F1 champ claims Ricciardo pace ON PAR with Verstappen

Ex Formula 1 champion Nico Rosberg has compared Daniel Ricciardo's pace on track to four-time champ Max Verstappen's.

The Dutchman has cemented his position as a legend of the sport at the age of just 27, winning his fourth consecutive title in 2024 with two races to spare.

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Ricciardo's 2024 wasn't quite as exciting as that, suffering a dismal downturn in performance compared to team-mate Yuki Tsunoda at VCARB and eventually being axed from his role.

It was the second time in his career that he had been released from his contract, having been axed by McLaren back in 2022, before finding a way back into the Red Bull setup via their sister team.

Why was Ricciardo sacked?

Ricciardo's best period of his career came between 2014-2018 at Red Bull, where he claimed seven of his eight grands prix wins, and came third in the 2014 world championship standings.

The Australian still remains the only one of Verstappen's team-mates to have beaten him in a full season, with the pair being at Red Bull together between 2016-2018.

Verstappen has now managed to see off four Red Bull team-mates during his time at the team, and is about to go head-to-head with a fifth, in Ricciardo's VCARB replacement Liam Lawson.

2016 world champion Nico Rosberg recently suggested that Ricciardo's one-lap pace was on a par with Verstappen, as he struggled to explain the Australian's qualifying drop-off.

"That was a strange case and we’ve seen a couple of those examples now, Sebastian Vettel also at Ferrari," he told the Sky Sports F1 podcast when talking about drivers losing their pace over one lap.

"We see it with Daniel Ricciardo as well because Daniel was on par with Verstappen in their prime at Red Bull I mean they were really there and then it just kind of drifted away from there."

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