Daniel Ricciardo has spilled the beans on his car troubles before the Dutch GP.
Ricciardo had a difficult race at Zandvoort, finishing 11th in the standings. He had a lot of issues with his car, and nothing seemed to go right for him. From smoke coming out his car to transmission issues, everything collectively showed up to dent Ricciardo a good Sunday.
Ricciardo addressed what went wrong with his McLaren, and spilled the beans on his car troubles before the Dutch GP.
“There were some stressful moments on the start,” Ricciardo told Motorsport.com.
“We have two clutch paddles, and you have your preferred one, and obviously if you‘re right-handed, you probably choose the right hand to do a start. And that one chose not to work.
“So I was on the grid stressing, because it wasn‘t engaging. So I thought I had a gearbox problem. I was waving my hands thinking I’d have to get pulled off the grid. And then I tried the left one, pulled first and it worked.
“So I was trying to figure out how to do a start with my left hand. I was prepared for a pretty poor start,” he explained.
More bad luck
The Australian’s bad luck didn’t end there. His car started smoking and spilling oil onto the track. Other drivers noticed it, and started to move away from his car. Then, his day was capped off with Sergio Perez overtaking him easily.
“With Perez, I tried to hold on,“ Ricciardo said.
“But he was quick. I mean in hindsight I probably could have run him off the track. But I think it was a matter of time until he got around. So yeah, that was it.
“We tried a strategy to, let’s say, help the team, help Lando out with that. I think we tried. Simply, I don’t think it worked. So we’ll obviously try to analyse that now, and see what we could have done better.”
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