Ricciardo's work ethic is admired: 'He takes responsibility'

Daniel Ricciardo is driving his first season at McLaren this year and since the summer break, he seems to be flying in the car. At the start of the season, there were still many concerns about his speed, but the victory at Monza showed that he still has it in him. Speaking to Formula 1, Tom Stallard, Ricciardo's race engineer, told us more about the victory.

The entire McLaren garage was jumping after the Italian Grand Prix. After Ricciardo already finished third in Sprint Qualifying, he then managed to cross the finish line first in the race with Lando Norris in second place. Tom Stallard was one of the people jumping in the garage.

"I was super proud because we've worked really hard this year, to be honest, and it was nice to see him executing everything that we'd talked about and worked on," said the Brit.

Problems were always there

In the interview, Stallard also admitted that there were problems from the start. The engineer's first reaction was to put processes in place to help the 'Honey Badger' achieve good results. That plan helped because since then they have been on an upward trend which eventually led to the podium.

"We have a car that understeers and that's been something that he's had to adapt to and modify his natural approach to get the best out of. There have been a number of races where after the race, he's been frustrated and I've been reassuring him that actually we are seeing progress, and we don't have the good results yet but they're coming," the McLaren engineer says.

No doubts for Ricciardo

What Stallard and McLaren particularly like is the work ethic of the Australian driver. Not for one moment did he question whether it was down to the team, he just worked hard to make sure the results came.

"Daniel's easy to work with, because if you give him a problem to solve, he goes away and works at it, so the work ethic's always been good, which makes life easy. He doesn't defer responsibility away from himself; he takes a lot on the chin, which means some of what I've had to do is keeping him, let's say, up, because he's taken a lot of responsibility for things himself."