Key Red Bull figures have opened up on the bombshell move to axe AlphaTauri rookie Nyck de Vries after just ten races and immediately replace him with Australian Daniel Ricciardo.
Ricciardo was spending this season as the reserve driver for Red Bull after two disappointing years at McLaren, but has now been loaned to their sister team where he first started his F1 career.
And two senior Red Bull officials have revealed his performances at this week’s mid-season tyre test at Silverstone was the key reason behind the 34-year-old Australian’s full-time return to the grid.
Ricciardo got behind the wheels of the Red Bull car that has won all 10 grands prix this season and reportedly delivered lap times that would have put him on the front row of last weekend’s British Grand Prix.
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Now Red Bull boss Christian Horner has said: “It was great to see Daniel hasn’t lost any form while away from racing, and that the strides he has been making in his sim sessions translate on track.
“His times during the tyre test were extremely competitive. It was a very impressive drive and we are excited to see what the rest of the season brings for Daniel on loan at Scuderia AlphaTauri.”
On a special edition of Pit Talk: Daniel Ricciardo‘s comeback is on, with the Aussie set to see out the final 12 races of the season in the AlphaTauri seat formerly occupied by Nyck de Vries. But what can we expect from the eight-time race winner in the slowest car on the grid, and should Sergio Pérez be worried about his Red Bull Racing seat?
Red Bull Adviser Helmut expanded on Ricciardo’s performances, telling Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf: “Ricciardo’s lap times were competitive during the tyre test, on three different tyre sets.
“If Ricciardo hadn’t had the speed, we would have needed to consider something else.
“But AlphaTauri is not in a good position right now and is last in the constructors’ standings, so we had to do something to change that. That often happens after a driver change and Ricciardo brings new energy to the team.”
But Marko is right to say that AlphaTauri is ‘not in a good position’. They sit last in the constructors’ standings on two points, with next-last Alfa Romeo significantly in front on nine behind Williams and Haas on 11 points.
While Ricciardo proved himself in the two-day tyre test in the competition’s fastest car (by some distance), delivering positive results in the worst car on the grid will be a wholly different challenge.
F1 expert Ted Kravitz told the Sky Sports F1 Podcast: “It’s the best car by a country mile in Formula 1, and so maybe Daniel just couldn’t deal with the McLaren and its idiosyncrasies that we know it still really has.
“So when they saw that what Daniel could do in the best car on the grid, they were sufficiently impressed to actually put him in.
“Now this is all well and good basing it on the Red Bull RB 19, which is the class of the field. He’s not driving that car, he’s driving, probably one of the slowest cars on the grid, if not the slowest, which is the AlphaTauri.
“The AlphaTauri had some upgrades to Silverstone and they finished further down than they normally do with a non-upgraded car, so this is not a great AlphaTauri, it’s fair to say.”
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Kravitz said that should the Aussie succeed in the 12 races remaining this season, Red Bull’s struggling driver Sergio Perez should be very worried.
“I think it makes Sergio Perez check the terms of his contract to see if it’s as leaky as Nick de Vries’ contract with Red Bull obviously was,” Kravitz said.
“If he is amazing, then Checo will be pretty worried actually … he may well be worried if Red Bull decide to go the Ricciardo way if he turns out to be the man who turns AlphaTauri around.”
But, he added, if Ricciardo can’t outpace new teammate Yuki Tsunoda – who consistently outperformed de Vries this season – then the Australian’s hopes of a fairytale return to Red Bull next season or in 2025 will be over.
“It’s a really tricky one because this whole plan of coming back could be scuppered by being no quicker than Yuki Tsunoda in a not good AlphaTauri,” Kravitz said.
“But certainly, if he is, and he can score points on debut at AlphaTauri and is kind of the driver who can transform a car – this will be a good deciding value of how much is car and how much is driver won’t it? This will give us an idea of that age-old question.”
