Ricciardo taking ‘natural’ approach with Scuderia AlphaTauri

Daniel Ricciardo is taking a more natural approach to his racing upon his return to F1 with Scuderia AlphaTauri following two difficult years with McLaren.

The Australian made a positive start in Hungary, out-qualifying team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, ending Sunday’s race ahead, too despite being involved in the opening corner melee.

That performance came despite a lack of seat time in the AT04; Ricciardo only drove it for the first time in Free Practice 1.

In climbing into the car, Ricciardo has adopted a more natural approach to his driving.

“I don’t want to get into that detail ever again,” he said, referencing the analytical approach he pursued with McLaren.

“I think even through year one at McLaren, kind of at the summer break, I’d learned that, okay, we’ve probably gone too much, we need to change the approach a little bit.

“It was all with everyone’s best interests, trying to make it work, but I felt like I’d come to the realisation that wasn’t working for me.

“We still probably did too much, in hindsight, but maybe that works for another driver.”

Ricciardo was rushed into action last weekend, receiving the call-up to Scuderia AlphaTauri in place of Nyck de Vries in the week following the British Grand Prix.

It left little time for preparation, with a brief simulator session about the totality of it.

With Free Practice 1 effectively rained out, it made for a baptism of fire with the squad.

“There was definitely things over last weekend I worked on, and Yuki was a good reference, especially coming out of the box, little bits of driving and where the car could be on the limit in some areas of the track,” Ricciardo explained.

“So there was certainly things that the engineers were showing me and saying ‘Okay, I think you can probably do this here and improve that there’.

“There was some learning to be had,” he added.

“Also, they wanted to see how I drive the car and kind of go from there.

“I was improving where I knew I could, but they were just kind of letting me drive it naturally and see where that ended up.”