“That’s the most important and also the difficult thing”- Daniel Ricciardo praises McLaren’s special quality

“That’s the most important and also the difficult thing”- Daniel Ricciardo praises McLaren’s special work culture, calls it the strongest element.

Daniel Ricciardo, who started his work with McLaren this year, has apparently found the work environment at his new place to be incredibly positive.

He explained that your presence is cherished at McLaren, and it feels that one’s points are considered before making a decision. Hence, he feels that his presence is valued.

“It’s feeling like you’re sitting in a room with a voice, I guess and with enough knowledge that what you say will be taken on board. So I think that whole integration into all areas of the race team, that’s got a lot more power than being the driver and only the driver,” he said to GPFans.

“I think that feeling like you can sit in every room and have a presence, that’s the most important and also the difficult thing to get going,” he added.

Great expectations

While Ricciardo feels valued at McLaren, the Woking-based team’s bosses have certainly big expectations from him. Mclaren last year, after a constant struggle, managed to achieve a P3.

It is not a fair representation of their actual ability and still lies several times behind Red Bull and Mercedes. Therefore, the main objective of McLaren this year is to be within the 1/10th seconds’ gap behind the top-2 across all qualifiers.

And Ricciardo is among the drivers in the current grid who can maximize the outputs for his team, as his two podium exhibition for Renault in 2020 is a piece of evidence for it.

On McLaren’s side, the biggest development has been upgrading to the Mercedes’ engine, which according to Andreas Seidl, is the best power unit in F1 right now.

As of now, Mercedes is supplying engines to three other teams apart from themselves.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

Read More