McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl says the team has to take some responsibility for Daniel Ricciardo’s ongoing Formula 1 struggles after his Q1 exit in Austria.
Ricciardo joined McLaren at the start of last year but has found it challenging to adjust to the characteristics of the team’s F1 car, which doesn’t suit his driving style.
Despite winning the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, Ricciardo’s general form since signing for McLaren has been underwhelming and has shown no signs of improving this season.
The Australian sits just 14th in the drivers’ standings, seven places lower than team-mate Lando Norris, who is the only driver outside Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes to score a podium this year.
After another challenging weekend at Silverstone that brought no points, Ricciardo’s difficult spell continued as he was knocked out in qualifying at the Austrian Grand Prix.
While Ricciardo has felt added pressure to improve his performances following CEO Zak Brown’s comments on his future earlier in the year, Seidl believes Ricciardo’s problems are not solely down to him.
“We simply need to stay calm and keep working together, in order to see what we can do also on the car side in order to help him get more out of the car, which we are doing,” Seidl said, as quoted by Motorsport.com.
“Daniel is very critical about himself as well, which is good, but in the end we have to do a better job as a team.
“We need to give him a more reliable car, so that he can also do the practice sessions as you want to do them to get through the full programme. We need in general to get the car performance more up, and then I’m sure both drivers are in a position to score the results.”
McLaren’s day in Austria was hit further when Norris failed to advance to the top-10 shootout due to a brake-by-wire issue, leaving him 15th on the grid just ahead of Ricciardo.
Norris had limited running in the opening practice session on Friday when he pulled off the track with an engine problem, while Ricciardo was hindered by a DRS issue.
“It was a tough Friday, and obviously for us just not good enough as a team,” added Seidl. “I guess it is not typical for us, so we need to get to the bottom of this and make sure we eliminate all these different issues as quickly as possible.
“If you look at FP1, then on Daniel’s side unfortunately we had a DRS issue which compromised his run plan. We could not go through the full programme like that, as his focus was on solving the DRS issue.
“For Lando, unfortunately after we installed a new PU for this weekend, he had a power loss: something we still have to investigate together with our colleagues from Mercedes.
“We had to go back to a used power unit from the pool for qualifying, although still we managed to get both cars ready then for qualifying.
“But then right away from the first outing we experienced a BBW issue on Lando’s side which didn’t allow him to push the car to the limit, or give him confidence.
“On Daniel’s side, he struggled to extract the performance from the car which was a shame. And unfortunately with the field being so close together on lap time, he could not progress into Q2 which is obviously a bad outcome.
“Being 14th and 15th after qualifying, luckily, we have a sprint race because I think with the package we have here, if we get the reliability issues sorted, we should definitely be in a position to move up some positions. That will then put us in a better position for the race on Sunday because the goal is to still get the cars in the points.”
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