Ricciardo knew early he had his "work cut out" with new McLaren

Daniel Ricciardo has revealed to knowing soon after arriving at McLaren he would have his "work cut out" with this year's car.

Ricciardo has struggled for confidence and performance in the MCL35M since his winter switch from Renault on a three-year contract.

That has resulted in the Australian scoring just 26 points from the first six grands prix of this season compared to the 66 of team-mate Lando Norris.

Ricciardo concedes he is still trying to understand the car while at the same time adapting how he needs to drive in order to extract the best from it.

“When I first drove the car I said to myself ‘Okay, it’s a different one’,” said Ricciardo on formula1.com.

"But I wasn’t discouraged by that. I just said to myself ‘I’ll have to figure it out. The more laps I do, it’ll just come’.

“The car is different enough, you need to work a little harder at it. It hasn’t so far come just by circulating and doing laps. I’ve had to adapt a few things with my driving style to help the car. I’m still trying to get on top of that.

“I’m just focused a bit more on me now. But I felt early on it was quite a different car. Different not being bad, different being ‘I’ve got my work cut out’.”

Ricciardo learning to cope with "bad days"

The 31-year-old is in no doubt that understanding will come, as it did in his second season with Renault last year.

Until then, Ricciardo recognises the path forward may not be easy to find and he will have to continue to cope with any difficult times ahead, albeit confident he can pull himself up when needed.

“I’ve been here before, whether it’s to this level or not, whether it was in F1 or not,” added Ricciardo.

“Naturally you always have these highs and lows. I fall out of love with the sport at least once a year. It’s always done this [to me] and it will probably keep doing that.

“But the good thing with me is I’m always able to wake up Monday morning, after say a [tough race like] Monaco, and be full steam ahead again.

"I’ll be sad if I need to on Sunday night but then I wake up Monday morning with fresh motivation.

"I’ll say to myself ‘This feeling, I don’t like it, what am I going to do to change it?’ I definitely find perspective in the bad days.”

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