It appears that Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula One career has reached its end – an 18th place at Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix looks to have been his last race. His eight wins and 32 podiums are certainly fine achievements, but his career tailed off enormously in the last few years.
His peak came during five years at Red Bull from 2014-18. In that period he was a master of the big, bold overtake, with his daring moves on the brakes undoubtedly his greatest asset. It is a difficult skill to master and with huge consequences if you get it wrong. Plenty of drivers do not possess that instinct on the brakes.
Yet Ricciardo decided to leave Red Bull for Renault in 2019 before a bruising two years at McLaren and he never had another season in a truly competitive car.
Where did it all go wrong? Some people would point towards the decision to leave a winning Red Bull team for Renault at the end of 2018 as the start of his downfall, but I disagree. I think the logic was solid. The big crossroads in Ricciardo’s career was not his departure from Red Bull but in fact the arrival of Max Verstappen to that team.
Verstappen arrival forced his hand
Before Verstappen burst on to the scene – being promoted from Toro Rosso near the start of the 2016 season – Ricciardo was the top dog at Red Bull. He had won three races to Sebastian Vettel’s none in 2014, when the German had just come off the back of four championships in a row. His hunger, talent and racing skill was that of a man destined for great things.
Verstappen was initially very fast but very error prone. Once he stopped the crashes, Ricciardo struggled to match him. He could do things that Ricciardo just could not.
From 2016-18 their records were similar – 590 points to 608 and five wins to four in Verstappen’s favour – but the Dutchman’s ascent to becoming the No 1 driver in reality if not yet on paper was clear.
Perhaps Ricciardo also lost a bit of that hunger that he had in those early Red Bull years as Verstappen took his place as the next big thing in Christian Horner and Helmut Marko’s eyes.
Ricciardo could maybe see things within Red Bull getting worse, as the team would have started to follow Verstappen’s path when it came to developing the car.
No disrespect to Ricciardo, but the engineers and designers will always listen to the faster man because if they give him a tenth of a second he will take it. Verstappen was, and still is, that driver.
Yes, Renault were definitely a lesser team than Red Bull but the move to becoming the No 1 driver, most likely with a bigger pay packet, in a works team was perhaps enough to get him to sign for the French outfit.
Although not at Red Bull’s level, Ricciardo achieved some good results in his second year with the team, finishing fifth in the championship and securing two podiums.
I would argue, though, that his decision to move to McLaren was the wrong one. Staying with Renault for another year may have increased his reputation, as changing teams frequently means you spend a lot of time bedding into the new environment and getting up to speed with the processes of the team as well as the characteristics of the car.
Yet at McLaren his form dropped off as he was trounced by Lando Norris in their two seasons. It was not a disastrous 2021, with another race win to his name, but in 2022 he scored only 37 points to Norris’s 122.
Indeed, it was the difficult characteristics of the McLaren that were frequently mentioned as the reason for this fall-off in form. There is some truth in that, but it is the mark of the very best drivers to adapt to the characteristics of the car. There is no point making a car a comfortable limousine that qualifies at the back of the grid.
With his experience, Ricciardo should have been able to adapt to these characteristics better and apply himself. He did not. This no doubt dented his confidence, which made things harder still, and McLaren dropped him a year early from his contract.
His return with AlphaTauri/RB was a final shot at the big time. For a driver with his talent and ambitions he wanted to prove himself good enough to return to Red Bull alongside Verstappen. For a variety of reasons – not helped by a broken hand last year – he was unable to achieve the results needed for Red Bull to consider him again.
Of all the drivers to come through the Red Bull scheme, Ricciardo has been given as big a chance for success as anybody. He should leave F1 satisfied with what he has achieved, even if that fell short of his ultimate goal of becoming world champion.
Source Agencies
