Daniel Ricciardo is all set to make his much-awaited F1 return later this weekend at the Hungarian Grand Prix following his successful testing at Silverstone. As the Australian edges closer to making his return, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner revealed in a recent interview how they fixed the “broken” 34-year-old following his struggles at McLaren.
Ricciardo had a disastrous two-year spell with McLaren as he underperformed massively in comparison to his inexperienced teammate, Lando Norris. In his first season at the team, Norris beat Ricciardo by 45 points. And in their second season as teammates, the margin increased to a whopping 85 points.
Since Ricciardo had such a horrible time at McLaren, Horner believes that his confidence shattered. The 49-year-old also believes that the Honey Badger picked up some bad habits while he was at McLaren, which took some time to fix when he returned to the Red Bull family.
Horner believes Ricciardo became unrecognizable after his McLaren spell
Christian Horner recently opened up on the most recent episode of the F1 Nation podcast about the much-awaited return of Daniel Ricciardo. The Red Bull team principal began his comments by explaining how the 34-year-old seemed “broken” after McLaren parted ways with him.
After having a look at what Ricciardo’s time at McLaren had done to him, Horner suggested that the Australian could return to the Red Bull family and work his way up back again. Horner believes it was important for him to call Ricciardo back as “it was clear that he was not enjoying things“.
The same was true for Horner, who added, “To be honest, I didn’t really recognize the Daniel over the last couple of years that we have grown so used to (seeing)“. After stating the same, the Red Bull team principal added that Ricciardo drove a simulator following the conclusion of the season finale in Abu Dhabi, one that was “a complete disaster“.
Race week. Haven’t said that in a while. Cool.
— Daniel Ricciardo (@danielricciardo) July 17, 2023
The 49-year-old believes that the Australian “adopted every bad habit imaginable” while working with his previous race engineer at McLaren, and hence, he needed fixing. Horner believes that it is only when Red Bull began working with Ricciardo for the first half of the 2023 season is when the Australian began to rediscover his lost form.
The 49-year-old then added how this period helped the 34-year-old get ready for his Silverstone test which turned out to be a great success. Ricciardo’s Silverstone test was a massive success as he set a lap time that would have been good enough for the front row for the recently concluded British Grand Prix.
Why was the Silverstone test so important for Daniel Ricciardo?
Since Daniel Ricciardo found himself without a race seat at the start of the 2023 season, he was always desperate to find his way back to the F1 grid. And for him to do so, he needed to be at his absolute best during the recently concluded Silverstone tests.
Even though the 34-year-old had not driven an F1 car for seven months, it took him just a few laps to get up to speed. Once he was confident, he registered a storming lap that was just seven tenths of the lap time registered by pole-sitter Max Verstappen at the British Grand Prix, as per mirror.co.uk.
Since Ricciardo was so impressive, Red Bull barely took any time to sign him for their sister team, AlphaTauri. Now with the Honey Badger returning to the F1 grid this weekend at the Hungarian Grand Prix, all eyes are likely to be on him.
