By keeping promises in negotiations from 2018, Riccardo decided to go for Mclaren
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- GPblog.com
In 2021 Daniel Ricciardo will drive for McLaren. The Australian makes the switch from Renault to McLaren, where he will be the teammate of Lando Norris. In 2018 there were already talks between Ricciardo and McLaren, but in the end nothing came of it. Zak Brown, team boss of McLaren, explains in the podcast In the Fast Lane where the new contract came from.
"A few years ago we had some terrible seasons, one of the worst in the history of McLaren. All I could do then was promise Daniel what the future was going to bring, I couldn't give any certainty," Brown says. "It was just like: 'I'm going to get a great team leader, I'm going to get a great technical director and we're going to get the resources we need'. It was a lot of promises.
No more promises
With those promises, they did not get Ricciardo to go to their team, who chose Renault for security. However, after two seasons the situation has completely changed. McLaren now stands for Renault and with the upcoming switch to Mercedes as engine supplier they only seem to get stronger. "I don't need to make any more promises, as we all have that now.
"We now have Andreas Seidl and James Key as team leader and technical director." Seidl, in particular, had a lot of influence on Ricciardo. "He is a big Andreas fan. I am sure that played a role in Ricciardo's decision". Seidl is only now working for McLaren for the second season as team leader and under Seidl a lot of progress has been made.