Mark Hughes on the twists in Daniel Ricciardo’s career

Mark Hughes, a well-known British journalist, in the pages of The Race, analyzes another career twist in the fate of Daniel Riccardo, who returns to Faenza’s team more than ten years after he parted ways.

Daniel Ricciardo first signed a contract with Red Bull in 2008, when he played in Formula Renault, and worked with the teams of the Austrian company until 2018, but then rejected the offer (they say at a price of 20 million pounds) to remain a partner of Max Verstappen and chose to move to Renault F1, even though her cars were regularly ahead of the circle.

His decision seemed strange then, and it seems so now, especially as Daniel returns to the “junior” Red Bull team ten years after his departure. His aim is to return to Red Bull Racing to drive with Verstappen and prove to the world that he is still a first-class driver. Although there were doubts about that after the previous two seasons at McLaren.

Ricciardo tries to convince Christian Horner and Helmut Marko that he is still as fast. However, this will not be enough, as Sergio Perez’s contract does not expire until the end of next year. However, now that the Mexican is in a crisis situation, he loses confidence in himself, and with it his form, which cannot but disturb. And the contract can be canceled.

Suppose Daniel will show sufficient results in the remaining races of the season behind the wheel of the AlphaTauri car and convince Red Bull management to buy out Perez’s contract to make room for him. Then it turns out that the Australian is returning to the team, from the place where he refused five years ago. And he will certainly have to agree to a very significant pay cut.

Hence the question: why did he do it then and is he doing it now?

And here one cannot underestimate the effect the arrival of Max Verstappen and the results of the young Dutchman once had on Riccardo. In his best days, Daniel was unstoppable, just exuding waves of confidence, making daring overtakes and shining in qualifying.

In his first season with Red Bull Racing, he immediately went faster than Sebastian Vettel. He was ahead of the four-time world champion, perhaps not much and far from all the 2014 races, but he took three wins while Vettel had none, which probably also influenced the German’s decision to move at the first opportunity. to another team.

But Riccardo’s confidence in his abilities only grew stronger.

When Daniil Kvyat became his partner in Red Bull Racing, it did not threaten the status of the Australian, who became the new team leader, but even then it was clear that she was pinning her hopes on Verstappen.

Max replaced Kvyat at Red Bull Racing halfway through the 2016 season and immediately won the race in Barcelona. This did not bode well for Daniel, although Verstappen was of course just lucky with the tactics that day, just like Kimi Raikkonen, who finished second behind the wheel of a Ferrari.

But from the outside it was so perceived that an 18-year-old newcomer came to the team and immediately began to win.

Ricciardo gave a fitting response on the next stage in Monaco as he took pole while Max crashed the car. But even if Daniel deserved to win that Grand Prix, events unfolded in a very unfavorable way for him, and he missed out on the chance to win the race after a serious mistake by the team during his pit stop.

Ricciardo had a 9-6 lead over Verstappen in qualifying that year, but his lead was very small, averaging around 0.062%. Both won one race each – Max in Spain, Daniel in Malaysia.

In 2017, Verstappen was already slightly faster in qualifying (by 0.064%) and recorded two victories against Riccardo’s. And in 2018, that memorable collision happened in Baku, when they collided on the track and went out of the race.

Unlike Max, Daniel went through the Red Bull youth program – for him it was the only chance to build a successful career. And Verstappen was raised by his father Jos, and in the years when Max was still performing in karting and then in Formula 3, he would not allow anyone to take his son to his racing programme.

Helmut Marko had been trying since 2010, but Jos resisted and his plan succeeded brilliantly: when Max had a great debut season in F3 in 2014, Mercedes paid attention to him. The two teams entered into a dispute over the right to get such a driver, and in that situation Marco made the Verstappen family an offer that Mercedes could not accept: Max would immediately make his debut in Formula 1 in 2015.

Marco was captivated by the talent of the young Dutchman and was determined, because he knew that such riders only come once in a generation. That is why Verstappen was given a unique status in the team. Among other things, the contract with Red Bull included special conditions that Max could switch to another team if certain results were not achieved at certain points in the season, etc.

At the same time, Riccardo was given absolutely equal opportunities and exactly the same technique. But his position in the team was already different and Daniel did not like it.

After the accident in Baku, the team had a serious talk with both drivers, but, as Christian Horner later recalled, it was “like water off a duck’s back” for Verstappen. But Riccardo was hurt by the scolding, and he spoke of it this way: “I was scolded like a bad boy for misconduct, although I don’t think I was to blame.”

He also did not like that both were required to come to the base of the team and apologize separately to the employees of all his divisions.

When asked if this was one of the factors that influenced the decision to leave Red Bull Racing, Daniel replied: “There were other things, but that certainly also had an influence.”

However, now that he is 34 years old, he has become wiser and more experienced – he probably already sees things differently. He has been a Red Bull driver for 11 years since the age of 19 and through this program has had the opportunity to build an excellent career, lead an enviable lifestyle, but probably gradually developed other interests, personal and business, which made him lost some concentration.

Then, in 2018, he had a dream that if he moved to the factory team, he would not only receive a huge amount of money, but also help her become a leader, but it did not come true. But he made the decision to move to Renault in the summer of 2018 on a plane bound for California, and at that time, at an altitude of more than ten kilometers, it seemed right to him.