Despite having finished on the podium seven times previously, all for Red Bull, Ricciardo's career highlights are with McLaren.
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Daniel Ricciardo has called his McLaren victory at Monza “the biggest” of his Formula One career. Last year, Ricciardo surprised everyone by winning the Italian Grand Prix as McLaren dominated to claim the season’s only one-two finish, with Lando Norris coming in second. Despite having finished on the podium seven times previously, all for Red Bull, Ricciardo’s career highlights are with McLaren.
“The more time that passes since Monza, the more I realise the effect of that and I really do think it was the biggest moment, win, race kind of day of my motorsport career,” said Ricciardo, talking in December.
Ricciardo had an up and down year after joining McLaren from Renault prior to the start of last season, as he struggled to get to grips with the MCL35M. “The second half of 2018 had its challenges and at the time that was the most for me, but last year as a whole, absolutely,” he said.
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“Thinking about the first half and the highs, it has been pretty wild. I certainly reflect on the second half of the season much better than where I was kind of reflecting back in August.”
McLaren F1 team CEO Zak Brown doesn’t believe they will go into the 2022 Formula 1 season as title contenders.
The team finished fourth in the constructor’s championship in 2021, but registered their first race win in 9 years when Daniel Ricciardo won the Italian GP.
However, Brown believes they still have a degree of technical catching up to do with the others teams. As such, the goal for now remains to close the gap to the front of the field.
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“I think it’s great we won our first race this year (2021). We need to be careful not to raise expectations to an unrealistic level,” he told Gulf Business.
“I don’t want to say our goal in 2022 is to win two (races) – our goal is to continue to get closer to the front of the field.
“Of course, we’re going to give it everything we’ve got. But we still have a couple of years of technical catch-up that we just can’t accelerate any further or faster than we are.
“We still have technical infrastructure that we’re catching up on, most notably our windtunnel. I’m not going into next year (2022) thinking we’re going to be a championship contender.”
