McLaren boss Zak Brown says he regrets not making Daniel Ricciardo’s contract more watertight so the team wouldn’t have to give him a mega payout.
Ricciardo confirmed the 2022 season would be his last at McLaren, with the two parties agreeing to part ways with 12 months remaining on his contract.
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“Obviously we put in a lot of effort on both sides but it just hasn’t worked the way we wanted so the team has decided to make a change for next year,” he said in an emotional Instagram post.
“We had a lot of discussions but in the end we mutually agreed it was the right thing for both of us.
“I will continue to do the rest of this year, absolutely. And I’ll continue to give it my all.
“For the future, what lies ahead, (I’m) not sure yet. But we’ll see.”
The 33-year-old, who has won eight grand prix races since making his F1 debut in 2011, will reportedly receive an eight-figure payout from McLaren worth around AU$24 million — taking into account his salary and performance bonuses.
He is expected to be replaced by young compatriot Oscar Piastri, the reigning F2 champion and Alpine’s current test driver.
Speaking on the High Performance podcast just hours after the news of Ricciardo’s sacking was made public, Brown said McLaren had tried everything they could to help the Aussie, but ultimately his poor performances gave them no choice but to sack him.
“We’re not sure, he’s not sure,” Brown said of where it went wrong for Ricciardo.
“We’ve tried changing cars and offering to change people. It’s been two seasons, two different cars. We thought year one, maybe it just didn’t gel with the car. Year two, it’s a totally different car.
“But we got to the point where our only strategy was hope, and hope’s not a great strategy. So it’s a great mystery.
“We saw in Monza it’s in there. The guy did not win eight grands prix by accident, we just weren’t able to unlock it together. And Lando’s driving great and getting the car to perform.
“So I don’t think there’s anything we would have done differently, or could have seen, or should have known.”
The lone high point of Ricciardo’s stint at McLaren came when he won the Italian Grand Prix at Monza last year.
But Brown said he and McLaren were expecting much better overall performances from a driver with Ricciardo’s CV.
“It’s an interesting one,” he said.
“He came in having won seven grands prix and was the hottest driver that you could get.
“And I think we maybe assumed, and I think kind of rightfully so, that he was going to pick up where he left off.”
Asked if he had any regrets over the Ricciardo saga, Brown admitted if he had his time again, he would have made sure there were “protections” in Ricciardo’s contract that would have allowed McLaren to sack him early without having to pay him out.
Ricciardo was the only party with the right to end the contract early, meaning McLaren has to foot the bill for his 2023 salary.
“I think my one learning there would just be contractual, I don’t think there’s anything we could have done differently for him as a driver,” Brown said.
“I’m sitting here right now thinking I don’t think we could have done something differently to make him more competitive. We tried all that.
“We’ve had to end the relationship early. We’ve had to write a big cheque, which is fine because that’s the deal that we cut. I think what I’ll do next time is maybe have some more performance protections for us and not just assume that a great driver’s going to always be great. I think that’s the one learning as more a contractual one, but it’s a big one.”
Brown said McLaren had high hopes for Ricciardo when he joined the team, but it would have been more prudent to cover themselves and give themselves an out with stipulations in the contract.
He continued: “I think the only thing is from a business standpoint, we could have (thought about), ‘What if it doesn’t work?’ I think we went into it so excited and not really thinking of a downside scenario.
“But you also don’t know if you would have got those contractual protections. Sitting here now, I can say, ‘I wish I had this in the contract’, but who knows whether he would have agreed to it.
“But also he might have, because he might have been going, ‘Well that’s never going to happen’.”
Brown earlier revealed he had made a desperate bid to keep Ricciardo on the McLaren roster by offering him a seat in United States’ leading single-seater championship — IndyCar.
If Ricciardo had accepted the IndyCar offer, it potentially would have saved McLaren millions, but the Aussie is fiercely determined to stay on the F1 grid.
Ricciardo’s future in Formula 1 is up in the air and it’s unclear if he will even have a seat on the grid next year.
His most likely landing spot is Alpine, the French team he left to join McLaren that is now caught up in the messy triangle between Ricciardo, Piastri and his manager Mark Webber.
Ricciardo could also make a move to back of the grid and join one of Williams, Haas or Alfa Romeo, but that would be see him driving an inferior car on a significantly reduced pay packet.
The F1 season resumes following its mid-year break at the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday at 11pm (AEST). There are nine races remaining this season.
