Daniel Ricciardo's career has been charecterised by daring, late-breaking overtake moves. And he is hopeful that he can do this more often.
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McLaren F1 team driver Daniel Ricciardo hopes that Formula 1 cars will see more overtaking in the coming years.
The new 2022 regulations have been designed partly to increase the on-track action. It is also designed to minimise the problem of dirty air and cars following.
Ricciardo’s F1 career has been charecterised by daring, late-breaking overtake moves. And he is hopeful that he can do this more often in the coming season.
“Hopefully, it increases [overtaking]. In years past, for sure I’ve still made some moves, but I have not consistently been the guy doing the best moves,” said Ricciardo.
“In a way it is due to how the cars were at times; they are so fast, you brake so late, and it is so hard to get close to another car – so to pull off moves was just tricky.
“So, now, if this allows us to be closer, to have a little bit more of a braking zone, I hope we have to brake a little bit earlier on these cars and buy ourselves a bit more distance to work with.
“I think that will promote not only more overtaking but more chance for the big D.R.I. double-C to come back.”
Ricciardo won a race for the first time in three years last season at Italy. However, his season was one that consisted of plenty of struggle.
He seemed unsure at times how to get the best out of the car. To make things worse, teammate Lando Norris was regularly mixing it up with the frontrunners.
But the Australian has had plenty of input into the development of the 2022 car. He also admits that the team was very receptive to whatever he and Norris had to say.
“I’m not the guy to walk into the room and throw things around and say: ‘this has to change’. I’ll do it productively.
“From very early on [in 2021], from when I first got in the car, I was relaying information about ‘this is what’s different compared to the Renault, the Red Bull’, so I was already kind of feeding information.
“Then as we got more races deep, I was still obviously not doing as well as I thought, so I was being a little bit louder. But as I said before, the positive was that Lando was also in [agreement with] that.
“But long story short… the team also acknowledged that this is a strength of Daniel: ‘He has proven to be very fast, so we would live to give him this so we can get the most out of Daniel’.”
