Lando Norris, Daniel Ricciardo’s F1 teammate, thinks there isn’t much else he can do to help the Australian driver get to grips with the tricky McLaren.

When the F1 season returns on August 29 with the Belgian Grand Prix, there will be only 12 races left to run this season, leaving Ricciardo with little time to extract more from the McLaren.

So far this season, the Australian star has been thoroughly outpointed by Norris, with the British young gun third in the drivers’ standings and Ricciardo ninth.

While Ricciardo can blame his lower-than-expected total points on bad luck, Norris has just had more pace, more consistently throughout the season.

McLaren engineers have confessed that their car needs a special driving style to get the most out of it, and Norris said there was nothing else he could do to help Ricciardo get up to speed at this point.

“I don’t know where else I can help,” Norris told Motorsport-Total.com.

“I tell him what I feel, he has all my data, he can see everything I do, I describe things very well in the debriefings and what I do.

“I’m not going to lie, but at the end of the day it’s not up to me.” 

Earlier in the season, Ricciardo joked about a paddock encounter with his McLaren predecessor Carlos Sainz, who is now at Ferrari.

“I bumped into Carlos, I don’t know when it was, not too long ago and he said, ‘What do you think? Strange huh?’,” Ricciardo said leading up to the Monaco GP in May. 

“I was like, ‘Thanks for telling me’.”

Pressure mounts on Daniel Ricciardo as F1 season gears up to return

Ricciardo needs to start scoring more points if McLaren is to overcome heated rival Ferrari to third position in the constructors’ championship.

McLaren broke through after several years mired in the midfield to finish third in the 2020 championship, aided by a lackluster Ferrari team hindered by an underpowered engine.

However, the Italian manufacturer appears to have put their power problems behind them in 2021, leading McLaren by only one point in the constructors standings before the summer break.

Norris and Ferrari ace Charles Leclerc have made regular appearances on the podium so far this season, meaning Ricciardo’s performance will come under more scrutiny is his is unable to maximise his opportunities before the end of the season.

Norris said it was crucial that Ricciardo get a handle on the car sooner rather than later.

“Of course I want him to do well because that’s what we need for the Championship,” Norris said.

“We want to beat Ferrari and for that he has to do well, but I can only do something to help him to a certain extent.

“Ultimately, he’s a different driver. And I drive differently. Every driver drives differently than anyone else in the world. And what he feels is different from me, and what I feel is different from him.”

Ricciardo, for one, admitted earlier this year that he had had to adjust to the new machinery.

“I think it’s the first time I’ve consistently found it difficult,” Ricciardo told Speedcafe.

“For sure over the years you have bad weekends, and even you might have two bad ones on a trot, but then you kind of get it right where I feel like it’s been definitely more bad, or more or less impressive than good.”

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