News broke on Thursday that Daniel Ricciardo and McLaren Racing “mutually agreed” to part ways at the end of the 2022 F1 season, terminating his contract a year early.
Although Ricciardo has suffered this season, recording only 19 of the Woking-based team’s 95 points, team principal Andreas Seidl did say in the team’s news announcement that there were “shared challenges.”
“Despite the shared challenges, he has always turned up with a fighting spirit and positivity and helped the entire team to always keep pushing forward,” he said, in part.
Ricciardo, who is the only McLaren driver to win an F1 race since 2012 thanks to the ’21 Italian Grand Prix, has lacked pace in comparison to teammate Lando Norris. However, the young rising star told motorsport.com that he has had to adapt his driving style for the car.
Seidl, though, did say he takes some of the responsibility for Ricciardo not reaching results at the level the team expected, per Racer.
“From the team side, there was a huge commitment and a lot of effort went into making this work. The same thing happened from Daniel’s side, and I think it’s also clear that regarding internal challenges we had, or the internal situation, that we don’t give a live commentary of all the conversations that we are having,” the team boss said. “The important thing for me—and that is always how we work with our colleagues or employees, but also with our race drivers—is that you have an open and honest and transparent dialogue internally between each other, which we always had.
“We tried everything we could from both sides; unfortunately, we couldn’t make it work. Which is obviously also my responsibility, being in charge of the team. In the end, it’s a team effort between the team and the driver and that’s how I also see it. It’s a shared responsibility for also not getting it to work.”
Ricciardo will finish out the season with McLaren, but in terms of what his future holds, the Australian said in a video Wednesday, “I think for the future, what lies ahead, I am not sure yet … I am not sure yet. But we’ll see.”
