Daniel Ricciardo: 'The car is not doing everything I want'

“That definitely was fun, coming through the field. I made hard work for myself yesterday, and that’s why I was obviously so upset, because those qualifyings do shape your weekend.”

Ricciardo enjoyed fighting through, but he concedes that there is much to improve: “We’ve still got some work to do. But actually the clean laps I did, obviously, I was happy. But then there are still mistakes during the race. And most of the mistakes came from the same thing.

“Of course, updates will help, but I think actually just in set-up, I can help myself in that area. So it’s probably something I’ve just maybe missed the first few races, and I think I can probably just change a little bit the set-up to help me in this area. So kind of optimistic looking at Barcelona.”

Ricciardo has a very specific issue that he’s been struggling with, especially in Portugal – one that explains why he’s not comfortable when pushing to the limit.

“To be honest, just locking – locking brakes. Well, it’s a bit of locking, and sometimes it’s losing the rear. But there’s a fine line, I guess. And I think probably there’s a period in the kind of entry phase where the car is on a knife-edge.

“I feel like there’s probably a set-up solution where I can just open that and not be on such a knife’s edge”

“And I feel like there’s probably a set-up solution where I can just open that and not be on such a knife’s edge, because it is really sensitive.

“And I think Lando is certainly able to drive around that better than me at the moment. And probably to fast track my learning, I can just try something with set-up that opens our window, and it’s probably with the suspension or something like that.”

Three weekends in, and having sampled the car on three different tracks, Ricciardo is still learning about how to get the most out of it. The good news is that he is getting a decent handle on what direction to take.

“Definitely after Bahrain and Imola, I had a clear direction for the team as far as updates and feedback to aero, like ‘Okay, this is where we need to improve the car looking forward’. But I still wasn’t sure what I want currently in the car and then how I want to set up the car.

“Lando is obviously now in his third year with us together, he is fully familiar with how our car behaves, to the characteristics of our car, he’s one with it, he’s one with the team. On Daniel’s side he’s new, and needs to get used to our car.

“The second point is, of course there are also differences between each driver in what they want from a car in order to go to the limit in each corner. And that’s simply something we need to get together with the clear aim to get both cars to the maximum performance on every lap we do.”

Ricciardo’s feisty drive in Portugal was well received in the McLaren camp. Two points wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it represented a good recovery.

“I think it was simply important after the disappointment yesterday that he put this behind himself, together with his engineering crew,” said Seidl. “And going into this race today with a clear objective to fight back, which he did.

“I think we have seen a lot of positive things today from him in our car. I think it was a good race for him. I think it helped him, together with us, to probably also understand more the challenges also that he’s having with our car, and that cost him performance.

“And I’m quite optimistic with his strong drive today and with the learnings from it that we can make the next step in Barcelona.”

Crucially the team understands Ricciardo’s issues and is working with him to resolve them.

“Obviously he’s in a better position to comment in detail on what he’s feeling,” said Seidl. “But it’s something which just doesn’t allow him to continuously push the car at the limit, because for him in certain dynamic conditions it’s like driving on a knife’s edge.

“But that’s definitely something where I think we made already steps for this weekend, together with him, despite the disappointment in qualifying.

“And we simply have to keep working together with him in order to improve this situation. As always, there’s the driver’s side, but obviously we also look deeply on the team side into this, and see how we can help him with improvements we bring to the car, with set-up changes, in order to lift the performance.”