Is Lando Norris McLaren’s #1 Driver? Daniel Ricciardo Answers the Concerns

In the hopes of winning the World Championship, Daniel Ricciardo joined McLaren after his not-so-successful two-year stint at Renault. But the Australian might be getting déjà vu due to competing against a youngster driver for the spotlight in the team.

The 32-year-old is undoubtedly one of the best drivers who come from Red Bull’s youth academy. He later even drove for the Austrian constructors, and fans considered him to become the Red Bull talisman. However, things changed for the Honey Badger after the emergence of the young prodigy Max Verstappen. Soon, the Aussie left Red Bull to join Renault and became the torchbearer for the French F1 team.

After failing to lift the Championship at Renault, Ricciardo joined the Woking-based team in hopes of winning the championship. However, by doing so, the Honey Badger has to come across a similar ‘Red Bull’ situation where the team favors a young talent over the experienced Ricciardo.

But the Australian recently revealed his thoughts on the matter and mentions having no problem about McLaren preferring Lando Norris over him. The Honey Badger reported, “No, I’m certainly not worried about that. If I look from McLaren’s perspective, or from a business point of view, I see it is a good move to keep Lando longer.”

“Not only did he perform well last year, he loves the team and feels right at home,” the McLaren driver further added to his statement.

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Daniel Ricciardo’s late-break expertise might return in 2022

The Honey Badger is undoubtedly one of the best overtakers in the sport. He has shown his best overtaking skills in 2018 even winning the Chinese Grand Prix that season. However, Daniel has failed to showcase his ‘dive-bomb’ talent in the past three seasons, mainly because of not being very comfortable with the cars.

But the 2022 season might be a return for the overtaking expert Ricciardo. He even believes that the new rules and the 2022 challenger will help him perform more overtakes this season. Even McLaren boss Andreas Seidl wants to get the best out of the Australian. Hence, the F1 team is working closely with the driver.

The English constructor recently revealed their 2022 challenger, MCL36. Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris will take the new MCL36 for the pre-season testing at Barcelona on February 23-25. Therefore, it’s worth keeping an eye on the Australian and McLaren in the 2022 season.

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