Daniel Ricciardo F1 shambles proves McLaren complaint is legitimate

Daniel Ricciardo

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Ricciardo F1 SHAMBLES proves McLaren complaint is legitimate

The Australian's F1 career could well be over, but did it have to be this way?

Daniel Austin

Tuesday 24 September 2024 12:59 Updated: 18:07

The 2024 season was the first time in Formula 1 history that all 20 drivers who started the year remained in the same seats they occupied at the end of the previous campaign.

But fast forward six months and, perhaps inevitably, the unique status quo has not been able to hold. With Logan Sargeant already dropped by Williams shortly after the summer break, Daniel Ricciardo seems to be on his way out of the exit door too.

F1 HEADLINES: Ricciardo LIFELINE appears as Verstappen losing OUT at Red Bull

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The build-up to Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix was dominated by speculation that the ebullient Aussie, a firm fan favourite throughout his 13 years in the top tier of motorsport, is set to be dropped by the RB team in favour of Liam Lawson for the remainder of the season.

The rumours further swelled when Ricciardo himself confirmed that his current contract does not include the final six races of the current campaign. Choking back tears in the media pen after finishing 18th, he acknowledged the fact that this could well have been the final race of his F1 career.

"A lot of emotions,” Ricciardo strained. “I am aware it could be it. Just exhausted after the race, so a flood of emotions and feelings and exhaustion. The cockpit is something I got very used to for many years. Just wanted to savour the moment."

Since his return to the Red Bull fold a year ago, when he was given RB’s second race seat in place of the struggling Nyck de Vries, Ricciardo has been comprehensively outperformed by the significantly younger Yuki Tsunoda. So far this season, the Japanese driver has scored just shy of double the number of points that Ricciardo, an eight-time grand prix winner, has earned.

Ricciardo has struggled in recent seasons

Is dropping Ricciardo the right decision for Red Bull?

Combined with his desperately poor two-year spell with McLaren, which was cut short by an entire year due to sub-par performances (aside from an unexpected victory at the Italian Grand Prix in 2021), Ricciardo has not performed at a high enough level to justify a seat in F1 for almost half a decade, and the logic of Red Bull looking to the future instead with Lawson is irrefutable.

Putting the 22-year-old, who impressed when standing in for Ricciardo during his spell out through injury last year, in for the final few races of the season gives Red Bull the opportunity to bed him in, assess his performances and establish whether he should race for the junior squad in 2025 or perhaps even be considered for the position currently occupied by Sergio Perez alongside Max Verstappen.

The express purpose of the RB team, after all, is to provide a proving ground for young Red Bull drivers to demonstrate whether they have what it takes to make the step up to the front of the grid. Ricciardo’s return to the team was always peculiar in the sense that, unless he completely blew Tsunoda away and outperformed the car to the extent that he was given Perez’s seat shortly afterwards, all he was doing was blocking a potential pathway for a younger talent.

Ricciardo was left to answer awkward questions in Singapore

Have Red Bull handled the Ricciardo situation correctly?

Though Red Bull’s decision – which though still unconfirmed, seems inevitable given Ricciardo’s downbeat tone and his contract status – is justified logically, that does not mean that the team has handled the situation well at all.

Rather than giving both Ricciardo and his legions of fans around the world some certainty ahead of the race in Singapore, affording him the opportunity to say a proper farewell, the matter was instead left to media speculation and awkward questioning of the driver. This was essentially the world watching a man be sacked in slow motion live on television.

A driver with as much tenacity, popularity and skill as Ricciardo should have been allowed to go out with a lot more respect than this. Indeed, even the way his race was managed on track was rather undignified.

Stuck outside of the points following a lacklustre qualifying on Saturday, Ricciardo was called into the pits in the final laps on Sunday to pit for fresh soft tyres in an attempt to take the fastest lap.

Though the RB team called this 'a chance to go out on a high' for Ricciardo, it was little more than a thinly-veiled ploy to deprive Lando Norris of an extra point in his battle with Max Verstappen in the fight for the drivers’ championship.

Ricciardo was serving a function, sure, but it was as nothing more than a pawn in a powerplay by the senior team that is in the process of kicking him out the door. He was being instructed to assist one of his former team-mates by compromising another, serving to legitimise McLaren team principal Zak Brown’s complaints that Red Bull owning two teams on the grid does indeed offer them a potential advantage over others in some circumstances.

With only a seat at Sauber left available for 2025, and Ricciardo having not been linked to it to any great degree, his chances of ever returning to F1 seem slim to none if this really was his final outing.

Ricciardo’s fate will be confirmed before the next race in the United States in a little under three weeks’ time.

If this is the end, Formula 1 should remember the rambunctious, raucous Ricciardo who was always latest on the brakes, and delivered some of the most thrilling and joyous moments in the series' modern history.

What a shame, then, that what could be his last outing was turned into such a meek, bleak shambles rather than the celebration that his terrific career merits.

Red Bull Max Verstappen Daniel Ricciardo Williams Singapore Grand Prix Logan Sargeant