RICCIARDO IS OUTSHONE BY NORRIS HEROICS

DANIEL RICCIARDO’S MCLAREN debut was reminiscent of a test cricketer playing himself in. Careful to avoid an embarrassing early duck – or ‘doing a Mazepin’ as it will surely become known in F1 parlance – Ricciardo drove sensibly and came home with a decent, if unspectacular, result.

Ricciardo adapted quickly to the Mclaren’s quirks and pipped Lando Norris by less than half a tenth of a second in qualifying. Dan admitted after testing he has work to do to get comfortable with Mclaren’s braking systems, and it looked as if he doesn’t yet fully trust the car in that area given the understeer he appeared to pick up mid-corner.

“I think all of us could jump in any car on the grid and get up to 90%, 95% relatively quickly,” he said in the build-up to Bahrain. “But it’s then extracting probably the last 5%, that’s where you exploit different characteristics of the car. I think extracting that last bit will naturally come over time.”

The disappointment for Ricciardo, and to his surprise it seemed, came in the race. He lost out in early wheel-to-wheel combat with team-mate Norris, then struggled to stay with Norris and Leclerc’s Ferrari. Ricciardo averaged 0.27s per lap slower than Norris in the second stint (on mediums) and 0.514s slower in the final stint (on hards).

“With everything settled I felt like I would probably progress the most through the race, but it was the opposite,” admitted Ricciardo, who later discovered he was carrying floor damage from early contact with Pierre Gasly’s Alphatauri. “I got more out of qualifying than the race and just struggled to

keep pace. I felt like if I lifted my level and pushed my lap times, I could hold it for one or two laps and then it would quickly drop off, so I struggled to really manage the tyres and keep all that sensible.

“I probably don’t have a setup yet that I’m really sure of, or love, so I’ve got some homework, but I’m certainly not discouraged – I wouldn’t say it was an exhilarating race or performance, but I feel like we can just get better from here.”