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Daniel Ricciardo’s victory in the Italian Grand Prix was special for him personally not only because it ended a win drought that stretched back over three years, but also because it comes during a season he’s previously admitted is the toughest of his career.
The 32-year-old has struggled to adapt to what he described as a “peculiar car”. Before the August break, he referred to the battle to modify his driving style as “the puzzle that I’m still trying to solve”.
At Monza, he talked of the value of that break in allowing him to come back refreshed both mentally and physically and having had time to process what he’d learned in the first half of the season. But does the fact he took McLaren’s breakthrough win confirm a breakthrough in his personal performance?
“Closer, definitely closer,” said Ricciardo when asked by The Race how far along he is with the process of making the initially counter-intuitive driving style required to get the best out of the McLaren-Mercedes MCL35M more natural.
“I think there is still more to come. I don’t know if you will ever find anything but that’s obviously the way the sport is. The sport evolves and changes and you are trying to keep up with it.
“Just inside myself I’ve felt better since the second half of the season and that doesn’t always need to translate into laptimes. It’s just me throwing the car round, feeling a bit more comfortable with it, that’s stuff I know.
“I don’t think all of it has translated yet into the stopwatch but there is certainly a bit more comfort and confidence that’s coming through from myself. I just look to keep building on that.
“I think we will get tracks that suit, some that don’t, but I would like to think the second half of the season there will be some more consistency and hopefully more of these type of results.”
Since the break, Ricciardo’s qualifying performances have been stronger.
While at Spa he didn’t have the stunning pace in the wet that Norris did before crashing, he seemed relatively comfortable with the car and was fourth-fastest. At Zandvoort made it through to Q3 while Norris, just over half-a-second slower, didn’t – albeit in a session that was impacted by two red flags.
At Monza, there was almost nothing between them with Norris 13 thousandths quicker, although Ricciardo was mighty through Ascari and the Parabolica and set the fastest time of all in the final sector. In the race, it’s possible Norris might have had a bigger turn of speed, as has often happened, but it’s difficult to judge that with certainty given the race situation. However, both did have a tilt at fastest lap at the end of the race and Ricciardo was 0.159s quicker.
While these are encouraging signs for Ricciardo, he’s right not to use his victory as a reason to declare he has triumphed over his struggles to adapt to the car. These difficulties over the first half of the season are explored in depth here but it’s largely been about trying to adapt to a later-braking approach that loads up the front end more aggressively for corners, in particular the long-duration, medium-speed ones that made life so difficult for him at the Red Bull Ring, or example.
It’s required him to move away from his default driving style, which tends towards braking a little earlier (except when pulling off one of his trademark overtaking moves) and carrying the speed through the corner. This approach has left the car under-rotated and effectively lengthened the corner for Ricciardo at times this year, meaning he particularly suffers compared to Norris at the exits.
But he and race engineer Tom Stallard have worked tirelessly at adapting to be able to get the most out of the car. Ricciardo was certainly quick at Monza, although it’s a circuit that’s mainly about heavy braking into slow corners with direction changes and is a narrower challenge than the average circuit. Likewise, Zandvoort features plenty of faster corners, where generally Ricciardo has struggled less, so on paper plays to his weaknesses less than some.
This is reason to be cautious rather than dismissing the progress he has made. It’s clear the break helped him to redouble his efforts and while it might just as easily have been Norris who won had the early seconds of the sprint race gone differently, Ricciardo is definitely getting there.
That’s why his claim of being “closer” is the right position to take. Over the remaining eight races, there will be track configurations that test him more and some others where he should go well.
It’s also likely, although yet to be seen, that Norris will on balance continue to be the stronger performer.
But the fact Ricciardo has continued to work, effectively trying to reprogramme his driving style to one that his benchmark, Norris, has excelled at is testament to his determination and qualities.
This has been Ricciardo’s toughest season in F1, but far from revealing he was somehow over-rated – as if one difficult year undoes the good work of a decade – it has allowed him to exhibit the work ethic to ensure that 2021 won’t go down as a wasted year for him.
