COMMENTARY: Ricciardo in big crisis again, repeating his stint at McLaren. What’s happening to the famous F1 driver?

Does Daniel Ricciardo even have a Formula 1 drive left in him? This has been one of the leading topics discussed in the early part of the season, with many believing the end is near. In this article, we take a look at the full story together – his departure from Red Bull, the details of his end at McLaren, his return after a year’s break and also the horror start to the current season. Sit back and relax…

Has he forgotten to race? Did Ricciardo manage one engagement at Red Bull, plain and simple, otherwise he’s not exactly a refined talent in the queen of motorsport? Will he finish the season at RB or does he even have F1 left in him?

The questions are many, the answers relatively few. But one thing is certain. The 34-year-old Australian is at it again. But after a year’s hiatus, he seemed to have found a kind of lost love for F1 again and exuded a determination to fight for the Red Bull seat he once left.

A fateful move, you wouldn’t leave Red Bull voluntarily, you’d think. And it’s actually true, except that Ricciardo couldn’t handle the pressure of driving alongside Max Verstappen, and his career has gone downhill steeply ever since. Yes, he still had some very solid results at Renault, but his stint at McLaren was downright tragic.

The engagement and the details of the end at McLaren

Apart from McLaren’s spectacular double, i.e. winning Monza in the 2021 season, Ricciardo didn’t show much at the Woking stable. However, leaving the British team was frustrating not only for him as a driver himself, even though he earned a bundle to pay off his contract.

Specifically, $18 million. A huge sum for someone who was far from delivering the expected results and was due to leave the team at the end of the 2022 season. Purely statistically – team leader Lando Norris scored 122 points that year and finished seventh in the final driver championship standings.

And Ricciardo? 37 points and position number 11. Valtteri Bottas in the Alfa Romeo was also better off. But as we write above, his departure from McLaren also hit his then race engineer Tom Stallard, who is now Oscar Piastri’s race engineer.

The Australian who replaced Ricciardo as his compatriot at McLaren. According to an interview with BBC Sport, he saw a problem when the experienced driver joined McLaren. They had to get to know each other via video chat and lost a lot of social interaction because of Covid.

A candid confession from Stallard

“Ideally, you know the driver so well that there can be some hard-to-notice non-verbal communication between you. But with a pilot licking his wounds, it’s very tricky. You try to understand what happened, what to do differently, you think of a new plan and you try again,” said Stallard, who was also quoted by Racing News 365.

“When the team decided to replace him with Oscar, it took me a long time to process it. We were in a deep process of performance improvement, I never felt like it wasn’t going to work out. It was frustrating to quit before we could solve this puzzle,” explains Piastri’s current race engineer.

“It may sound strange, but I’m proud of the work Daniel and I did. We’re still good friends and we see each other at all the tracks. It’s partly a reflection of his character and I’d like to think it’s also a reflection of the strong collaboration between us,” he added.

A year off and a return to F1

Ricciardo took almost a year off after his stint at McLaren to reset his mind and mental set-up, and also to put his battered psyche right after the failed years. Needless to say, after his time at McLaren he returned to the Red Bull family and, for example, shone at the later tyre tests at Silverstone, so to speak.

When he replaced Nyck De Vries in the AlphaTauri after ten races last season, there wasn’t a single fan who wouldn’t have wanted him to return to his old form.

When it came to decision making, there was really nothing to decide. Helmut Marko understood that he and De Vries had been swayed by the power of the moment and after ten grand prix he said goodbye to the Dutch rider.

Ricciardo beat teammate Júki Cunda immediately on his return in the Hungarian Grand Prix, but finished only 16th in Belgium. But a hand injury at Zandvoort saw him replaced in the cockpit by New Zealander Liam Lawson.

Another fateful moment? Lawson rose to the occasion and showed he was ready to enter Formula One. He finished just outside the points at Monza, and then got it right in Singapore, finishing ninth (two points). In Japan, he beat Cunoda for the third time. The race in Qatar didn’t go as he had hoped, but the Formula One community was delighted.

And even then, there was an opinion among the experts that he should get the second seat in AlphaTauri, the current RB. It wasn’t quite the same from Ricciardo in the US after his return to injury, but he put in an almost phenomenal performance in Mexico, finishing seventh.

That’s it! That’s the old Daniel, the kuolari proclaimed. He finished 13th in Brazil and Las Vegas, but it was in Vegas that he managed to beat Cunoda again. He finished the last race in Abu Dhabi just outside the points, in eleventh place, his Japanese teammate bringing home four points for eighth place.

Ricciardo and his horror start to the new season

However, the start of the new season has caught Ricciardo in disastrous form. Bahrain – P13 and a less than dazzling race pace. Saudi Arabia – sheer disaster, the clock towards the end of the race seemed to symbolise everything Ricciardo and the hitherto invisible RB were going through.

Oh, and the last race in Australia? Pity about qualifying, where Ricciardo’s time was erased and he only started from 18th place. Yes, he did finish twelfth in the race, but mainly due to three drivers crashing out, Sauber again had tragicomic problems in the pits and for example Esteban Ocon had to pit unscheduled due to a stuck foil in the car.

And the race pace? It’s terrible. Ricciardo, of course, is hoping to break the poor performance and start getting the kind of results that will allow him to keep his RB seat.

Ricciardo believes RB still have a lot of time during the 2024 season to improve 💪

He started his home race P18 after a tough Q1 run, and finished the race P12 🏁 #F1 pic.twitter.com/bVphCmumdy

— Autosport (@autosport) March 27, 2024

Ricciardo after Australia…

“I kind of put my frustration to one side today and concentrated on getting the most out of the race. It’s good that I had some nice moments in the race where I had good pace and I knew I could make some good laps out of it,” Ricciardo said after the Australian Grand Prix.

“I definitely believe I can do it. I wouldn’t say I should panic. Yes, the start of the season could have been better, but we’ll just keep working. I think we will find something (to improve performance). If it doesn’t happen next time, we’ll work on it until we find something,” he said when asked if he can return to his old form.

But the problem is that Ricciardo has clearly gone back into a spiral that will be very difficult to get out of. It’s not so much about placing as high as possible in the grand prix and scoring valuable points, but about finding himself and coming to the true belief that this is just a failed start to the season.

Everything after the opening three Grands Prix culminated in an ultimatum from Red Bull, or rather Helmut Marko. So how much time does Ricciardo have left? With his performance so far, three, four, five, six races? Maybe not even that… It’s a wonder that the driver who replaced De Vries last season as a returning former star could actually end up worse off.

On the other hand, the information that Red Bull was going to replace Ricciardo with Liam Lawson back in Miami is not based on truth.

This Ricciardo/Miami rumours… Utter nonsense. Story emerged on Sunday morning, I checked it with Red Bull, RB, and Daniel's management, and other sources. No truth to it. #F1

— Mat Coch (@matcoch) March 25, 2024

In fact, Mat Coch claims that he consulted the situation with Red Bull, RB, and Ricciardo’s management and other sources. No such thing is in the works for now.

In conclusion…

In conclusion, it’s probably still too early to pass judgement on the 34-year-old Australian. But given the great travails of the past few years, it’s not surprising that there’s talk of it. And pretty loudly. Unfortunately, the marketing potential and character that Ricciardo exudes isn’t everything if a rider isn’t meeting targets and driving results.

That’s the bottom line, that’s just how simple Formula One is sometimes. Personally, for a long time, I was glad Ricciardo was still driving and part of the queen of motorsport. But on the other hand, I can no longer overlook the fact that some drivers are simply giving way to younger and better drivers.

There are many great talents waiting for their chance, be it Lawson, Felipe Drugovich, Theo Pourchaire, Frederik Vesti and others. And from a purely sporting point of view, I’d like to see them in F1 already, instead of the veterans who have clearly seen their best days.

Source: F1, The Race, X