Daniel Ricciardo currently remains without a seat for the 2023 season, but the outgoing McLaren driver insists that he is “putting in a plan” to return to race-winning machinery in the future.
In August, Ricciardo and McLaren announced that they had agreed to part ways at the end of this season with the Australian then confirming that his hopes for a seat in 2023 were all but over.
“You will see me around,” said Ricciardo in Austin, when asked about his plans for next season. “It’s going to look different for me, but there is still very much still a plan in place.
“So, it’s not that I am checking out and saying ‘see you later’; it’s far from that. I’m just putting in a plan to honestly try to get me back to the front of the grid and win races and do all the stuff I know I can do.”
Daniel Ricciardo ‘putting in a plan to get me back to the front of the grid’
Ricciardo finished 11th last time out in Japan, and in Austin he said that result represented a “relatively strong weekend”.
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He said: “I feel like… I think even Japan was a relatively strong weekend. It didn’t show on paper, but there were a lot of good things that I think we found that came from the weekend, personally.
“I’m excited for the last four [Grands Prix], I mean I’m excited for this track. I find that I always get two-tenths extra here just being in Texas. So, let’s see. But [I’m] happy, excited, pumped, motivated, fired up.”
The McLaren driver is currently 12th in the drivers’ standings while McLaren are 13 points behind Alpine in the chase for fourth in the constructors’ championship.