McLaren CEO Zak Brown admits that the backlash he received for calling time on Daniel Ricciardo’s time with its Formula 1 team prematurely was “very difficult”.
Ricciardo took McLaren’s sole GP victory in the turbo-hybrid era to date at Monza in 2021, but he struggled to adapt to the side’s machinery either side of a regulation change.
After being outscored by 45 points by Lando Norris in his debut year at the team, Ricciardo was thrashed by the Briton in 2022, only amassing 37 points compared to 122.
The Australian’s troubles resulted in McLaren electing to terminate the contractual agreement a year early, prompting him to return to Red Bull in the role of reserve driver.
Ricciardo, who was handed a reprieve with AlphaTauri midway through 2023, has revealed how his failed McLaren stint made him question whether he had lost his ability.
Having lobbied hard to sign Ricciardo, Brown contends that the parting of ways was tough on McLaren too, particularly the resulting criticism that was directed at the team.
Speaking on the Track Limits podcast, Brown said: “Breaking up with Daniel was very difficult. You know, love Daniel. Great guy.
“It just didn’t work out, but that wasn’t the master plan in the end, so that was a very difficult situation.
“Especially, something like that is very public and then everyone has their opinions, and 99% of them don’t actually know what’s going on behind the scenes.
“So to get accused of certain behaviour… where they’re just not informed, and that’s the nature of the beast when you’re in the spotlight. Everyone has an opinion, but they don’t have the facts, so that was very difficult.”
McLaren opted to dispense of Ricciardo to capitalise on Alpine’s mishandling of Oscar Piastri to steal the highly-rated driver away at the end of a drawn-out legal process in 2022.
The Australian excelled during his rookie F1 campaign, collecting his maiden two podiums in the top flight and landing a breakthrough victory in the Qatar Sprint race.
Brown believes that Piastri has placed Norris “on his toes” while also being pleased that McLaren is benefitting from having two talents who possess similar driving styles.
“I don’t think necessarily that [Piastri] brings something different but Lando hadn’t been challenged by his team-mate the last couple of years on a regular basis,” he added.
“On a side note, great to see Daniel doing so well at AlphaTauri because he’s a great, great guy, won me my first race.
“But I think Oscar is keeping Lando on his toes. I think the benefit is they like a very similar race car, so we’re getting consistent feedback from the two.
“Last thing you want to do is have two drivers that one says they have understeer, the other says they have oversteer and then kind of what do you do?
“So I think we’re benefiting from having two very fast drivers that are very technical and we do have an experienced and a rookie, it’s just that our experienced guy happens to be pretty young.”
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