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TV Pundit Paul di Resta claimed that McLaren's comments about breaking Daniel Ricciardo's contract were made just to 'try and alert him'. The Australian has been going through a rough patch in his career and has been consistently outperformed by his teammate Lando Norris.
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The Honey Badger had yet another dismal afternoon on Saturday after failing to make it into Q3 yet again in 2022. The McLaren driver was unable to find the pace needed to break into the top ten, while his teammate managed to put the same car in P5 at the end of the session.
With McLaren CEO Zak Brown commenting on the Norris-Ricciardo rivalry, many feel the Australian driver is headed towards an early retirement from the sport. However, former driver Paul di Resta believes the talk of ending Daniel Ricciardo's contract sooner than agreed upon was just done to try and get the driver to bring his 'A game' at every race weekend.
The TV commentator said the following about Ricciardo's contract with McLaren:
“I don’t think that the writing is on the wall. They’ve done that to try and alert him to what’s going on. It’s about as low as I’ve seen Daniel [Ricciardo], when he stopped and he was out of qualifying, he sat in the car and you could see him staring. It was almost like that stare in Baku that Lewis [Hamilton] had when he didn’t believe in the package he had, that’s happened for Daniel. You’ve got to turn that around, make Daniel happy and keep him there because when you give him something he can do it.”
The McLaren driver only managed to secure a P14 in Saturday's qualifying session in Monaco.
Nico Rosberg is unsure of the reason behind Daniel Ricciardo's fall from grace
2016 world champion Nico Rosberg is unsure what has happened to Daniel Ricciardo, claiming it is 'difficult to explain' what went wrong in the driver's career path. The driver, who once fought for pole positions and podiums, now often finds himself towards the back of the grid despite having a fairly competent car.
The former Mercedes driver commented on Daniel Ricciardo's form, saying:
“Daniel was just a couple of years ago a top three-four driver in F1, and it’s so difficult to explain what happened. I really feel for him because this is a painful situation. His team boss came out this morning saying that there is a way to break the contract for next year with him. You don’t want to hear that stuff.”
To make matters worse for the Honey Badger, his younger teammate Lando Norris has outperformed him on almost every occasion and now holds a 20-8 qualifying record against the former Red Bull driver. The 32-year-old will start the 2022 Monaco Grand Prix from P14 on the grid, while Norris will fight the front-runners in P5. While it definitely looks bleak for Daniel Ricciardo, he still has plenty of time to turn the season around and bring in some solid points for the team.
