McLaren driver Lando Norris has explained his wave to Daniel Ricciardo when lapping him at Monaco on Sunday afternoon, as well as offering his thoughts on the Aussie's struggles at the team so far.

Norris has had an excellent year so far in Formula 1 with him a cool 32 points clear of his team-mate who has not yet consistently shown the pace we know that he has as a driver.

Certainly, the McLaren car is one of the strongest on the grid, Norris has shown that, and Ricciardo just needs to keep adapting to it so he can start climbing the standings.

Indeed, Sunday afternoon's race at the Monaco Grand Prix underlined where the two are at the moment with Norris lapping Ricciardo on the way to a third-place finish, with him waving at his team-mate on the way up the hill from Saint Devote.

However, Norris quickly shut down suggestions that the wave was something cheekier than just a courteous gesture to his team-mate for moving out of the way so quickly under blue flags:

“That was a ‘cheers,’ Norris said to Channel 4.

“I don’t think it really matters. In Monaco, you just get stuck behind everyone and gaps get created so I don’t think anyone needs to talk about that.

“Daniel doesn’t need any shame or anything [being lapped]. It was just a blue flag and it’s easy to get here in Monaco because you just get stuck behind cars.

“So it doesn’t matter.

“I think Daniel had good pace in the race. When I got ahead of him I didn’t really pull away.”

Norris was then asked what he thought about Ricciardo's struggles at McLaren so far this season, with him suggesting that he's just lacking confidence at the moment.

“He’s just been struggling with the confidence with the car, which I felt good with this weekend. But when you just don’t have that, with these types of cars, you lack speed and lack confidence to really push on the car.

“It’s tricky but like we saw in Barcelona, when the car is good [for him] he’s there.

“But when it’s not, he struggles. It’s up to him.”

On paper, McLaren have one of the best driver line-ups of the entire grid but Ricciardo clearly still has some work to do.

He knows that better than anyone, though, and he's bound to leave no stone unturned in the bid to close the gap down to his team-mate in the Drivers' table.