McLaren does have “mechanisms” that could see them part ways with Daniel Ricciardo before his current contract expires.
The Australian’s future at the team has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight this week after CEO Zak Brown suggested Ricciardo had not lived up to “his or our expectations” since joining in 2021.
On Friday, the eight-time Grand Prix winner agreed his boss’ comments were “pretty true” but also clarified he has a deal with McLaren until the end of 2023.
While that initially seemed to rule out Ricciardo being dropped after this season, Brown has now responded confirming their are potential exit routes.
“I don’t want to get into the contract [details],” the McLaren CEO was quoted by The Race. “But there are mechanisms in which we are committed to each other and then there are mechanisms in which we are not.
“I’ve spoken with Daniel about it. We are not getting the results we both hoped for, but we will both continue to push.
“I think he showed at Monza he can win races. We also need to continue to develop our race car – it’s not capable of winning races, but we’d like to see him further up the grid.
“We’ll just play it…I don’t want to say ‘one race at a time’ because we are not going to one race at a time, but we’ll just see how things develop, what he wants to do.”
Though Ricciardo has continued to be largely outclassed by teammate Lando Norris, he does think 2022 has been better despite it not translating to results on track.
Reflecting on last season, however, Danny Ric explained the mental rollercoaster he went through.
“It was the most challenging year of my career,” he told Maxim Magazine.
“I think because I’m a bit of a veteran now you don’t expect to struggle, to have one of your toughest years when you’re well into the depth of your career. So maybe that was a bit of a subconscious mistake on my part to always just expect too much of myself.
“So when I was struggling I was quite taken aback by it and certainly confused, frustrated. I was a bit down and lost but then to overcome a lot of that and get the win in Monza made everything okay.
“I learned a lot about myself through the lows, and some days for sure I was like, ‘I’m done with this. I hate racing’,” he added.
“But then a day would pass and I would be training as hard as I ever have in the gym because it lit the fire again. So just trying to learn really how much it meant to me and just to keep persisting. Nothing earned is easy.
“And it’s also difficult to accept because for most of my career I was used to being one of the best guys on the grid or the top guy on the teams.
“So to not be that for a good month or something, it definitely makes you question, ‘Man, what’s going on? Do I still have it?’ You get some of those doubts creep in a little bit.”