Daniel Ricciardo believes the “bit of a downward spiral” that has ended his rejuvenated form since Formula 1’s summer break is not as bad as it has looked.
The new-for-2021 McLaren signing had a tricky first half of the season as he struggled to adapt to a car with very different requirements to his natural driving style.
Ricciardo had an average starting position of 10.27 and an average finishing position of 8.27 before the August break, and he admitted stepping away from F1 over the summer was vital as it helped him relax and refocus.
After that, Ricciardo’s form improved significantly. He peaked by taking a shock win in the Italian Grand Prix and in the six events that immediately followed the break his numbers were clearly better: averaging 7.83 on the grid and 6.33 at the finish.
The last of those six races was the United States Grand Prix, one of Ricciardo’s favourite events and one where he was in his element – culminating in a strong, battling drive in the race.
His good run ended abruptly with the triple-header of Mexico, Brazil and Qatar, in which Ricciardo failed to score points at all, with 12th place in Mexico and Qatar his best results from that trio of races.
“Unfortunately, since Austin, it’s been a bit of a downward spiral,” said Ricciardo.
“I don’t want to be too negative with that, it’s just been a run like that.”
Ricciardo had not previously gone two consecutive races without scoring points all season and now has three point-less races in a row.
This isn’t a normal case of ‘driver says bad thing isn’t bad’, though. Ricciardo’s desire to brush it off is valid. His last three events have been impacted severely by varying degrees of misfortune, skewing the quality of his weekends.
He was competitive in qualifying in Mexico, where his race was ruined by a clash with Valtteri Bottas at the first corner that broke his front wing and caused other damage he had to carry all race.
That looked like an error from Ricciardo initially but he was not deemed at fault for it and on review, it did seem to just be an unfortunate collision.
In Brazil, Ricciardo was on team-mate Lando Norris’s pace in qualifying, lost out slightly in the Saturday sprint race, but was on course for a points finish before a cracked chassis caused a power unit problem and forced him to retire.
Qatar was the only one of those three events where Ricciardo was simply too slow, but even there he reckons “I don’t think I sucked”.
“I just missed half a tenth in some of these key corners and of course it adds up,” he said.
“Three and a half tenths in qualifying is not what I want. But gone are the days when I’m seven or eight tenths off.
“I want to say I’ve moved on from there but there’s clearly still some work to do on some circuit-specific ones.”
The Losail circuit’s sequence of long, medium-speed corners prompted a return of one of Ricciardo’s main struggles this season. He has primarily struggled under braking, particularly longer braking zones where he tried to carry in more speed than the car prefers.
These corners do not suit the MCL35M and the technique required to combat that has not come naturally to Ricciardo.
He describes such corners as “where ‘the McLaren style’ is the one and only style to get it through those corners quickly”. Ricciardo says Norris is “definitely doing a better job in those corners, and I’m still not quite nailing it”.
“I’d definitely call it a weakness of the car but it’s ultimately a weakness of me being able to get the car working well in the limited areas,” said Ricciardo.
Ricciardo’s Losail race was also heavily compromised by a needless amount of fuel-saving prompted by an error in McLaren’s system that calculates how much fuel is left. So, Qatar closing the triple-header was unfortunate because it meant that the run of races ended with comfortably the worst weekend pretty much from start to finish.
That confirmed Ricciardo’s self-described “downward spiral”, at least in terms of results. It would be wrong to think the last few races have undone Ricciardo’s progress entirely as a quirky mix of circumstances clearly conspired against him.
The only truly underwhelming performance was in Qatar. And that didn’t come as a surprise to Ricciardo once he had analysed the data – it just confirmed the underlying weakness in the 2021 McLaren that he has tried his best to mitigate, but still has to contend with.
“I can see the difference in the driving and why I’m running into some of these problems,” said Ricciardo.
“But I guess if it was easy then I’d have perfected it already.
“Lando is driving very well and I think any questions about him, he’s proved this year that he’s top level. But also having three years with the same car has helped him dial that in.
“I think I’ve improved my style from the beginning of the year but there’s definitely still a step to go in some of these tracks that he’s still on top of more than I am.”
