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McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says the early end of Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula 1 deal has taught him to build more performance protections for the team into future driver contracts.
Ricciardo will leave McLaren by mutual consent at the end of the 2022 season, one year earlier than planned.
His spell with the team has included an eighth F1 win, at last year’s Italian Grand Prix, but has largely been characterised by a drastic gap to team-mate Lando Norris and difficulties adapting to cars with a limited front end.
Speaking on The High Performance Podcast, Brown said McLaren had gone into the deal “so excited” that it had not considered the scenario that has played out and whether “a great driver’s going to always be great”.
Ricciardo’s McLaren contract was a three-year arrangement, with his salary rumoured to be worth in excess of £20million per year, and the option to end the deal early that has now been taken up was believed to have been on his side.
“He came in having won seven grands prix and was the hottest driver that you could get and I think we maybe assumed, and I think kind of rightfully so, that he was going to pick up where he left off,” said Brown of Ricciardo.
“My one learning there would really just be contractual. I don’t think there’s anything we could have done differently for him as a driver. I’m sitting here right now thinking ‘I don’t think we could have done something differently to make him more competitive. We tried all that.
“To end the relationship early, we’ve had to write a big cheque, which is fine because that’s the deal we cut.
“I think what I’ll do differently next time is maybe have some more performance protections for us and not just assume that a great driver’s going to always be great.
“That’s the one learning, it’s more of a contractual one. But it’s a big one.”
Ricciardo finished the 2021 season 45 points behind Norris and after 13 races this season is 57 points adrift of his team-mate, who is best of the rest in seventh in the drivers’ championship standings.
Brown reiterated his belief that McLaren had done all it could to help Ricciardo work around car limitations that he was not used to.
“We’re not sure, he’s [Ricciardo] not sure,” said Brown, when asked what insight he could provide about why Ricciardo has struggled.
“We’ve tried changing cars and offering to change people and it’s been over two seasons, two different cars so we thought ‘year one maybe he just didn’t gel with the car, so let’s see what will happen in year two, it’s a totally different car’.
“But we got to the point where our only strategy was hope, and I think hope’s not a great strategy.
“It’s a great mystery. We saw in Monza, it’s in there. There’s no doubt; the guy did not win eight grands prix by accident. We just weren’t able to unlock it together.
“And Lando’s driving great and getting the car to perform, so I don’t think there’s anything sitting here that we would’ve done differently or could’ve seen or should’ve known.
“I think the only thing is just from a business standpoint we could’ve contractually kind of [asked] ‘what if it doesn’t work?’ and I think we went into it so excited and not really thinking of a downside scenario.
“But you don’t also know if you would’ve got those contractual protections; sitting here now I can say, ‘well, I wish I would’ve had this in the contract’, but who knows whether he would’ve agreed to it.
“But he also might have because he would’ve been going, ‘well, that’s never going to happen, I’ll agree to things in contracts’.”
