Norris “understands” why Ricciardo is struggling with McLaren F1 car

Ricciardo has had a difficult 2022 season so far, and he has made the top 10 only twice. The Australian has scored 15 points in 10 races, while Norris has logged 58.

Norris admits that the car has characteristics that make it difficult to drive and require a special technique.

“I can understand on some points,” Norris said when asked if he could relate to Ricciardo’s struggles. “Because I do feel like it’s a difficult car to drive, our car.

“I think like our characteristics we’ve also had over the past few years, and even Carlos [Sainz] said it, they’re quite specific and unique.

“So some of the driving styles you need are not ones you kind of grow up learning, and therefore you have to adapt quite a bit.

“Last year, I would say that we had more of that, and then it’s not an easy thing to adapt to that, like holding the brake in some sorts of corners that you don’t feel like you want to hold the brake in, and then doing the opposite in other corners.

“It’s not like an obvious thing on how to drive the car in every corner.”

Norris insisted that it hasn’t been easy for him to adapt to the car, despite his longer tenure at McLaren.

“It’s the same for me,” he said. “Especially with this year, the car is very different. And some of the characteristics we had last year are gone, and we’ve introduced some other characteristics. And I’ve had to change my driving style.

“So at the same time I’ve also had to adapt to it. It’s not just because I’ve been with McLaren for four years that I know this car inside out, I struggled at the beginning of the season probably with my driving style a little bit more than what Daniel struggled with initially, in the first few tests, and I feel like I had to adapt quite a bit.

“So I understand certain parts of it [Ricciardo’s struggle].”

Norris said he’s happy to help the Australian if he can.

“We look at each other’s data all the time. We ask each other questions all the time. It’s not something you probably ever want to do, let’s say, is ask someone else questions. But we help each other as much as we can.

“There’s still a lot of things he does well, and that I still learn from him and use from him from my side and from my driving and set-up and things like that.

“But I’m happy if he has questions to ask me if he wants to know how I feel in the car and so on. But at the same time some of my feelings are not translated to his feelings. And how we…