Daniel Ricciardo is taking the lessons out of his time at McLaren as he embarks on his return to Formula 1 after half a season on the sidelines.
Ricciardo has joined Scuderia AlphaTauri in place of Nyck de Vries, rejoining a team he raced for in 2012 and 2013 when it was known as Toro Rosso.
The team sits 10th and last in the constructors’ championship but offers a potential path back to the Red Bull senior team alongside Max Verstappen.
To get there, he’ll have to quickly come to grips with a car that is not thought to suit his driving style.
The Scuderia AlphaTauri AT04 has a nervous rear end, an issue Ricciardo battled with at McLaren.
There, the Australian worked to change his driving style to better suit the car, though had limited success in doing so as it never became natural.
“I think that was probably what hurt me the last couple years was that I started probably just falling into a little bit of a trap where ‘Oh, yeah, like this car doesn’t serve me and I need to work around this and this’,” Ricciardo explained.
“You can probably be your own worst enemy as well.
“It kind of goes back to my first quali with McLaren; I did a great quali and that was when I kind of didn’t know so much yet.
“I know the car will have limitations,” he added of the Scuderia AlphaTauri.
“I’m sure it’s not going to feel as good as the car I drove a week ago. I’ll just work with that.”
A key part of that is not heading down a rabbit hole in terms of adapting his own driving to the nuances of the car – a criticism that has been made of his time at McLaren.
“There’s a lot I learned,” he admitted.
“I think not only just singling the last two years or whatever, but over now my career, I look back on and having the last six months to actually reflect on my career I’ve been able to see a few things that ‘oh, yeah, I would have done that differently; I should have probably changed out or spoke up about that.
“The fact is, yes, I driven the simulator, but last week, I hadn’t driven a car in 10 months, I haven’t really been doing anything, driving wise; I haven’t driven F3s or go karts, I’ve just been really switching off from that.
“I appreciate the [Red Bull] car is very good, it’s the best on the grid at the moment, but I just got in and I drove, I didn’t really think about anything I just drove, had fun.
“And obviously the times were good, and I was competitive.
“But I think that, as a junior and when you’re coming up, you’re still pretty ignorant, and you don’t know much, you just race cars, because it’s what you love doing,” he added./
“I think there’s going to be a lot to learn, but I’m not going to solve everything this weekend, so it’s really just about focusing on using things I do well.
“I think then that’ll translate into similar positive outcomes.”
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