Daniel Ricciardo hopes the radical new cars for the 2022 Formula 1 season will require a more physical approach at the wheel.
McLaren have become the latest team to launch their 2022 car, the MCL36, which has been designed to F1’s dramatic overhaul of the technical regulations to improve the quality of racing in the series.
Ricciardo says that the change in downforce philosophy to emphasise underbody ground effect, rather than generating it over the surface of the car, could either make the cars “nice” or “ugly” to drive.
“It can go two ways,” Ricciardo explained. “Race cars can be nice handfuls, where if you watch IndyCar, you’ll get them wrestling them, especially on the road courses. They’re wrestling them all the time and, for me, it looks fun. Whereas others might be like ‘ugh, I can’t handle this – ‘no bueno’ at all’, but I look at it like ‘that looks fun’. There’s a nice fun and an ugly fun – I hope this is a nice fun.”
With car…