Daniel Ricciardo’s future in Formula One could be decided this weekend at the Australian Grand Prix.
After missing the opening races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the 33-year-old is making his first appearance at a race this season in Melbourne.
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Ricciardo won’t be racing of course, but he’ll have a packed program of sponsorship engagements, while he’s also expected to sit in on Red Bull’s strategy meetings as he serves as reserve driver for Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
The 33-year-old parted ways with McLaren last year with a season remaining on his contract and was replaced by Aussie youngster Oscar Piastri.
McLaren have endured a nightmare start to the F1 season, making Ricciardo’s departure, with a $24 million payout, look like the best sacking ever.
Ricciardo will only attend around eight of the 23 races on F1’s calendar his year, and he’ll get a sense of whether he’s keen to get back on the grid next year if the competitive juices flow again in Melbourne.
“I get the feeling this weekend is important for him in terms of making his mind up and what he wants to do next,” Speedcafe.com’s F1 editor Mat Coch told news.com.au.
“He’s a had a little taste of life outside of Formula One for the last few months — doing the family thing and a few other bits and pieces he’s wanted to do away from the sport.
“This weekend, getting back in the nitty gritty of it. He’ll be sitting in the technical debriefs, he’s there as reserve driver for Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. He will get that appetite wet.
“If that doesn’t stir his hunger, it makes the decision for him basically. It decides what he wants to do in 2024. If he’s as hungry as ever to come back, that sort of makes the decision as well.
“It’s going to be a defining moment in the year for Daniel — how he reacts and how he responds to that.
“Being in Australia, it’s going to be an enormous weekend for him. He’ll have a lot of marketing and PR to do. There’ll be the technical side, and whether he’s engaged in the sport and hungry to get back amongst it, that’ll be the big thing.
“I got the impression at the end of last year not that he wasn’t hungry, but that he was tired. He’d been worn down by a couple of difficult years.
“I’m pretty certain that we’ll get to Sunday evening and he’ll be pretty clear on what he wants to do.
“There’s still life in the old dog. It’s just whether there’s that hunger and appetite to really push to the level that you have to, to be competitive in Formula One. And that’s the big question I think he needs to answer this weekend.”
Alan Jones, the last Australian to win an F1 title in 1980, has questioned if there is an attractive spot on the grid for Ricciardo next season.
“In relation to him ever getting back into a Formula One car, you never say never, he is a reserve driver, and you never know what might happen as far as coming out of a sabbatical is concerned,” Jones said.
“If he did I think he would be quite good. We’ve seen (Fernando) Alonso come out of a break and (Kimi) Raikkonen come out of a sabbatical and both go extremely well.”
“But I just don’t know where Daniel would go, because at the end of the day, I can’t see Red Bull getting rid of the two that they’ve got.
“I can’t see Ferrari getting rid of the two of them (Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc).
“Where does Lewis Hamilton go? He wouldn’t go anywhere unless it was a good team. So there’s not really that many doors for Daniel to go through.”
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