Daniel Ricciardo’s 2021 F1 season featured dramatic highs and lows as he initially struggled with the McLaren and was unable to keep up with the pace of his younger teammate Lando Norris. As he got a handle on the required driving style Ricciardo’s skill shone through, leading home an emotional McLaren 1-2 finish at Monza.

Discussing his often difficult first season with the team, Ricciardo highlights the positives in the negative, claiming his difficulties helped him to better identify his strengths as a driver.

“There’s a lot I can use from that moving forward, simply because yeah, it kind of occurred to me that I didn’t really know my strengths,” Ricciardo said at McLarens 2022 season launch.

“I knew that I could be very fast - but I thought maybe because I have got bigger balls in the high-speed corners and I just care less! I don’t know.

“But going through it, I realised OK, this is what made me fast in years past. This is what actually gives me confidence in the car, and this is actually where I’m better than others, in this part, and that was at times when I couldn’t do it in the car, so that’s kind of how I discovered that.”

He went on to explain that it was identifying why he struggled with McLaren’s car that allowed him to isolate his own strengths.

“I was trying to get the car to do that, like, this is what got me to the dance so to speak, let me do this and I’ll do well,” he explained.

“But then there’s the reality of things not being an overnight fix, and I need to work on myself and adapt my style to get it going.

“I definitely learned my strengths. I think my weaknesses I guess became more apparent, but it was really the weird one figuring out why I was quick, why I’d been quick.”

As 2021 was Ricciardo’s first season with the team he had no influence on the design direction and handling characteristics of the MCL35.  The Australian confirms he influenced the balance of the new MCL36 to better suit his own driving style and eliminate any chances of the same problems occurring in 2022.

“From very early on, from when I first got into the car, I was relaying information on this is what is different to the Renault or the Red Bull, so I was already kind of feeding information,” Ricciardo said.

“As we were more races deep in, I was still kind of not doing as well as I thought, so I was beating it a little bit louder. The positive was that Lando [Norris] was also in agreement to that, and he would have like to have these attributes as well in the car, and what we could do with it.

“There’s a lot of emphasis on that for this year’s car, but it’s also a whole new car so we don’t know if that is also the best way to drive this car.

“I was beating [the drum], but the team also acknowledged that this is a strength of Daniel, he’s proven to be very fast, so we also want to give him this so we can also get the most out of Daniel.”