Daniel Ricciardo F1 return doubts emerge over sensational 2026 Cadillac move

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F1 Analysis

Ricciardo F1 return doubts emerge over sensational 2026 Cadillac move

Not everyone is on board with the idea

Chris Deeley

Friday 31 January 2025 21:57 Updated: 14:17

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Did you hear that Daniel Ricciardo doesn't have a drive for the 2025 Formula 1 season? Did you? Has an F1 website got that message through to you?

Yeah, alright. Hypocrite, I know. We're going to talk about him again though, for the last* time this off-season, as people wave his name around for a seat on the 2026 grid with Cadillac.

[*Editor's note: probably not, no]

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Cadillac and General Motors are hitting the sport like a ton of bricks in 2026, ending a decade-long run of the sport's 10-team championship (RIP Manor Racing, thanks for the memories) and opening up a key pair of seats for drivers who may otherwise be left to find jobs as reserves or in other racing series.

Ricciardo's popularity both in the sport and particularly with American fans makes him an obvious candidate for the seat, a big name to bring in alongside the American driver the team want to hire. It looks like a match made in motorsport heaven.

Daniel Ricciardo, looking at home in America

Click here to buy the unofficial Danny Ric vintage style racing graphic tee.

Should Cadillac sign Daniel Ricciardo?

Let's save Cadillac a lot of time right now. Don't do this. The last thing you should be doing now is buying Ricciardo stock. When you're being offered a product at a bargain basement price and the person trying to sell it is suspiciously keen to let it go, do some background checks. Take that gift horse and give it a full-on dental x-ray, and a CT scan for good measure.

Ricciardo is a busted flush. It's all very well to point at drivers like Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton and insist that age is no barrier to F1 success, but Ricciardo hasn't beaten a team-mate in the championship in four seasons (and yes, Yuki Tsunoda outscored him in the 2023 races they both competed in).

It's been a marked decline from the high point of 2016, when he finished a career-best third in the championship. Think about that. 2016. Ricciardo hasn't been sniffing around the title race for the best part of a decade, and he's finished in the top two in a race just one time in his last 123 attempts, since winning in Monaco in 2018.

That's the dirty secret about Ricciardo – it's not that he's no longer an elite driver, it's that even at his peak he probably wasn't a championship-level star. When Hamilton and Alonso fall off a little with age and little technical issues, their other qualities keep them in the conversation. When Ricciardo regressed, he was done as a viable F1 point-scorer.

Why's he still in the conversation for seats then, given all of that and the fact he just got sacked mid-season for being slower than Tsunoda, who himself was passed over for Red Bull's senior seat in favour of a driver who's started 11 races? He's a nice guy.

Invert the heights, and that's the bar graph of their points

If you're good with the media, popular with the fans, good in the garage and pop on TV, you will always have your name put up for jobs that might be a little beyond your scope. That's the nature of the game. It's Cadillac's job to make sure that they don't stumble on their entry to the F1 stage by hiring a lame duck driver.

Right, two seconds, I have to go and slice some potatoes and soak them. This isn't a bit, I want to make chips tonight and giving those spuds a soak really helps ditch a lot of the starch and helps them crisp up nicely. Parboil them before you get to the oven/chip pan/air fryer stage too, that's how you get the middles nice and fluffy. Be right back.

45 minutes in the oven at 200ºC/390ºF

Where were we? Right, let's save Ricciardo a lot of time right now. Don't do this. The last thing you want, entering a 2026 season in which you'll turn 37 years old, is to piss around at the back of the field with a team building their whole operation from scratch.

Seriously, this isn't going to be a fun job. There were times during last season when you looked absolutely haunted, red-eyed, with none of that verve and easy charm everyone in the F1 world loves. You want to put yourself through that all over again, but this time away from the Red Bull cradle where you actually knew everyone?

This is the look of a man who is Going Through It

The last truly new team to arrive in the sport were Haas. They have no podiums in nine years. Before them, HRT. Three years, no points, disbanded. That same year, Virgin (which became Marussia, then Manor, then folded). Three points in seven years. Same yeah, Lotus (which became Caterham, then folded). No points.

Shall we keep going? Super Aguri, 2006-08. Four points. Folded. 2002, Toyota. The most successful of the bunch. Made it eight years, never won a race. Withdrew the team.

That's every single brand new F1 team of the 21st century. Signing up with Cadillac is signing up for the most gruelling calendars in the sport's history, and doing that just to get lapped by the cars that actually matter. You've just done this once, don't do it again. For your own sake.

Lewis Hamilton Formula 1 Daniel Ricciardo Cadillac