Ricciardo: Teambuilding with McLaren 'trickier' due to Covid restrictions

Daniel Ricciardo says a lack of face-to-face meetings at Woking due to Covid restrictions hindered his teambuilding process with McLaren in 2021.

While Formula 1 and race promoters gradually relaxed part of the sport's Covid restrictions on race weekends, protocols very much remained in place at teams' headquarters where many staff and engineering meetings continued to be conducted virtually.

The first part of Ricciardo's maiden campaign with McLaren was marked by the Aussie's difficulties in getting on top of his team's Mercedes-powered MCL35M.

Ricciardo was consistently outpaced by teammate Lando Norris in the first half of the 2021 season before his performance improved after F1's summer break.

In hindsight, the Aussie reckons his adjustment to his new team and the relationship process with his crews were partly impacted by the enforcement of Covid protocols at Woking.

"You always want to build something, that’s ultimately relationships, comradery, so that you have the same goal, you want to be chasing that one thing," Ricciardo said.

"To do that you want to be on the same page and therefore it comes back to building these relationships.

"It is trickier with Covid and some of the protocols, it’s only at the track or in the simulator room we’re able to get some face-time."

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Ricciardo says he'll be looking forward to more relaxed restriction next year that will hopefully allow for more teambuilding activities that will help him grow his relationships at McLaren.

"But hopefully next year that can be opened up a little bit more, that we can do some off-track activities as a team that help with building and all of these sort of things, which go a long way," he added.

"With the tools we’ve had, it’s been good and it’s definitely a good understanding with the people that work around me at the team.

"I’m happy to have built that, built that level of trust as well. But these things can always grow and become more valuable."

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