Did Daniel Ricciardo develop bad driving habits during his stint as a McLaren driver? Red Bull Team Principal, Christian Horner, seemed to think so when the Australian returned to the Austrian team. However, McLaren engineer Tom Stallard disagrees with the British team boss.
Ricciardo drove for Red Bull until 2018, before the Australian switched to Renault. However, the driver didn’t stay there long, and after just two seasons, Ricciardo moved to McLaren. During the 2022 season, McLaren announced that Ricciardo was being replaced by Oscar Piastri, which led the Perth native to return to Red Bull.
Horner previously joked that the Australian returned to his former employer with a few ‘bad habits’ in his driving after his time at McLaren. “I think the problem is that when you drive a car that clearly has its limitations, you adapt and try to get the most out of that car,” said the Red Bull team boss. “And when (Ricciardo) came back, it was clear that he had picked up some habits that we didn’t recognize as the Daniel who had left us two or three years earlier.”
No Bad Habits
Tom Stallard, former race engineer for Daniel Ricciardo at McLaren, however, disagrees with Horner’s statement. “I would actually say that Daniel drove the car quite normally,” says the engineer in the Beyond the Grid podcast. “Our car required some very specific actions, especially around the corner entry. He struggled to adapt because it required very precise timing from the driver and you have to do it very quickly.”
“So I don’t think he left the team with bad habits,” continues the current race engineer for Piastri. “He taught the team by adjusting his driving style in a certain way to try to get the best out of our car, and then Red Bull clearly felt they needed something different.”
