Daniel Ricciardo’s biggest fears confirmed

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has delivered a worrying message to Daniel Ricciardo after last weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix — there’s nothing wrong with the car.

While teammate Lando Norris has already clinched two podium finishes this season, the Australian F1 star has struggled throughout the opening five races.

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Ricciardo’s woes were exacerbated in Monte Carlo, where he managed the 12th fastest time in qualifying at one of his favourite tracks, once again outperformed by Norris who qualified fifth.

The 31-year-old’s fastest lap was almost a full second slower than the time Norris registered in the third qualifying session, and the Perth-born driver refused to believe he was solely responsible.

“I’m probably confused more than frustrated,” Ricciardo said at the time. “Obviously frustrated and upset, we know qualifying here is so big, but it’s probably got to a point where it’s not even the position now, it’s just we’ve been pretty much a second off all weekend.

“I’d like to say I’m just not confident or still need to learn the car but not a second, not around here.

“I’m certainly not being like, ‘Yeah, something is broken’, but I think we do have to have a look into maybe a bigger picture, because I refuse to believe I’m that slow around here.

“I’m sure Lando’s fast — but I refuse to believe he’s a second quicker around here, and I don’t mean to say that against him.”

Prompted further if he felt there was an issue with the car, Ricciardo said: “I’ll certainly ask the question. I’m sure the team will do a dig and I don’t want to say that’s it or point the finger at the guys for not putting it together properly, but I’m sure we’ll give it a proper look.”

McLaren’s Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo.Source:AFP

The McLaren boffins have done some digging over the past seven days, and unfortunately for Ricciardo, they’ve found there’s nothing wrong with the MCL35M.

However, Seidl does have a “clear idea” of what’s going wrong.

“One reason why I love the sport, and why you guys love this sport, is because it’s a human sport, and we like the emotions from team members or drivers after good or bad sessions or races,” Seidl told The Race.

“That’s why I think you have to put in context the quotes from Daniel after qualifying.

“We have, when we look into the data, a clear idea of why Daniel couldn’t produce the lap time in Q2 to progress to Q3.

“Our car needs a certain way of driving it in order to extract the performance Lando can extract from it.

“This is not natural for Daniel. And that’s obviously an issue and takes time until you can recalibrate yourself in order to make it natural for yourself.

“But at the same time it’s also the task for us to see what we can do on the car, change it, in order to make it more natural for him so he can extract the performance again (that) we are all used to from him, with a clear objective to not lose overall car performance by that.

“That’s the process we are in at the moment. I’m impressed with how both the team and Daniel are handling this challenging situation. We simply need more time and then in some races we will not talk about this issue anymore.”

The F1 season will resume this weekend with the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with lights scheduled for 10pm AEST on Sunday evening.

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