F1: McLaren struggles to get better results out of Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo has scored 34 points so far in 2021 compared to 86 points by his teammate Lando Norris. McLaren paid a lot of money to snatch Ricciardo from Renault and they expected more from the Australian.

At the Styrian GP he managed to qualify only thirteenth on Saturday. In the race, the McLaren driver got off to a strong start and immediately managed to move up to ninth place, until an engine problem slowed him.

“We need to investigate this in detail with our colleagues at Mercedes.  As I understand it, it has nothing to do with the temperatures,” team principal Andreas Seidl told Auto Motor und Sport.

In the end, Ricciardo finished the race right where he started, in thirteenth place.

“I was still ahead of Carlos Sainz at the start, who eventually finished sixth. We could have achieved that,” said a disappointed Ricciardo. “I want to forget this race as soon as possible. I think I’ll go out into nature and do some walking.”

“Of course he was very disappointed himself that he couldn’t continue the good development of the last races. Like us, he didn’t expect to have to fight so much in qualifying. The fact that we are now racing directly on the same track again is perfect for his learning process. There we can check that we have drawn the right conclusions,” said Seidl.

“In the battle we are in, both cars need to score points every weekend,” Seidl said, indicating that Ricciardo’s performance needs to improve, especially in qualifying.