According to Daniel Ricciardo’s race engineer Tom Stallard, it was at Imola where the reality hit of the struggles ahead.

Expectations were high when Ricciardo arrived at McLaren for the 2021 campaign, but it has been far from an easy process to live up to them.

For most of the opening half of the season Ricciardo lagged comfortably behind team-mate Lando Norris, and it was at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Round 2 of the season, that Ricciardo’s struggles truly came to light after a decent debut in Bahrain.

“I think the Bahrain race [where Ricciardo finished P7 to Norris’ P4] he did quite well, but that was with a lot of time in the car in the [Bahrain] test – I mean, not a lot of time but a bit of time at the test, and a circuit that suits him well,” said Stallard in an interview with the Formula 1 website.

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