Dutch GP: Daniel Ricciardo eyeing closer Alpine scrap at Zandvoort

Daniel Ricciardo says he’s hopeful McLaren are going to be closer to Alpine at Zandvoort than they were at Spa-Francorchamps last time out.

The papaya team were rather left in the dust of the one in blue at Spa, with Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon achieving a P5 and P7 respectively, whilst neither Ricciardo or team-mate Lando Norris could record any points for their efforts.

A difficult weekend, then, and one that handed Alpine the advantage in the battle for fourth place in the Constructors’ championship, though there is, of course, a long way to go before that particular fight is concluded.

Certainly, McLaren will feel there are tracks on the horizon that will allow them to beat Alpine and Ricciardo is hopeful Zandvoort can be one such instance.

Speaking ahead of the weekend, the Aussie said:

“I’m looking forward to Zandvoort. It’s an awesome circuit and has such a fun, almost festival-like atmosphere which is great for your mood going into the weekend. It’s more of an old-school circuit with interesting features like Tarzan and the ability to overtake there, so I’m excited to get on track and see how different it is from last year in the new cars.

“I’ve spent the last couple of days in Amsterdam resetting, eating stroopwafels, and looking at how we can improve for the coming weekend. Last weekend was not what we wanted it to be, but we’ve bounced back before so we can definitely do the same this time around. We’ve got some good learnings from Spa which we can use for this weekend so hopefully we come out a bit better and can properly battle with the Alpines.”