Ricciardo’s three-year McLaren contract ended for a year at the start of last winter after the Australian had difficulty fitting in with the team’s F1 cars. In the hard-to-manage McLaren, Ricciardo has consistently trailed teammate Lando Norris during his two seasons at Woking, despite a surprise win at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.
Ricciardo was then recruited by Red Bull as a third driver during a sabbatical until he was loaned out to sister team AlphaTauri before the Hungarian Grand Prix to replace Nyck de Vries. Ricciardo made an impression on his first outing with the refined AT04, and although he has yet to fully adapt to the car, he has vowed never to achieve the level of detail he experienced.
experience at McLaren. His attempts to change his driving style at McLaren have made him “unrecognizable” as he returns to Red Bull modeled after team boss Christian Horner, with Ricciardo in need of a rebuild. confidence on subsequent runs and a convincing tire test at Silverstone. When asked if Ricciardo should dig as deep as he did at McLaren to update himself in AlphaTauri, Ricciardo replied: “I never want to go into that detail again. “I think in my first year at McLaren, during the summer break, I knew maybe we were doing too much.
We had to change our approach a little bit. Daniel Ricciardo, Alpha Tauri AT04 Photo by: Red Bull Content Team “Everybody’s interested in trying and making it work, but I feel like I realize it’s not working for me. Maybe we’re still overdoing it in hindsight, but maybe it’s possible. it worked for another driver, so stop it.” Ricciardo said he was able to use his natural driving style when he returned to the Faenza team and found the AlphaTauri to be a better fit for him, despite the car’s lack of aerodynamic payload compared to most competitors. painting.
Ricciardo never wants to go back to the McLaren F1 level of driving style detail
“I felt a little bit more. In the first round, I felt like I was getting some kind of response that I expected or would have liked, so that’s very important,” Ricciardo replied. when asked by Motorsport.com how the AlphaTauri compares to his old McLaren. “I’ll probably find the things I need to don’t quite match how I feel, so maybe I still expect some challenges along the way. “But the first impression is that it feels a little more familiar to me. That’s also important because I was hoping for that feeling.”
