Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren, Silverstone, 2021

Integrating fully at McLaren is hardest and most important thing to get right – Ricciardo

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In the round-up: Daniel Ricciardo says it is vital he integrates completely with his new team as quickly as possible following his second move in three years.

What they say

The new McLaren driver was asked what is the most difficult challenge he faces after joining the team:

I think fitting in, in terms of feeling like you’re part of the team. Being integrated, not only into the driving side but into into all of it, into the engineering, into the strategy.

I’ve already had so many meetings at the MTC [McLaren Technology Centre] with not only my engineer, but really with the whole racing department. So it’s kind of like feeling like you’re sitting in the room with a voice and with enough knowledge that what you say will be taken on board.

So I think that kind of whole integration into all areas of the race team, that’s probably got a lot more power than just being the driver and only the driver. Feeling like you can sit in every room and have a presence, that’s probably the the most important, but also the most difficult thing to get going.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Several of you were unimpressed with how Formula E handled the coverage of Alex Lynn’s crash on Saturday:

Thankfully Alex Lynn is fine and he is discharged from hospital, but today wasn’t a good day for Formula E.

First of all, we had two drivers going to hospital after their massive shunts. In Mortara’s case, he had an incident quite familiar to the one Daniel Abt had during practice in Mexico 2020. In both cases there was a software glitch which made the car unstoppable (quite unacceptable in my opinion).

Not only that, but the way they broadcasted the whole Lynn accident was really amateurish. You could clearly see some medical cars rushing to turn 18 and the broadcasting team didn’t mention anything. To top that, the coverage followed race winner Sam Bird when celebrating, with the ambulance being right behind him.
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Keith Collantine
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21 comments on “Integrating fully at McLaren is hardest and most important thing to get right – Ricciardo”

  1. It would be a shame if F1 doesn’t accept the opportunity to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Hopefully they take up the offer. Throughout most of last year there was a case or two announced regularly within the paddock through their testing, and who knows how many untested cases were spread as a result.

    Would be great to get rid of that factor entirely, and the show from a broadcast perspective could return to normal without the need for such strict social distancing.

    1. Some might ask who would be missing out in Bahrain, or at least having their vaccination delayed to make way for the paddock? From my understanding vaccination isn’t a 100% guarantee against contracting covid, so if the paddock was to take up the offer, and still have cases spread it would be pretty negative imagery.

      1. @Ross Indeed. This possible side impact exists should F1 take up the offer in Bahrain.

      2. Vaccination is not perfect, but does (significantly) reduce the risk of getting the disease and (most likely) spreading it.
        If you keep many of the other precautionary measures then it cannot hurt.

        1. @coldfly The vaccine doesn’t stop you catching the disease, it just stops you from getting ill (if 100% effective) and needing to go to hospital. Vaccines are designed to build up your antibodies to that virus so if you do catch it your body can fight it off more easily without needing hospital treatment, therefore if you are vaccinated you can still suffer from symptoms but hopefully not as bad as it would have been.

          That is why the government is still telling vaccinated people to observe restrictions as they can catch it but still spread it to unvaccinated people who can still get ill. It can’t be seen as a ‘golden ticket’ until enough people have got it.

          1. That’s what the vaccines were formally tested for, but real-world experience shows that they also reduce the risk of contracting and spreading the disease, and massively at that.

      3. The vaccinations are designed to stop you from suffering serious enough symptoms if you catch it so you will not need to go to hospital. That is all they are designed to do, nothing more.

        There is some evidence that it helps to reduce transmission as well but this is a secondary benefit (although good if it does deliver this).

        Therefore for social distancing to be reduced to pre-Covid levels, the vast majority of people will need to be vaccinated to prevent illness and hospitalisations of non-vaccinated people.

        1. That is all they are designed to do, nothing more.

          Or tested anyway. But they are seriously overperforming. At least the BioNtek/Pfizer one, which is by far the leading one with almost 250 M doses administered already.

    2. @skipgamer I know what you’re saying, but weirdly I think Domenicali has made the right call here; both socially, and from a business PR/optics perspective.

      Accepting the vaccine, even though from another country, could very well be seen as “skipping the line” and you just know a vocal minority would spin it this way.

  2. It will be interesting to see how Dan Ricciardo blends in with Mclaren and whether or not they make a step forward this year.

    It took a year for Renault and him to properly gel. Hopefully it will be a more successful Union at Mclaren.

    1. The same Ricciardo quote could come from the Mercedes PU.

      I’m evenly interested to see how that PU will blend in (or the chassis blend around it).

    2. Very insightful comments by Ricciardo. Almost sounds like he’s trying to become their first driver. Not in a sneaky way, but just by establishing himself as part of the management, ‘Schumacher-style’.

    3. @dbradock he has more experience at transitioning now so he knows what to do to accelerate the integration process. I don’t think it will take quite as long as it did at Renault.

  3. Looking at the video of the Lynn crash and how avoidable it all was, it really goes to show why FIA stewards NEED to give penalties for unnecessary blocking on overtakes. Lynn is going for a perfectly valid overtake and is simply pushed into the wall by a late move which mirrors literally every (completely unpunished) defensive move in Formula E. This happens all the time and it’s only the fact that they generally don’t go fast enough to have major crashes that avoided such a horror crash in the past. Generally it just ends with a crash into the wall or each other.

    The FIA and Agag’s organisation only have themselves to blame for this crash, by allowing late defensive moves to go unchecked for years, making it perfectly normal for drivers to just move over as late as possible to block cars from overtaking them.

    1. @aiii I have to agree, sometimes FE just looks like ‘bumper cars’, when they get ‘silly’ (which is not always), it resembles your local indoor kart track accountancy firms team building exercise.

    2. “Simply pushed into the wall”???

      That’s not what I saw!

    3. Common crash. they’d be even more common if the drivers didn’t sense how common this problem is. What is not common is to hit the gap on the wall. another “gap on the wall” crash what a coincidence after Grosjean hit the wall that sticks to cover the gap on the barrier, Lynn hits the edge of the gap. Unusual places to crash into but bad track design.

  4. As much as i’m sure Mitch Evans will get a very stern telling off for extracting himself and running to Alex Lynn, I think it’s very understandable to go to someone after a crash like that, even just for your own sake you need to know he’s okay as quickly as possible, and though Mitch (i’m guessing) isn’t medically trained nobody was going to get Alex quicker than him.

    Happy to see that Alex seems to be doing well.

    That photo of Kimi is fantastic, I’ve not seen it before.

  5. Re Lynn: Jeez, I had always thought Formula E cars would never go airborne.

    1. A car went airborne in the very first race of Formula e.

  6. Totally agree with COTD.

Comments are closed.