Column | Ricciardo gets more of the same struggles at McLaren, if not worse

It’s rare to see a driver actively opt to leave a top team in Formula 1, but Daniel Ricciardo did just that in 2018. Hindsight is a wonderful prospect, but the facts can’t be ignored. Red Bull Racing, after combining with Honda, have grown drastically which culminated in Max Verstappen’s World Championship win in 2021. Meanwhile, Ricciardo finds himself stuck in a rot.

In an interview at the start of April, Red Bull team boss was quick to highlight this and expressed his views on how the Australian had “spectacularly bad timing” with his move to Renault. Via two podiums at the French team, Ricciardo moved to McLaren where he actually won the 2021 Italian Grand Prix. However, where his former team were fighting for both World Championship titles, Ricciardo struggled as McLaren finished fourth. 

Main motives, same motives

Ricciardo and Verstappen had a decent relationship at Red Bull. But it was clear the Austrian team had a set goal in mind: to make Verstappen the youngest Formula 1 World Champion. This is something Helmut Marko proudly mentioned to the media every single pre-season until it became an impossible record to beat. Ricciardo didn't want to be the second driver, and he felt all the efforts in the Red Bull camp pushed towards Verstappen instead of himself. All this, with a bad crash and double DNF in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix fuelled Ricciardo’s decision to leave the team. One that he will say he doesn’t regret but is that true? 

Scroll forward four years, and the motives that drove Ricciardo out of the Red Bull door seem to be present at McLaren. He lagged far behind Norris in the 2021 season, particularly at the start with the British driver lapping Ricciardo at Monaco. If Ricciardo matched Norris whilst McLaren were on top, they could've beat Ferrari for third place in the standings. At the time, the popular paddock excuse was that Ricciardo just needed to settle in at the Woking-based team. Whilst things did improve, Norris became the leader. With new regulations and a whole new car, it’s still Norris that leads the way. 

After three races, Norris has a 100% record in the qualifying teammate duel. Beating his teammate by an average of nearly four-tenths. Only Williams, Alfa Romeo and AlphaTauri have a bigger average gap between their teammates in qualifying. That includes rookie Guanyu Zhou, Nicholas Latifi who isn’t known for good qualifying results, and Yuki Tsunoda who comes up against a strong Pierre Gasly. Ricciardo has seemingly walked back into the corner that he was so keen to back out of at Red Bull Racing. Did he make the right choice in terms of results? Probably not. He’d almost certainly have better F1 statistics and perhaps a Constructors World Championship in his pocket. When in reality, he’s back where he was. 

Gap to Norris 

Ever since the second pre-season test in Bahrain, it’s fair to say the McLaren car hasn’t been behaving as well as the team would’ve liked. In both the test and the race in Sakhir, the team experienced braking issues. Though it seems they had fixed the main problem with better performance and results in Australia. 

Comparing both the drivers fastest laps in Melbourne qualifying, and a big difference already occurs at the first corner. By the end of turn one, Norris has a 0.150-second advantage over his teammate. Just under half of the total lap time delta. 

Norris carried more speed down the home straight, but with only around 2-3km/h difference. Ricciardo might be known as the king of late brakers but Norris has him on toast at turn one. Norris is later on the brakes, but they both come off them at the same time. Ricciardo is back on the throttle earlier but had to briefly pull out midway through the acceleration stage meaning Norris was back on 100% throttle slightly earlier. This process is more or less repeated at the three biggest braking zones. 

This shows that Norris has his car under control better compared to last weekend’s home favourite. He is able to have more confidence at the corners. Maybe it’s a set-up thing, or the McLaren car suits Norris’ style. But one thing is for sure, Ricciardo needs to improve before McLaren search elsewhere.