McLaren reveal cause of Daniel Ricciardo São Paulo retirement

Ricciardo, Mclaren, Brazil — Photo: © LAT Images

São Paulo Grand Prix

McLaren reveal cause of Ricciardo São Paulo retirement

Ricciardo was eighth when he retired on lap 50

Sam Hall

Monday 15 November 2021 16:15

McLaren F1 team principal Andreas Seidl has explained a crack in the "power unit insulation" was behind Daniel Ricciardo's retirement from Sunday's São Paulo Grand Prix.

Ricciardo was running in eighth position to a bold one-stop strategy when he was instructed to return to the pits and retire his car.

Asked to explain the reasons behind the call, Seidl explained: “We had a power loss on track.

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"We did an initial investigation and we found a technical issue, a crack in the chassis side of the power unit insulation which we need to now investigate further and I can give a further update in Qatar.”

After scoring just a single point at each of the past two weekends, when wished well for the upcoming Qatar GP, Seidl joked: "They can't go worse!"

Ricciardo hopes PU "recoverable"

The retirement was Ricciardo's third non-points finish in the last four races, bringing to an end the longest active finishing streak in F1 at 34 races stretching back to last year's season-opening Austrian Grand Prix.

Reflecting on the failure, Ricciardo said: “I felt it coming in a few laps earlier and then Tom [Stallard] let me know he had also seen it so I asked if we could do something to help.

"We made a couple of switch changes but it was just dropping and dropping more and more.

“We couldn’t fix it on track so hopefully it is recoverable but it was game over.”

After enjoying strong reliability for the majority of the season to date, Ricciardo added: "Obviously, these things can happen.

"We were looking like we were going to get a few points so the race was going pretty well. We were managing quite well and potentially a one-stop could have worked out for us pretty strongly.

"Definitely it was a better day than Saturday. I was pretty happy with how we were going. It was just out of our control."