Daniel Ricciardo reveals new reason for leaving Red Bull

Daniel Ricciardo

Ricciardo reveals new reason for leaving Red Bull

He joined Renault for 2019.

Martin Macdonald

Wednesday 14 August 2019 17:00

Daniel Ricciardo claims that a major contributing factor to him leaving Red Bull at the end of the 2018 Formula 1 season was the departure of Simon Rennie as his race engineer.

Ahead of the 2019 campaign, Ricciardo surprised everyone by not signing a new contract with Red Bull, instead opting to jump ship for a lucrative deal with Renault, where he has struggled so far alongside Nico Hulkenberg.

A few factors have been speculated as for the reason for the Australian’s decision, from money, to him believing the team favoured the younger Max Verstappen.

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However, a new one has come to light - his longtime engineer no longer travelling in a full-time F1 schedule to move to a domestic factory position.

"There were a lot of reasons, but losing Simon - I knew he wasn't going to engineer this year, if I stayed at Red Bull, and I thought I had a good relationship with him, and there were some unknowns," Ricciardo admitted during this year's Hungarian Grand Prix.

"I was certainly comfortable with him. If I knew he stayed, I don't know if that would've been the deciding factor, but it was another [thing] - obviously when you've got the Honda concern and a few others, I guess that was another little thing.

"As I said, there were lots of these little things which probably added up - I don't want to say 'concerns' but unknowns. 'Concerns' is probably a bit disrespectful."

Ricciardo reveals that a few teams were campaigning for his services, and that the pressure to make a decision began to mount up around the time of the 2018 Hungarian GP.

"I remember, coming into the weekend, I was still a little bit probably oblivious of what was going to happen and where I would end up, but as the weekend progressed, Friday or Saturday, it was like, 'alright, some teams are really pushing me, they need to know answers' - so it started to ramp up,” he continued.

"And it was Sunday night we had to start to really decide what to do, and I was like 'I'm just going to go out tonight, have a few drinks, and maybe I'll find my answer with a few friends'.

"And then on the Monday it all kind of started to kick off a bit more."