McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo admits he did not appreciate Lando Norris’s full potential as a driver until spending a season alongside him as his team mate.
Ricciardo moved from Renault to McLaren for the 2021 season and regularly struggled to match team mate Norris’s performances, ending the season 45 points adrift of the 22-year-old in the drivers’ championship despite taking McLaren’s first race win in almost a decade in Italy.
While Ricciardo says he expected Norris to be a formidable team mate when joining McLaren, he admits he did not anticipate how often he would reach his full potential out on the track.
“In a way I was… I don’t want to say ‘surprised’, because there’s 20 of us here out of many in the world who are trying to get here,” Ricciardo said. “So I’m always expecting someone very talented, someone fast, but I guess the ‘scale’, you’re not really sure.
“I’ll be honest, probably like most of the world and F1, I think I knew Lando was…