The Australian is still trying to get fully comfortable at McLaren following his winter switch from Renault and a shortened pre-season te🍬st after enduring a difficult opening three races to the year.

While Ricciardo has recorded three points finishes, he is yet to join his teammate Lando Norris - who finished on the podium at Imola - inside the t꧒op five so far this season.

Ricciardo suffered a shock elimination in Q1 𝕴at last weekend’s Portuguese Grand Prix but recovered strongly to ♏ninth in the race to maintain McLaren’s steak of double points finishes.

“After three races I would say it is still a bit trickier than I expected,” Ricciardo admitted after the ꦉrace in Portugal. “But in saying that, doing another race, there were a lot of things I understood in the car.

“That when I wanted to maybe push a little bit more and where I couldn’t. Whatꩵ I need to get that feeling and confidence. For sure some updates will help.

“But in pure set up there are some things that we can be doing better to maybe help or suit me. We will try thaꦬt in Barcelona.”

Ricciardo revealed a tweak to his driving style that he had tried out in th🔯e simulato🏅r enabled him to unlock some more performance at Portimao and he ho✱pes some set-up experiments could further aid his bid to get fully on top of the car’s characteristics whi♏le he waits for updates.

“There certainly were moments in the race where I took some confidence, and there were some flashes of good speed and good pace and management,” Ricc🗹iardo explained.

“But there are also mistakes, and let us say more notes to feedback on. I feel like today I made a step🌜 forward in understanding a bit more what I want in the car. I feel like a lot of the mistakes came through the same thing or the same limitatioꦺn.

“I do not think that means waiting for an update, I believe there will be something on the car where we could just change the setup to 🌺help the areas where I’m struggling.

"So maybe some things we can try and Barcelona. I am actually optimistic that just through set up can help my cause a li🍰ttle bit while we wait for some update🎐s.”

In the mean🧔time, Ricciardo is hoping that familiarity with Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya will help him get on the pace much faster at the Spanish GP.

“Barcelona will be a bit easier, maybe more like Bahrain whe🐼re I was able to get up to speed a bi💎t quicker,” he added.

“It is a track that we are familiar with.♈ Let’s say I’m not going ꧒to expect anything, but I hope it should be a bit easier and I can show some true speed.”