Ricciardo admits RB upgrades could decide his F1 future

Daniel Ricciardo has described an important upcoming moment in his season, as rumours around his Formula 1 future continue to swirl.

The 34-year-old has had a poor 2024, being largely outperformed by Visa Cash App RB team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, but has shown some signs of improvement in recent races.

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His miserable early season form placed his future in the sport beyond the end of this season in real doubt, and Helmut Marko's recent comments about Red Bull reserve driver Liam Lawson suggests that is still very much the case.

However, Ricciardo does now have 11 points, and sits just one position behind Tsunoda in the drivers' championship.

Ricciardo hopes for upturn in fortunes

RB's season in general has been somewhat of a rollercoaster. Early season performance suggested that they were near the upper end of the midfield, but a barren spell coincided with Haas and Alpine resurgences.

The team remain in sixth in the constructors' championship, but that position is now no longer a foregone conclusion, and a top five finish looks beyond them.

Now, Ricciardo has been talking about recent upgrades the team have brought to their car, and how they could really impact both his and his team's season after the summer break.

“This could be a real kind of shifting point,” Ricciardo told Autosport.

“You're at that moment where you need to make the best calls. Every moment of F1 is important, but this update and our correlation, and our understanding, can obviously dictate what we do with the next update and how well we understand it.

“What we learn now will basically dictate where our car is in October and November, so it's a really important period for us. I'm obviously not an engineer and not an aerodynamicist,” he continued. “But in these moments, I feel our duty as a driver is to just give as much as we can.

“Feelings, feedbacks, positives, negatives, comparisons to other cars, everything - just to give them as much understanding of why we are where we are at the moment. I throw a lot on the table and just say: ‘you guys deal with it.’ But yeah, it's obviously a little bit like that. We have to just put it all out there.

“Hopefully they can understand it and the simulator stuff as well, what we feel on the sim, and just try to correlate that to the real car. It's a team effort. But yeah, there's a little bit for us to go [through] from these last three weeks.”

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