Daniel Ricciardo discusses McLaren struggles ahead of Saudi Arabian GP

McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo says that the team has started to understand the reasons for their poor start to the Formula 1 season.

The papaya-clad team went into the campaign fairly hopeful that they were going to be competing at the right end but fell short of that hope with them finishing outside the points with both cars at the opening race of the season in Bahrain.

Indeed, the drop-off in performance from looking good at Barcelona testing to race-day last weekend has been pretty stark, and shows you can only read so much into a test session in the off-season.

Speaking to Sky, then, Daniel Ricciardo has revealed that the team is starting to understand the reason for that drop in performance and they are hoping to get a fix sorted soon – though it’s unlikely it is going to be an overnight remedy:

“We certainly understood things after the race and even looking at the Barcelona test to the Bahrain test I think there was a little confusion about where we lost out and where it went wrong.

“I think we’ve understood why we fell away a little bit from the pack, so I think that’s one part of kind of moving forward. Can it be addressed in a few days? Not to a great extent but maybe this circuit suits us a little more, so you never know. All we can do is do our best in the car.”

The Saudi circuit is a lot different to the one in Bahrain so that might provide an opportunity for McLaren to have a better weekend, though they will not be holding their breath.

It was a real shame to see how their opening weekend went but that was always a potential risk with the new regulations and now the Woking-based team needs to try and find solutions as quickly as possible.

Time will ultimately tell as to how long it takes them to sort.