McLaren has identified an oil leak as the likely cause of Daniel Ricciardo’s retirement from the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix.
The Australian rolled to a stop on Lap 46 of the 53-lap race, drawing the Safety Car under which the event would ultimately end.
Ricciardo was running eighth in the closing stages in Monza before he was forced to park his MCL 36 between the two Lesmo corners.
“We still need to wait for the car to come back,” Team Principal Andreas Seidl said when asked by Speedcafe.com if the team had an early indication as to why the Australian stopped.
“Daniel commented on the radio that he lost the engine and it looks like that we had an oil leak, but what exactly the root cause of the oil leak [is] something we need to analyse once the car is back.
“It is obviously very unfortunate for Daniel, for us, that after a strong weekend on his side of the garage, the strong race today, that ultimately we couldn’t score the points that he deserves this weekend.”
Ricciardo ran third at the end of the opening lap, and spent much of the race inside the top 10 in one of his strongest showings of the season.
“It was nice to start at the front, nice to be on the second row,” Ricciardo said.
“Got a decent start obviously, was in third, and I was kind of hoping the race would end on Lap 1, another podium would have been really good, but didn’t have the pace.
“I was trying to hang on today with [Pierre] Gasly, and he was definitely quicker, so I was happy to hold him off for pretty much the whole race.
“But I wish we had a bit more to show.”
A poor start for team-mate Lando Norris saw him drop from third to sixth on Lap 1. The Brit ultimately reached the chequered flag in seventh.
“There was some mistakes with the launch settings, things that I couldn’t change or adapt,” he explained of his sluggish getaway.
“So I was dealing with a car which wasn’t made to do a launch basically, which meant I went into anti-stall like two or three times, and lost me a lot of time, a lot of positions, and probably cost me fifth place today.
“I’d be disappointed, I’ll say quite disappointed because I feel like I did a very good job when I drove well. But we just made too many mistakes.”
With Fernando Alonso retiring with an overheating car, and Esteban Ocon only classified 11th, McLaren clawed a little back in the battle with Alpine for fourth in the constructors’ championship.
The gap between the two squads had sat at 24 points heading into the weekend and has now reduced to 18 with six races remaining.
Formula 1 heads next to Marina Bay for the first time since 2019 for the Singapore Grand Prix on September 30-October 2.
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