Daniel's long run of reliability ends in Brazil
After more than a year and nearly two full seasons of completing every race, one of Daniel's bogey tracks bit on Sunday with a retirement at Interlagos.
All good things come to an end eventually, right? If the sight of Daniel not seeing the chequered flag at a Formula One race looks strange, it should; his non-finish at last Sunday's Sao Paulo Grand Prix was his first retirement in 34 races dating back to the opening race of the 2020 season in Austria, some 497 days ago.
There were just two retirements from the 19th round of the season at Interlagos, and Daniel was one of them on lap 49 of 71, an issue relating to the power unit seeing him become an early spectator for the first time in a long time. Worst still, a solid haul of points looked possible after starting from 11th and banishing the bad memories of Saturday's getaway in Sprint Qualifying, where he dropped two places and was kicking himself afterwards.
"It's a surprise to know I'd not had a DNF in that long!," Daniel says.
"Kinda crazy! But at some point you're due these things, it had been a good run.
"The race was a lot more of a positive day until we retired than the sprint was on Saturday. I wasn't really happy with that, losing out like I did on the first lap. Sunday was looking like it was going to be a better day, so that's one positive at least."
From 11th, Daniel engaged in a spirited dice with old teammate Esteban Ocon (Alpine) in the early laps before advancing to ninth on lap 10, which became eighth when he demoted Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin) on lap 20. Daniel ran as high as fourth as the pit stops shook out ahead of him before his own stop on lap 30, where the strategy was to run the hard tyre until the end of the 71-lap race as his rivals chose to two-stop.
Daniel was looking good in eighth with 22 laps to go, but pulled into the pits when he and the team noticed the issue.
"The dramas only began five or six laps before we retired the car," he says.
"In the end, it affected the power unit but it wasn't a power unit issue. It caught us out today, but I think we'll be OK moving forward."
More frustrating were the points he left on the table at a circuit where, right through his career, strong results have been mostly hard to come by.
"Seventh was definitely achievable," Daniel says.
"I think we would have been able to do a one-stop on that hard (tyre) and looking back at the race, (AlphaTauri's Pierre) Gasly two-stopped and got caught up for quite a few laps behind the Alpines so I think that would have given me well and truly enough buffer to cruise home in seventh."
With teammate Lando Norris managing a solitary point for 10th after an early puncture, McLaren fell further behind Ferrari for third in the constructors' championship after Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finished fifth and sixth respectively for the second race running. With three races left this season, McLaren now trails Ferrari by 31.5 points.
"Ferrari have had three big weekends in a row and with the tracks coming up … I think it's been a quite a while since we've been quicker on raw pace than them," Daniel admits.
"We're definitely some pretty big underdogs now, but we'll focus on ourselves and do what we can."
The next two chances to do that come at tracks F1 has never visited; the Losail International Circuit in Doha next weekend for the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix followed by F1's first foray into Saudi Arabia with a brand-new circuit in Jeddah a fortnight later.
"Qatar is a new place for all of us – not only a new track, but I don't think any of us have ever really been to Qatar before," Daniel says.
"These twilight races are normally pretty fun as well, so excited to see what that's about. I'll be on the simulator this week to check it out before we head there. The long low-speed or medium-speed corners may not suit us, but there are some quicker corners that hopefully will come back in our favour."
