RICCIARDO’S ROCKY ROAD TO RECOVERY

PICTURES

Few images encapsulate the first half of Daniel Ricciardo’s eventful 2021 season quite so graphically as the footage of him climbing out of the cockpit after dragging his wounded McLaren to 12th (on the road) in the Hungarian Grand Prix. Or, rather, pausing halfway through the manoeuvre with his head slumped disconsolately against the car’s halo for what seemed like an age.

After two seasons with a Renault team which habitually overpromised and under-delivered, Ricciardo made a high-profile move to McLaren for 2021 which should have provided him with a performance upgrade. And yet, after a relatively bright start in the Bahrain season-opener, disappointment piled upon disappointment as Ricciardo struggled to get to grips with an MCL35M chassis in which understeer is the predominant characteristic. Team-mate Lando Norris adapted quicker, perhaps benefitting from a year’s experience with the car’s predecessor, and the gaps in lap time between the two drivers grew to distances Ricciardo himself felt unbridgeable; in Monaco Ricciardo was eliminated in Q2 while Norris came within three tenths of the pole time. After similar circumstances eventuated during qualifying for the Austrian GP Dan described the deficit as a “mystery” because he felt “at the limit of everything”.

Solving that mystery required Ricciardo to sacrifice a few sacred cows. Adapting to a new way of driving the car required months of chipping away at the margins, scrutinising the