Daniel Ricciardo admitted after the Spanish Grand Prix that his own “step” with McLaren this weekend was diminished slightly by the deficit his team had to Formula 1 rival Ferrari.
After McLaren finished best-of-the-rest in the opening three rounds of the season Ferrari offered the strongest midfield challenge at Barcelona, where Charles Leclerc qualified and finished fourth and Carlos Sainz Jr was seventh to ensure Ferrari outscored McLaren for the first time this season.
It detracted from Ricciardo’s mini-breakthrough as he beat team-mate Lando Norris for the first time this season and matched his best result so far with McLaren in sixth.
Ricciardo spent the Barcelona weekend working diligently on improving his corner entry technique and was rewarded for that effort with a strong qualifying performance and arguably his best drive of the season in the race.
He called it “definitely a more encouraging weekend” and felt that “I’ve taken a little step forward” even though his race wasn’t completely clean.
“There were moments in the race where I knew I’ll turn into the corner and I’m like, ‘perfect’, and I’ll get out quick, and other times I’d lock the front or lose the rear a bit,” he said.
“It’s delicate. And let’s say more often than not I got it right today, but still making a few errors here and there.”
But Ricciardo also admitted that the performance of the Ferrari was a concern.
“Personally, I’m happy with my race and the step I made, but we need to find a bit more,” he admitted.
“Even Carlos in my dirty air was putting a lot of pressure on me at the end.
“We’ve still got to find a little more. I think the car felt OK today. I think now it’s just more downforce, more downforce. Downforce is king.
“They seem to have had a good car and had a strong race throughout. Charles was slowly pulling away in the first stint and then I didn’t really see him after that.”
McLaren’s main upside from the grand prix was that Ricciardo and Norris both made a place from their respective grid positions, at the expense of Alpine’s Esteban Ocon, and continued the team’s record of scoring points with both cars in each race this year.
Norris started ninth after his qualifying was compromised because he was blocked by Nikita Mazepin on his first run in Q1 and needed to use a second set of softs to avoid being eliminated, and that had a knock-on impact on his tyre allocation that hurt him in Q3.
He said it was important Ricciardo stepped up to split the Ferraris, with Ricciardo resisting Sainz through the second half of the race.
Norris felt Ferrari was “definitely quicker than us” in Spain and that Sunday was the type of race “when you need those double points finishes and good points as a team”.
“Our qualifying pace this weekend has been better than the race pace and in the race we definitely struggled a bit more with the rear of the car and it’s a bit more difficult to drive,” said Norris.
“That’s where the Ferrari looks particularly strong.
“They were just that much quicker in the race that they could look after the tyres more than usual.
“At tracks where they are a bit slower then they have to push more, they use the tyres more and so on. Not a surprise.
“They are not always terrible in the races, sometimes they can be very competitive throughout the whole race. They’re not always dropping off our tail.
“They’ve been quick all season and this weekend they put it together and did a good job.”
