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'Big winner' McLaren takes immediate advantage of Ricciardo's smile

4 February 2021 at 10:05
Last update 4 February 2021 at 10:37
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  • GPblog.com

Daniel Ricciardo is the replacement for Carlos Sainz at McLaren, and the team is making good use of it. With his huge smile and positive aura, Ricciardo is McLaren's ideal signpost, and McLaren may even be on the up.

Even before the 2020 Formula 1 season had begun, the Silly Season for 2021 had already begun. Sebastian Vettel had to leave Ferrari and Carlos Sainz was his intended successor. McLaren, however, acted quickly and pulled a stunt. Ricciardo was plucked from rival Renault after the deal fell through at the end of 2018.

McLaren is the big winner

Indeed, in 2018 McLaren were also at the negotiating table with Ricciardo. There, however, Zak Brown and Andreas Seidl were honest in stating that it would take time to get to the top. Cyril Abiteboul's story was much more positive, and so Ricciardo opted for Renault. That Ricciardo had seen enough after one year also says enough about the management at Renault.

The departure of Sainz did not hurt McLaren that much. In fact, you can even say that McLaren is better off for it. Sainz is of course a good and consistent driver, but with Ricciardo McLaren gets a race winner, who won duels with Sebastian Vettel, Nico Hulkenberg and in the beginning even Max Verstappen.

The smile of Ricciardo

However, the most important new weapon at McLaren is Ricciardo's big smile. In recent years, Sainz and Lando Norris were mainly used as a duo to turn around the negative atmosphere that was created by the situation with Honda and Fernando Alonso. With the 'bromance' duo this already worked out quite well.

Wherever Ricciardo goes, however, everyone puts a smile on their face. Ricciardo is a hard and serious worker, but on and around the work floor, he creates a good atmosphere with his smile and positive appearance. McLaren is now trying to transfer that atmosphere to the fans as well, by using Ricciardo as the new signboard. What this will mean for the role of Norris, we will see during this season.