Ricciardo: I am seen as a Red Bull driver

Daniel Ricciardo is confident that the series of failures that plagued him during his time at McLaren are finally a thing of the past, and now that he is back in action at AlphaTauri, things will be much better.

Ricciardo’s three-year contract with McLaren was terminated prematurely by mutual agreement between the parties, after which the Australian resumed business relations with Red Bull. Initially serving as a reserve driver, he returned to the wheel in the second half of the year, replacing Nick de Vries in the Faenza team, for which he spent his first two full seasons in Formula 1.

It cannot be said that the return went smoothly, partly due to the injury to his left hand sustained in Sanfdort, because Daniel had to miss five races, but he still managed to show what he is capable of. The most important thing is that he has a renewed appetite for success, without which there is nothing to do in Formula 1.

“Coming back means a lot to me, and it’s great,” Australian publication Speedcafe quotes Ricciardo. – The team is going through a period of restructuring, and in some ways this can be compared to the current stage of my career, so we are following much the same path.

I would say I feel real confidence and I think the team believes in me. There I am still seen as a Red Bull driver with the results I showed then, and not as a McLaren driver with the results I had in the previous two seasons.

So we are in a good position. Now I want to spend the winter well and prepare for the next season. I think our activities in 2024 should be great.

It seems to me that the more laps I raced behind the wheel of a car, the better I understood its features and got into the rhythm. There were some successful moments in qualifying, although we did not perform well on some circuits, for example in Abu Dhabi.

But as I gained more experience, I started to believe in myself more and more, although it must be taken into account that my engineer, Pierre Amlin, had to work with three drivers this year (with De Vries, with Ricciardo and with Liam Lawson), and he tried to tune the car, taking into account everyone’s preferences, and this is not so easy.

If we look back at Brazil and Abu Dhabi, qualifying was our Achilles heel and obviously I take some responsibility for that because I might not have been able to put in a good lap. But I know we have the pace, and all that remains is to calculate the speed in one fast lap. Although, if we remember Mexico City and a few other circuits, there were a lot of things that encouraged us.”