Ricciardo: We didn't have the smoothest day

Daniel Ricciardo was sidelined by Covid-19 at the F1 pre-season test in Bahrain, one before the Bahrain Grand Prix, during which team suffered a horrid time in terms of reliability, mainly facing issues with overheating brakes of the MCL36, preventing them from going for long runs.

Ricciardo was fit to drive in Bahrain, and McLaren had reportedly brought new brake ducts for their car in time for FP1, but that did not seem to fix the problem fully, with Ricciardo also suffering water leak problems on his MCL36.

McLaren were out of the top ten in both FP1 and FP2 on Friday, with Ricciardo finishing 17th and 18th respectively, nothing to be excited about, given McLaren's pre-season testing form in Barcelona.

"It's good being back in the car and back out on track but we didn't have the smoothest day," Ricciardo said in the team report.

"Unfortunately, we missed out on some running this evening, so we've got our work cut-out tonight. We've also got some pace to find, but it's only day one.

"We'll keep at it, study the data tonight and try to make up for it tomorrow morning, before qualifying," he concluded.

Lando Norris whose best time of the day was only good for 11th in FP2, lamented the lack of running in the official pre-season test in Bahrain last week.

"Today was always going to be a tough day, trying to make up for the lack of long running that we missed out on last week at the test," he said in McLaren's press release. We stuck to our run plan and can take some positives from the day, but there's a lot of work to do to be competitive.

"That will be our aim overnight, we'll go and analyse the data, work out where we can improve and do what we can to get the car in a better place for tomorrow," the Briton added.

McLaren's Executive Director of Racing, Andrea Stella, reflected on a difficult day, where he admits they completed what they set out to do, despite not reaching a satisfactory performance level in the car.

Stella said: "After today, it looks like we have some work to do from a performance point of view, and we will do that overnight, trying to be as ready as possible for qualifying and the race.

"We needed to stop Daniel a little early this evening to investigate a water leak. This is nothing too serious and will be fixed for the remainder of the weekend," he added.

"Despite this, today we could achieve pretty much all the programme we had planned. Following the issues we had at the test, today we made a step forward with our brake cooling, thanks to rapid work done at the factory to deliver new parts," the racing director explained.

McLaren have treated us with some really cool footage from the onboard helmet cam with Lando Norris being on filming duty, great stuff to watch.