Ricciardo will not apply the McLaren approach at AlphaTauri

Ricciardo struggled for two years to get his around the McLaren cars that were putting at his disposal and failed miserably to do so and as such was released from his contract one year earlier from its expiry.

His former team Red Bull took him in as a reserve driver, and gave him another chance by loaning him to AlphaTauri to replace the underperforming Nyck de Vries.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner said that Ricciardo had picked up some really bad habits from driving at McLaren, revealing the team was shocked with the Australian.

Now following his second race with AlphaTauri, and as he works on getting used to his new surrounding and car, Ricciardo seemed to have learned his lesson.

Speaking to Motorsport.com, Ricciardo was asked about his approach at AlphaTauri, whether he would have to work hard to get used to the team's AT04.

"I don't want to get into that detail ever again," Ricciardo said. "I think even through year one at McLaren, at the summer break I learned we were probably going into too much. We needed to change the approach a little bit.

"It was all in everyone's best interests trying to make it work but I felt like I've come to the realisation that wasn't working for me. We still probably did too much in hindsight, but maybe that works for another driver, so it is what it is," he explained.

AlphaTauri's AT04 is arguably the slowest car on the 2023 F1 grid, but Ricciardo seems to be getting his head around it despite its shortcomings.

He said: "I felt a little bit more of it. On lap one I already felt like I was getting kind of the feedback that maybe I would expect or like, so that was important.

"Maybe I'll find things that I've just got to work on that don't quite correlate to my feeling, so I expect still some maybe challenges along the way.

"But the first impression was that it did give me a little bit more of a familiar feeling. That was also important because I was hoping to feel something like that," the eight-time race winner concluded.

Ricciardo outqualified and outraced Yuki Tsunoda on their first race together as teammates in Hungary, they were more evenly matched over the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, the Australian better in the Sprint, the Japanese better in the race.