Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull MESS shows McLaren F1 complaint is justified

Despite the driver market heading into the 2024 Formula 1 season perhaps being the most boring ever, things have heated up massively during this campaign.

With US F1 star Logan Sargeant already dropped by Williams shortly after the summer break, next up on the axing list was Daniel Ricciardo at Visa Cash App RB.

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The build-up to Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix was dominated by speculation that the ebullient Aussie, a firm fan favorite throughout his 13 years in the top tier of motorsport, is set to be dropped by the RB team in favor of Liam Lawson for the remainder of the season.

The rumors further swelled when Ricciardo himself confirmed that his current contract does not include the final six races of the current campaign. Choking back tears in the media pen after finishing 18th, he acknowledged the fact that this could well have been the final race of his F1 career.

"A lot of emotions,” Ricciardo strained. “I am aware it could be it. Just exhausted after the race, so a flood of emotions and feelings and exhaustion. The cockpit is something I got very used to for many years. Just wanted to savor the moment."

Since his return to the Red Bull fold a year ago, when he was given RB’s second race seat in place of the struggling Nyck de Vries, Ricciardo has been comprehensively outperformed by the significantly younger Yuki Tsunoda. So far this season, the Japanese driver has scored just shy of double the number of points that Ricciardo, an eight-time grand prix winner, has earned.

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Who will replace Daniel Ricciardo?

Combined with his desperately poor two-year spell with McLaren, which was cut short by an entire year due to sub-par performances (aside from an unexpected victory at the Italian Grand Prix in 2021), Ricciardo has not performed at a high enough level to justify a seat in F1 for almost half a decade, and the logic of Red Bull looking to the future instead with Lawson is irrefutable. That is why Ricciardo's exit from RB has now been officially confirmed by the team.

Putting the 22-year-old, who impressed when standing in for Ricciardo during his spell out through injury last year, in for the final few races of the season gives Red Bull the opportunity to bed him in, assess his performances, and establish whether he should race for the junior squad in 2025 or perhaps even be considered for the position currently occupied by Sergio Perez alongside Max Verstappen.

The express purpose of the RB team, after all, is to provide a proving ground for young Red Bull drivers to demonstrate whether they have what it takes to make the step up to the front of the grid.

Ricciardo’s return to the team was always peculiar in the sense that, unless he completely blew Tsunoda away and outperformed the car to the extent that he was given Perez’s seat shortly afterward, all he was doing was blocking a potential pathway for a younger talent.

Why is Daniel Ricciardo leaving F1?

Though Red Bull’s decision is justified logically, that does not mean that the team has handled the situation well at all.

Rather than giving both Ricciardo and his legions of fans around the world some certainty ahead of the race in Singapore, affording him the opportunity to say a proper farewell, the matter was instead left to media speculation and awkward questioning of the driver. This was essentially the world watching a man be sacked in slow motion live on television.

A driver with as much tenacity, popularity and skill as Ricciardo should have been allowed to go out with a lot more respect than this. Indeed, even the way his race was managed on track was rather undignified.

Stuck outside of the points following a lackluster qualifying on Saturday, Ricciardo was called into the pits in the final laps on Sunday to pit for fresh soft tires in an attempt to take the fastest lap.

Though the RB team called this 'a chance to go out on a high' for Ricciardo, it was little more than a thinly-veiled ploy to deprive Lando Norris of an extra point in his battle with Max Verstappen in the fight for the drivers’ championship.

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Ricciardo was serving a function, sure, but it was as nothing more than a pawn in a powerplay by the senior team that is in the process of kicking him out the door.

He was being instructed to assist one of his former team-mates by compromising another, serving to legitimize McLaren team principal Zak Brown’s complaints that Red Bull owning two teams on the grid does indeed offer them a potential advantage over others in some circumstances.

With only a seat at Sauber left available for 2025, and Ricciardo having not been linked to it to any great degree, his chances of ever returning to F1 seem slim to none.

If this is the end, Formula 1 should remember the rambunctious, raucous Ricciardo who was always the latest on the brakes and delivered some of the most thrilling and joyous moments in the modern history of the sport.

What a shame, then, that what could be his last outing was turned into such a meek, bleak shambles rather than the celebration that his terrific career merits.

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