In 2018, Daniel Ricciardo decided to leave Red Bull Racing in the hope of taking the next step in his career, but two years at Renault did not bring success and the Australian moved to McLaren. If Ricciardo won the race in Monza in his first year in the team from Woking, he looked pale compared to his teammate Lando Norris in the second season.
At the end of 2022, Ricciardo was without a contract for 2023, but Red Bull Racing offered him to return and take the place of third driver. Daniel did not refuse this option and halfway through the season he was given the opportunity to start again, replacing Nick de Vries, who did not live up to his expectations, at AlphaTauri.
Red Bull Racing chief Christian Horner believes Ricciardo now understands how wrong his decision to leave the team was.
“Daniel is a great guy, but he got bad advice early in his career and everyone made a mistake at some point,” Horner said on the Eff Won With DRS podcast. “I think he realized his mistake.” The moment he decided to leave us, there was no one around to stop him. Ricciardo saw that Max Verstappen was getting better, but probably didn’t realize at that moment how good Max would be.
Daniel spent several years away from our family and then suddenly realized: “It turned out that I had a very good option.”
It was terrible to see his results getting worse and worse. Last year in Mexico City I invited him to my hotel room and said, ‘You need a complete restart. Take a year off and come back to us. We have a lot of sponsors and promotional events.”
Now his confidence has returned. When Daniel feels strengthened, he is one of the fastest drivers on the grid.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
