go in to a corner quicker simply results in lock ups, the car sliding, him scrubbing off speed and lap time bleeding away. Seidl says: “I think it just snowballs into more lap time deficit when you don't feel comfortable with pushing and thats the reason why.”

Ricciardo himself has talked about the MCL35M feeling like it is on a ‘knife-edge’ in the corner entry phase, and the team is struggling to give him a set-up that gets rid of that feeling for now.

“It's a bit of locking, and sometimes it's losing the rear,” he says. “But there's a fine line, I guess.

“I think probably there's a period in the kind of entry phase where the car is on a knife edge. And I feel like there's probably a set-up solution where I can just open that and not be on such a knife's edge, because it is really sensitive.”

“I think Lando is certainly able to, let's say, drive around that better than me at the moment. And probably to fast track my learning, I can just try something with the set-up that opens our window, and it's probably with the suspension or something like that."

Ricciardo’s fighting drive back through the field at Portimao in Sunday’s race, finishing ninth, certainly showed he’s not lost at sea with the car. That he and McLaren understand where the problems lay, even if the cure is not an immediate one, means matters can be addressed.

McLaren also knows that problems with a lack of confidence are often exaggerated in qualifying – when drivers need to be much more at the limit and are required to have that blind faith in what the car is going to do.

Don’t forget that in 2021 qualifying, the margins between success and failure are so small - just one tenth of a second more would have put Ricciardo through to Q2, and the picture could have looked totally different if he had hooked things up then.

credit: motorsport

was long but a good one!