The 2021 season hasn’t quite seen Daniel Riccardo, Formula 1’s honeybadger, at his sterling best. Or at least, that’s what the feeling is having witnessed five Grands Prix so far. Where it stands at McLaren, arguably among the greatest of all F1 outfits, then it’s clearly been a Lando Norris show, the youngster bagging his second podium in five races so far and his third overall. On the other hand, Daniel Riccardo, a driver with perhaps 150 more race entries than the 21-year-old Briton, has seemed rather vapid.
It’s not that Daniel Riccardo lacks the fight or the grit, there’s none of that. Well, you cannot doubt a racer who has seven victories against his name, in addition to thirty one podiums.
It’s just that, as seen so far, the soon-to-be 32-year-old hasn’t quite adapted to the 2021 McLaren machine. The Australian’s woes were further exacerbated when Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen, who finished a fighting eleventh at the recent Moncaco Grand Prix kept Daniel Riccardo behind, the Honeybadger, of course, competing in a mightier machine given the McLaren.
But news from the famous British racing outfit is that Daniel Riccardo is due to get a new chassis at McLaren.
With the high-powered machine at his disposal that holds well in both corners as well as the straights, it doesn’t really cut an imposing figure to find a driver of such high class struggling with just 24 points, whilst being on P8 from the races that have been held so far.
But can Daniel Riccardo’s destiny change in what lies ahead?
Where it stands at the moment, then one of the premier points of discussion at the McLaren stable is to get the Perth-born driver a new chassis, just in time for the forthcoming Azerbaijan Grand Prix. That being said, while a final confirmation is yet to be had on that important matter, here’s what Daniel Riccardo shared after a troublesome weekend, which came right after a promising show at Spain:
“My relationship with the racing world has always been one of.. love-hate,” exclaimed the ever-smiling racer who would go on to add, “
I think this particular relationship of hate and love started in my first year of karting.
I remember I was about to line up at the start of a regional race and the engine didn’t start. That day I was on the front row, which for me was a great moment, and that was a hard blow.
After two days, I went back to the same track, I pushed the kart and it turned on, and I learned then that racing cars can be very rude. Who knows, maybe we go to Baku, I go out for first practice and I’m back in the position where I want to be,” concluded the McLaren star.
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The next round, set for Baku, will take the F1 circus to compete in yet another gruelling road-track barricaded feistily to ensure that the twenty of the world’s finest drivers in the highest annals of single-seater racing engage in a real tussle, quite like Monaco. Full of thrills and no-holds-barred-racing! And truly speaking, whenever it comes to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, then our first thoughts go to the 2017 event. Can the 2021 contest unravel a race similar to the kinds we saw nearly half a decade back?