Ricciardo aims blame for career slump at McLaren

Daniel Ricciardo on Thursday appeared to point the finger of blame for his nightmare two seasons at McLaren squarely at the Woking based team.

Dr Helmut Marko, a top Red Bull boss, says his decision to axe Nyck de Vries at the junior team Alpha Tauri and replace him with Ricciardo ultimately turned out to be "perfect".

And Australian Ricciardo, 33, says a big reason for that is because the Faenza based team listened to what he needed from an engineering point of view.

"They just let me do it with my natural driving style," he is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport.

"I noticed that they were curious and wanted to hear my opinion in the briefings. I was able to give them some new food for thought, but I didn’t want to overload them with a 100 things over the first weekend."

However, he managed to leap straight into pole position for Sergio Perez’s race seat at the main Red Bull team by outperforming new teammate Yuki Tsunoda in Hungary.

The implication of Ricciardo’s comments about Alpha Tauri is that McLaren engineers were not so receptive about his input.

"I don’t really want to talk about the time at McLaren anymore," he said.

"But back then, during the first summer break, I realised that we were going about things the wrong way, although obviously everyone was acting in the team’s best interest.

"But, looking back, you’d have to say that we probably just did too much."