Ricciardo: Did I try too hard? Did we engineer it too hard?

Ricciardo was never able to show he was still the driver we were used to enjoy watching during his Red Bull years after he joined McLaren, as he struggled to tame the F1 racers produced at Woking, and after two seasons of being soundly beaten by teammate Lando Norris, the Honey Badger was shown the door of the McLaren Technology Center on year before his contact expired and was replaced by compatriot Oscar Piastri.

Ricciardo tried to explain his struggle with McLaren in an interview with Beyond the Grid podcast, and revealed he lacked the "feel" and "feedback" from the car especially on corner entry.

"It all starts there," he said. "If you struggle with a corner on the exit, normally it’s a product of what’s happened through the corner that’s put you in a position of, let’s say, difficulty on the exit. Most difficulties start on the entry – maybe not all, but most.

"It is kind of an entry thing, but it’s more just like a feel and a limitation," Ricciardo went on. "I also look back at my very first race with McLaren, [when] I out-qualified Lando. That was when I was still fairly ‘green’ with the car, if you know what I mean. I kind of wonder, did we just get lost along the way?"

The Australian wondered: "Did I then start to try too hard, did we try to engineer it too hard, and get away from, let’s say, my strengths and then try to drive the car a certain way, [which was] maybe a weakness for me, and something that I couldn’t really grasp. I don’t know, it’s an interesting one.

"I think on both ends we struggled, in terms of the team trying to understand what it was and how to then update it and improve it," he claimed.

"But from my side I’m also like, ‘Okay, I’m not perfect. Sure, I’ve got some weaknesses, this car happens to expose a few of them.’ But, let’s say, I still didn’t find a way to gel at one with this car often enough."

One might have thought that with the new for 2022 F1 regulations that featured cars with ground effect, Ricciardo should have been able to fare better, but he claims that wasn't the case.

"The cars certainly behaved a bit differently, but I would say the DNA of the car is still the same. Where I would struggle, it was ultimately the same thing," the winner of eight grands prix insisted.

"I could honestly just strip it all back and just say it’s confidence, because I lack that extra bit of feel with the car to put it on the very limit and to know what I’m going to get. There were very few laps this year unfortunately where I crossed the line and [thought], ‘That was a good lap!’" he explained.

Ricciardo revealed that McLaren major upgrade package for the MCL36, introduced at the 2022 Spanish Grand Prix made matters worse for him

He recalled: "We brought updates around Barcelona and it was then that I started to struggle a bit more. I don’t know if that was a coincidence, but the gap [to Norris] started to increase again.

"Up until then I felt like I was always within a tenth or two of Lando, and we were kind of going a bit more nip and tuck. That’s where it started to separate again," he lamented.

Since leaving McLaren, Ricciardo found his way back home, joining Red Bull as a third and reserve driver, with the hope that this move would ultimately help him find his way back to the grid.