“At McLaren it’s all one step higher”– Daniel Ricciardo finds McLaren ahead of other teams

“At McLaren it’s all one step higher”– Daniel Ricciardo praises his team’s extreme progress over the years and their urge to maintain it.

McLaren signed Daniel Ricciardo with many aspirations in mind, but the alliance hasn’t kicked off anywhere near that note. Ricciardo’s main reason to join the Woking-based team was seeing their progress over the last couple of years.

And honestly, the Australian is still impressed by their work and merit and has claimed that it is one step higher than the other teams in the paddock.

“At McLaren, I was impressed from the very first minute by the care with which they work,” Ricciardo told Auto Motor Und Sport. “There are more conversations, more briefings. They tick off everything that needs to be ticked off.

“That’s not to say that the other teams don’t do the same, but at McLaren, it’s all one step higher. Perhaps because they have made such good progress in recent years, they no longer want to jeopardise this positive trend.

“I get an answer to every question. Mostly immediately, but definitely a few days later. Every problem is investigated down to the last detail.”

McLaren is more challenging to drive than last year.

Ricciardo has explained his predicament in MCL35M by claiming that the car is not suitable for his driving style. And even Lando Norris has admitted that the car is more complicated to drive than the last year.

“Pirelli changed the construction of the front tyres and a few other things, and immediately everything felt very different,” said Ricciardo. “At first, I thought it had to do with the different aerodynamics of the cars.

“But Lando himself says that the McLaren is harder to drive this year than last year. The funny thing about the tyres is that in some laps, it works pretty well, you have maximum grip and drive good lap times, and sometimes you don’t even know why.

“Then suddenly it doesn’t work at all, even though you didn’t do anything else. That can be quite frustrating.”

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.

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