McLaren found floor damage on Ricciardo's car due to collision with Gasly

F1 News

30 March 2021 at 09:59
Last update 30 March 2021 at 11:25
  • GPblog.com

Daniel Ricciardo impressed during qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix by immediately beating teammate Lando Norris in his first race for McLaren. During the race he saw the young Briton disappear on the horizon, but there was a reason for that.

The most important reason is of course that Norris drove an excellent race and made up positions by a fantastic start. In the first lap he overtook Ricciardo on the outside. That the Australian couldn't follow him for the rest of the race probably has another reason.

Hard impact with Gasly, but Ricciardo feels nothing of it

Ricciardo was hit by Pierre Gasly shortly after the overtaking action of Norris. This caused the front wing of the AlphaTauri to break off and although this was not shown on TV, the McLaren also suffered damage. "After the race, we found damage to Daniel's floor as a result of the impact with Pierre," team principal Andreas Seidl said in a statement on Monday.

According to Seidl, Ricciardo had lost a significant amount of downforce with that, but that it all feels a bit different in the car is evident from Ricciardo's comments afterwards. He was surprised that Gasly apologized to him, because he felt nothing of the collision.