Daniel Ricciardo said that he isn’t going to get distracted by speculation in the media because he’s “on a journey at the moment”. The problem is, with the way Ricciardo is currently performing, that journey may not last much longer.
Back in 2018, Daniel Ricciardo was one of the most sought after drivers on the grid. He had won eight races and gotten 29 podiums in his five years at Red Bull. His natural charm, sense of humor and easygoing charisma helped his off-track popularity immensely. Unhappy with playing second fiddle to Max Verstappen, Ricciardo was looking around for a new team where he could showcase his talents.
The Aussie eventually settled on Renault, where he did pretty well for two seasons. Then he went to McLaren, and that’s where everything came crashing down. Ricciardo struggled to make sense of the car for the entirety of his two seasons at the Woking squad. He couldn’t keep up with teammate Lando Norris in the slightest: while Ricciardo finished his two seasons in 8th and 11th, Norris ended them as 6th and 7th. 2022 was especially bad. Norris scored an impressive 122 points, while Ricciardo only brought home 37 points. So when McLaren announced by the end of the season that they were disbanding Ricciardo’s contract, it seemed like a fitting end for a driver who by all accounts was past his prime.
Red Bull threw Ricciardo a last lifeline
But Ricciardo wasn’t going to accept that. All throughout the latter half of 2022 and the winter break, he talked about how he wanted to go to a team that would “bring him back to the front of the grid”. Becoming part of the Red Bull family again was a great lifeline in that regard, even if they only took him on as third driver, a position that had never actually been defined. Though when Nyck de Vries got kicked out after what can at best be described as “disappointing results”, Ricciardo was suddenly back on the grid.
It honestly was a very euphoric moment. Half a year earlier everyone was saying that it was time for Ricciardo to retire. Now, everyone was laughing at De Vries and it seemed like the beginning of a redemption arc for Ricciardo. The popular Australian was back! And not just to drive the terrible AlphaTauri. Red Bull was very blatantly setting Ricciardo up to replace Sergio Perez, who was doing a terrible job in the Red Bull. His qualifying record was similar to that of Hulkenberg and Albon who were driving vastly inferior cars, and while Verstappen was steamrolling through the championship, Perez was barely holding on to second. It felt like it was only a matter of time before Ricciardo would take over from Perez in that second Red Bull seat. Christian Horner even practically admitted as much in the last season of Drive to Survive.
Ricciardo driving the 2024 Racing Bulls car at the Australian Grand Prix.
2024 is off to a bad start for Ricciardo
That brings us to 2024. Everyone - myself included - expected Red Bull to pull one of their signature moves and switch their drivers halfway through the season. Ricciardo himself said that he doesn’t consider Yuki Tsunoda as much of a challenge. Horner wants Ricciardo in that seat. And Helmut Marko has put insane amounts of pressure on Perez to improve his performance.
But 2024 is definitely not going according to the script. Perez is suddenly doing a fine job. Granted, he didn’t win the Australian Grand Prix like you’d kind of need from a second driver, but he did get two solid second places in the first two races. Horner’s position in the team is suddenly a lot less solid with the in-fighting going on at Red Bull. And Yuki Tsunoda is extracting the absolute most from the Racing Bulls car, landing himself a nice seventh spot in Australia and outqualifying and outperforming Ricciardo in every race so far.
Qualifying gaps
| Bahrain | 0.149 |
| Saudi Arabia | 0.461 |
| Australia | 0.729* |
*The gap in Australia would have been 0.110, but Ricciardo’s fastest lap was deleted for exceeding track limits.
In many ways, Ricciardo’s form is starting to resemble what he showed at McLaren. And that’s not good. It’s not just that he had a bad couple of races, or that Yuki is extracting more out of that car. Ricciardo seems fundamentally uncomfortable in that car. In Saudi Arabia, he said he was confused about not being able to go any faster in qualifying. He called his deleted lap in Australia the best lap in his F1 career, and yet it still wasn’t faster than what Tsunoda did in that same session. He failed to climb higher in the pecking order in Australia, despite three of the top cars dropping out of the race.
Average finishing position
| Tsunoda | 12 |
| Ricciardo | 13.7 |
All this speaks of a Daniel Ricciardo who doesn’t really know what to do with the car. After the Australian GP he said that they gathered a lot of data on what to improve, but there was no confidence in his voice after that. He also told the media that he was “on a journey” in F1. That might be true, but that journey could quickly take him to the exit.
A Ricciardo swap might be coming, and it’s not a good one
In the span of three races, we went from expecting Ricciardo to take over from Checo midway through the season, to wondering how long he will be in Formula 1 at all. We all know what Red Bull is like: if they don’t think you’re performing well, they won’t hesitate to kick you out. Just ask Nyck de Vries, or Pierre Gasly, or Daniil Kvyat. All of them were replaced mid-season.
When Red Bull fired Nyck de Vries in the middle of 2023, it was clear that Christian Horner was never his biggest supporter. The Red Bull team principal said: “Nyck is a very capable driver. He’s obviously got a lot of experience. But he’s not a young driver. I just didn’t see how it fitted within the junior program.”
It’s true, at 28 years old, Nyck de Vries was not a young driver. But they replaced him with a now 34 year old driver. And with young talents like Liam Lawson and Ayumu Iwasa - who is going to replace Ricciardo during FP1 in Japan by the way - in the waiting, that 34 year old driver will have to start performing very quickly. Otherwise the fan favorite Aussie might find himself on the sidelines again very soon.
Getting behind the wheel for FP1 in front of his home crowd 🙌 @ayumuiwasa_cars will drive the VCARB 01 during the first practice session in Japan 🇯🇵 pic.twitter.com/DmCOinQVgY
— Visa Cash App RB F1 Team (@visacashapprb) March 26, 2024