Ricciardo’s three-year McLaren contract was ended one yr early final winter after the Australian struggled to get on with the group’s F1 vehicles.
Within the difficult-to-handle McLaren, Ricciardo was persistently behind team-mate Lando Norris throughout his two seasons in Woking, regardless of taking a shock win on the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.
Ricciardo was then snapped up by Crimson Bull as a 3rd driver throughout his sabbatical till he was loaned out to sister group AlphaTauri forward of the Hungarian Grand Prix as an early alternative for Nyck de Vries.
Ricciardo impressed on his first outings with the tough AT04 and whereas he nonetheless wants to totally adapt to the automotive, he vowed by no means to go to the extent of element that he went via at McLaren.
His efforts to vary his driving type at McLaren made him “unrecognisable” on his Crimson Bull simulator return in response to group boss Christian Horner, with Ricciardo having to rebuild his confidence in subsequent runs and a convincing Silverstone tyre take a look at.
When requested if Ricciardo needed to dig as deep as he did at McLaren to rise up to hurry within the AlphaTauri, Ricciardo replied: “I do not wish to get into that element ever once more.
“I feel even via yr one at McLaren, on the summer season break I discovered we had been in all probability going into an excessive amount of. We wanted to vary the strategy a little bit bit.
Daniel Ricciardo, AlphaTauri AT04
Picture by: Crimson Bull Content material Pool
“It was all in everybody’s finest pursuits making an attempt to make it work however I felt like I’ve come to the realisation that wasn’t working for me. We nonetheless in all probability did an excessive amount of in hindsight, however perhaps that works for one more driver, so it’s what it’s.”
Ricciardo stated he was ready to make use of his pure driving type upon his return to the Faenza squad and located the AlphaTauri to be higher suited to him, even when the automotive is missing aerodynamic load in comparison with most of its opponents.
“I felt a little bit bit extra of it. On lap one I already felt like I used to be getting type of the suggestions that perhaps I might count on or like, in order that was vital,” Ricciardo replied when requested by Autosport about how the AlphaTauri AT04 compares to his {old} McLaren.
“Possibly I will discover issues that I’ve simply set to work on that do not fairly correlate to my feeling, so I count on nonetheless some perhaps challenges alongside the best way.
“However the first impression was that it did give me a little bit bit extra of a well-recognized feeling. That was additionally vital as a result of I hoped to really feel one thing like that.”
Further reporting by Matt Kew