Ricciardo 'not comfortable yet' in McLaren says team boss after Spanish struggle

McLaren F1 boss Zak Brown is supportive of driver Daniel Ricciardo's efforts, but feels his results continue to fall short of the team's expectations compared to that of teammate Lando Norris.

In Barcelona this past weekend, Ricciardo finished outside the points (P14) for a third time this season, while Norris finished eighth despite suffering with tonsillitis.

In an interview afterwards Ricciardo admitted he had struggled in the race.

"Yeah, I wasn't there from the start," said Ricciardo. "And it wasn't it wasn't like I had understeer – I mean, I did – but it was just overall lack of grip.

"I thought at the start of the race, it was very, very slow. I thought, okay, maybe, I don't know, temperatures just got too high or something with the tyres.

"You know, [at] the start you're obviously fighting cars and maybe things like that can happen. We did a three-stop race, so I have four sets of tyres today and was very, very slow on all of them so not sure. Really, really sad race."

For Spain, the MCL36 had been heavily upgraded but it did not seem to help Ricciardo make inroads to Norris' pace.

"Everyone obviously came in the weekend curious, you know, for how they're going to perform," Ricciardo said.

"And yeah, it's one of those races that it was so slow that you kind of nearly, it sounds bad to say, but like, I mean, you hope that something was wrong.

"Like you hope that we find something that is like, ‘oh, that's why' – because [it's] probably more concerning if we don't because, as I said, it wasn't like a tenth or two tenths off, it felt like over a second at times.

"I don't know that for a fact, but I certainly saw the cars pass me and pull away very quickly."

Last season, Ricciardo struggled with the car but little seems to have