Ricciardo’s “huge” performance loss revealed after McLaren F1 car damage

Ricciardo was an unfortunate victim of the first-corner carnage in Hungary after being caught up and spun around in the melee involving Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll and Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. 

While the Australian was able to continue, the damage sustained to his McLaren MCL35M hindered his recovery effort and left him finishing outside of the points. 

Afterwards, Ricciardo said he would have happily been eliminated on the spot due to how much the damage affected his race. 

“I know that sounds negative, but because you have damage your race is so compromised,” a frustrated Ricciardo explained. 

“Of course you want to do the race to see if you get some points, maybe there’s some other crazy things that happen, but it was a very tricky race for us after that.

“It was enough [damage] to make it a long and painful race,” he added. “We were able to hang onto the points for a while but we could not go through the field. 

“It stopped us from attacking. Every time we got close we lost so much more downforce. I feel pain for me in the car but also for the whole team. My race and Lando’s race were done. A tough one for the team.”

Seidl later revealed the true extent of Ricciardo’s damage and resulting performance drop off. 

“On Daniel’s car, I think the front wing was damaged, then the bargeboards,” Seidl said. 

“The new ones got damaged heavily and the floor on the side front of the rear wheels on the right-hand side was damaged as well, so huge loss. 

“Probably seven, eight tenths a lap plus obviously the consequences it has then on the stint.”

Asked whether a second pit stop could have helped Ricciardo’s recovery bid, Seidl replied: “I don’t think it would have changed anything. 

“We simply didn’t have the pace with all the damage the car had to hang in there until the end. Daniel tried but he was also stuck behind George [Russell] for quite some bits. 

“He destroyed his tyres and in the end - plus with the damage he had the degradation was quite a bit higher than normal, so we had nothing left in his hands to fight for anything unfortunately.”