Daniel Ricciardo has described how he felt "unsure" of his abilities when he returned to Red Bull, having been ousted from his seat at McLaren in 2022.
The Australian returned to his old team as the official third driver, which encompassed being the team's reserve on race weekends and putting in laps on the simulator.
Team Principal Christian Horner remarked that Ricciardo had "picked up habits" and that the team almost "didn't recognise him" from their previous successful years.
Ricciardo spoke about the first days back with the team on the Talking Bull podcast: "Obviously my results weren't what I expected for myself and what anyone probably expected for me.
"I think stepping out of that and having a bit of time off over summer and knowing I wasn't going to be racing this year [helped].
"Then obviously getting back in, people were aware and then I became aware of: 'Oh yeah, I had lost a little bit of something internally'.
"The first day I was still unsure and probably still [had] some habits maybe from the past year that was still there, so it took me a little bit of time to kind of start fresh."
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Ricciardo felt 'hollow' in simulator
Ricciardo spent much of his simulator duties with Red Bull with Simon Rennie, his former engineer when he was at the team between 2014 and 2018.
When asked about how he felt the Australian performed in the first few days, he admits it was a difficult start: "It didn't necessarily click straightaway in the simulator.
"You [Ricciardo] was just a little bit hollow in a way and it felt like you were doubting yourself a little bit.
"Then we had a good day in the simulator, you just drove it naturally like you wanted to and it just sort of clicked a little bit.
"Then the confidence snowballed and by the end that day, you felt like 'He's back again!' - it's more like normal Daniel that we were used to from the past."
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