But how damaging might those concerns be to his own performance? At 39 years old there are many attributing his form to the passing of time. But you don’t go from setting the track alight on Saturday morning, braking super-late and confident, shaving the walls just like in the peak of your career, leaving your team mate bewildered at where you are finding the time from, to being old and off the pace later that same day. This cannot be a physical thing. Some of his qualifying deficit was later attributed to incorrect tyre pressures (doubtless creating more paranoia), but there’s clearly a psychological element at play. He is not meeting his own standards and it seems to be feeding on itself.
Focus is a word you hear all the time in all sports and F1 demands an extraordinary level of intensity. With a mountain of success behind you it’s probably quite easy to kid yourself you’re at your limit until a team-mate goes faster. Digging for the last tenth or so can be very uncomfortable. It needs to be flowing naturally, so that the spiral of confidence becomes ingrained in everything you do. But the moment that confidence gets dented and the questions arise, the performance can spiral downwards too.
“It’s not physical ability which makes drivers retire,” the late Chris Amon once explained of his own retirement at 34, “it’s just the loss of desire, from the grounding down of all the years. It isn’t that you can’t still do it. It’s that you can’t always summon the desire to go to that edge.”
Is Ricciardo’s lack of form due to a lack of desire?
Red Bull
Some of that resonated with what Ricciardo was talking about in Canada. “It was like, OK, what are maybe some other things that are affecting my performances? Am I coming into a race weekend not feeling energised or not feeling this or that?
“I think I just had a little bit of good self-therapy after Monaco, and just sat back and had a look at maybe the things I’m doing wrong away from the track. Or giving too much of my time to people and by the time I get to race day or something, I’m a little bit more flat.
“Deep down, I know what I can do, and it’s just making sure I’m in this spot to be able to do it more often.”
“That little energy, that little bit of a chip on my shoulder I brought into the weekend, I’ve got to make sure that stays there, and just keep that level of intensity. Sometimes being a little bit… I don’t know if I need to be a bit angry or just get my testosterone up. But I think it helps me.”