Daniel Ricciardo was axed by McLaren a full year before the end of his contract with the British F1 team. At the time it appeared this could be the end of the road for the loveable Aussie until Red Bull stepped in recruiting him as a reserve driver.

A number of theories were propounded as to why Ricciardo could not come to terms with the McLaren while his team mate Lando Norris flourished. One of which was revealed by the team’s then executive director of racing, Andrea Stella, who suggested the problem was a mismatch between the driving style of his driver and the characteristics of the car.

 

 

 

Driving style counter intuitive

“Some characteristics of our car that make it very special to drive, which we see with the experience Daniel is going through because he came from the opposite end in terms of how you would like to drive a Formula 1 car,” said Stella.

Put simply, Stella explained Ricciardo likes to roll the speed into the corner but the McLaren’s inherent front end weakness is only mitigated by braking later whilst applying a relatively progressive application of the steering lock.

This required a change in driving style Daniel found counter intuitive, much as Mark Webber had done during the years Red Bull developed cold blowing off throttle. This was the practice whereby the airflow through the exhaust would be maintained even when the drive was not engaged. This was done by keeping the throttle open during braking but also by restricting fuel to the engine and by retarding ignition.

Webber never mastered the driving style Vettel adopted to maximise this engineering trick and Ricciardo also struggled with the new demands of a different style of braking style to rotate the car through the corner.

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Tsunoda on top

Daniel’s fortunes appeared to change as Red Bull decided to ditch rookie Nyck De Vries after just ten races last season. Ricciardo stepped into the Alpha Tauri seat (now RB) and looked immediately more at home than when driving the papaya liveried car the previous year.

Yet an unfortunate accident on his third outing in Zandvoort saw the eight times Grand Prix winner forced to sit out five race weekends with a broken hand. His return would see a reversal in fortunes for Ricciardo as he finished just once in the points over the closing races, while team mate Tsunoda achieved this on three separate occasions.

Tsunoda has out qualified Ricciardo in each of the four rounds this season and finished ahead of him in three of the four Grand Prix. Further, with the RB having a fundamentally different driving characteristics from the McLaren, its questionable whether Ricciardo’s troubles are merely to be found in his driving style.

Giancarlo Minardi, who founded the Faenza-based squad RB as Minardi in the 1980’s, is full of praise for the team’s Japanese driver. 

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Yuki “is doing well”

“He is doing well and was unlucky a few times due to technical problems,” Minardi told Italy’s NewsF1.it

“He is first behind the five top teams, but it will not be easy to keep this sixth place in the constructors’ championship,” he said of Tsunoda.

“But he is doing his best and it is clear that RB needs the second driver too, because you don’t get far with one point per race. You can lose your lead quickly.”

Turning to Ricciardo, Minardi believes the broken hand marked a turning point in the RB inter team battle which had seen the Aussie driver comeback start so well.

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Ricciardo difficult to value

“After he came back he had that accident after which he was out because of his wrist,” the Italian said. “He was there though, he fought Tsunoda. But Ricciardo now is making it difficult for me to assign a concrete value.

“As an outsider observing things, the problem seems much bigger than injuries, it’s much more complex.”

Neither Yuki Tsunoda or Daniel Ricciardo have contracts beyond this season and Liam Lawson has been promised a drive with RB for 2025 according to Dr. Marko. Gone also is talk of Daniel replacing Sergio Perez who has delivered three 1-2 Red Bull finishes this year coming home second to Max Verstappen in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

Speaking to PlanetF1.com, former F1 driver Thierry Boutsen questions Ricciardo’s mental strength. “If you’re driving in Formula 1, you have to give 100 percent of yourself all the time,” Boutsen said of Ricciardo.

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“If you’re affected by confidence, affected by a physical problem, affected by anything, you’re not doing a good job. You can see today, that he is making mistakes and is not as quick as he should and what he has been in the past.

“That means that his mental[ity] is not as strong as it was when he was winning races in the past…..It’s also part of his mental preparation that there may be something missing there.”

As to Ricciardo’s future, Boutsen holds out little hope he will remain with RB for much longer.

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“you don’t deserve your seat”

“If I was the team manager and trying to make my team win, I would like to have drivers who have no psychological problems, and no pressure,” he said.

“They’re just there to win and to do everything to win.

“You need to put everything to the side and just concentrate on one thing. If you have some kind of problem, somehow, you don’t give 100 percent. That’s not what is needed in Formula 1. You don’t deserve your seat if it’s like this.”

Daniel Ricciardo won the Chinese Grand Prix for Red Bull back in 2018 and will need a strong weekend against his junior team mate if he’s going to begin to turn his season around.

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Toto Wolff contradicts Hamilton’s assessment

The once dream team of Mercedes and their star Formula One driver, Lewis Hamilton, is drawing slowly to a conclusion as the seven times world champion is heading for Maranello next year. Wearing his heart on his sleeve, the British driver has made his feelings clear about the team’s latest challenger as the W15 has continues the tradition of being difficult to drive as was evident in its recent predecessors.

Mercedes F1 weekends this season have followed the same predictable pattern. The car appears to perform relatively well in first practice then fades away as the track sessions evolve. Hamilton has been out qualified by his team mate at three of the four completed rounds and his highest starting position is a lowly P7 last time out in Japan…. READ MORE