In Monaco, Daniel Ricciardo looked a far cry from the happy-go-lucky ‘honey badger’ we’ve grown to know and love.
He crossed the line 13th, seven places behind his McLaren team mate Lando Norris. Ricciardo’s poor form, which began last year and has shown little sign of improving, has prompted questions surrounding his future, just seven races into the season. Not least due to pointed comments from McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown the week before.
Ricciardo’s future looked promising when he joined McLaren last season. The team signalled their commitment by signing him to a three-year contract which should keep him in orange until the end of next season.
When Ricciardo arrived, Brown gushed that they had “an incredibly exciting” driver line-up and that both drivers were “formidable racers on-track and great characters off-track”.
But the results proved hard to come by for Ricciardo. Despite a win in Monza, he was out-qualified by Norris 15 times in 2021, finishing 45 points behind in the drivers’ championship. Over the first six races of this season Norris amassed 39 points, including another podium, while Ricciardo’s 11 was less than Kevin Magnussen had accumulated in his Haas.
Speculation mounted that he may not see out his contract at McLaren following comments made by Brown in the week ahead of the race in Monaco. After Ricciardo’s 12th place in Barcelona, Brown told Sky: “We would obviously like to see Daniel much closer to Lando and have a good inter-team battle.”
“Daniel is just not comfortable yet with the car, we’re trying everything we can,” Brown continued. “Again it was a disappointing weekend.
“Short of Monza and a few races, it’s generally not kind of met his or our expectations, as far as what we were expecting.
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“And I think all you can do is keep working hard as a team, keep communications going, keep pushing and hope that whatever is not kind of clicking at the moment…