Daniel Ricciardo trying to avoid falling down emotional "rabbit hole" with McLaren

Ricciardo at Azerbaijan — Photo: © LAT Images

McLaren

Ricciardo trying to avoid falling down emotional "rabbit hole' with McLaren

Ricciardo claims to taking a step back to assess McLaren struggles after Monaco

Ian Parkes & Sam Hall

Thursday 3 June 2021 13:04 Updated: 13:08

Daniel Ricciardo has revealed to taking a step back following his poor performance in Monaco in a bid to evaluate his troubled integration at McLaren.

Ricciardo opted to spend a considerable amount of time in the simulator in Woking following a lacklustre Monaco Grand Prix in which he was lapped by podium-bound team-mate Lando Norris.

After the car was given a clean bill of health, ruling out any underlying mechanical issues, the Australian has since switched focus to his own approach.

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But asked if there was a danger he might begin to overthink things, he answered: “That’s with anything in life. Probably more so Formula 1.

"I was trying to give an example but Formula 1 is complex and you can [overthink things]. You fall down that little rabbit hole and it’s hard to pull yourself out.

“Probably with my experience in the sport I have pretty good self-awareness of that and sometimes you can’t help but go down that path because you also get emotional and emotions sometimes don’t lead to the clearest decisions.

“But I’m definitely aware of it and I think by Monday morning after the race I was full steam ahead and I was ready to go and then that led to the productive few days with the team in Woking.”

Ricciardo taking one step back for two steps forwards?

Five races into the season, Ricciardo trails third-placed Norris by 32 points, with his best result sixth achieved in Imola and Spain.

Norris, on the other hand, has twice finished on the podium but Ricciardo explained how he has stepped back to better assess where his problems lie.

“I did spend a good few days on the sim last week just trying to take a step back and understand what is going on and how the car works and what kinds of things need to be done to get the car working well," added Ricciardo.

“I don’t want to say I started from zero because I’ve definitely learned a bit in the first few races. I just had more of an open-minded approach and we just tried lots of different things.

“Even things that don’t feel correct, we’ll try them and then understand why it doesn’t work, so we just played around a lot.

"Certainly some things now do seem more clear to me and I think it was really productive to do that. I’m just looking forward to putting it into play now on track.”