Former Formula One World Champion Alan Jones has said Daniel Ricciardo “doesn’t know” what went wrong and how the brightest spark in Australian motorsport lost his seat at what should be the peak of his career.
Ricciardo was famously sacked from his McLaren seat in mid-2022 for countryman Oscar Piastri.
It left the 33-year-old without a seat for the 2023 season, where he has moved into a role as reserve driver where it all began at Red Bull.
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But while the man famous for his late-braking heroics earlier in his career contemplates a potentially comeback in 2024, the Western Australian’s career is now up in the air.
“I don’t think Daniel knows himself (why he lost his seat) to be honest,” Jones, who features on Channel 10s free-to-air coverage of the 2023 Australian Grand Prix, said.
“I think I really don’t know. I’ve tried to analyse it. I don’t know why he went off the boil.
“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. 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.”
Now with Aston Martin, Alonso left the sport at the end of 2018, also after a turbulent time in a struggling McLaren outfit, only to return with Alpine (then known as Renault), the team that brought him his two World Championships, in 2021.
Alonso spent the interim racing in IndyCar with McLaren’s American racing arm, as well as entering the Dakar Rally with Toyota.
Since moving to Aston Martin for 2023, Alonso has spearheaded an astonishing surge by the Silverstone-based outfit, beating out the Mercedes factory team that supply their power units at almost every stage this season.
Kimi Raikkonen left Ferrari in 2009 and wasn’t able to secure a drive with another top team for the 2010 season, turning down an offer from Toyota at the time.
He moved to the World Rally Championship in 2010 as a full-time driver for Citroen, finishing 10th in both of the seasons he competed, before signing with NASCAR team Kyle Busch Motorsports and racing in the third-tier Truck Series as well as the second-tier Nationwide Series.
He would return to the sport in 2012 for two seasons with the Enstone-based Lotus F1 Team (now known as Alpine), five-years with Ferrari and three more for Alfa Romeo, before retiring in 2021.
“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,” Jones said.
“I can’t see Ferrari getting rid of the two of them (Sainz and 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.”
Asked whether Ricciardo should have taken the reported offers he had from smaller teams such as Haas or Williams, the 1980 World Champion was philosophical.
“I don’t know – the beautiful thing about Formula One, we’ve got so many thousands of experts sitting in their lounge rooms, the only bloke that really knows what he should and shouldn’t have done is Daniel,” Jones said.
“You don’t know the state of his mind at the time, he might have had enough he might have needed this rest very badly.
“I can’t see going to Williams as any sort of great shake at all, unless they allow him to start the night before.
“But I think he’s probably done the right thing, to be honest with you.”
Asked about the other Australian on everyone’s lips this weekend, Oscar Piastri, Jones was glowing in his praise for the boy from Oakleigh and said McLaren’s struggles with the car are irrelevant in the estimations of the people who matter.
“The thing with Oscar is that he improves his stock every time he goes out there,” he said.
“At the end of the day, we all know it’s the car, we know it’s not him. There’s no question mark about that.
“When he is in the car, he performs extremely well. And those in his team, and those that are in Formula One, know this, so it’s not going to really affect his future.
“Maybe he won’t win a Grand Prix, maybe he won’t become a World Champion in the next year or so, but if he keeps going the way he is, it puts him in good stead for a really good competitive drive, if McLaren doesn’t come good.”
Jones was also optimistic about McLaren’s chances and scope for the team in papaya to put Piastri in a position to compete for the World Championship he so desperately craves, after winning a messy and public battle for the prodigy’s signature last year.
“McLaren are investing a lot of money in the future,” Jones said.
“They’ve just opened up their brand new wind tunnel, which costs an absolute arm and a leg. It’s a team that I certainly wouldn’t write off, that’s for sure.
“They’ve got the facilities and the personnel to produce a very good car.
“Formula One’s a funny beast, you know. Going to Ferrari a couple of years ago was no guarantee that you’re going to do any good for the last couple of years.
“They do have this reputation of snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.
“Aston Martin, they’ve come really good. They’ve proven that with a new facility, and a new wind tunnel, and the right sort of personnel, they can produce a race winning car.”
Australia currently is in a golden age of producing motorsport talent, with three Australians on the grid in either a racing or reserve role in addition to two more in Formula 3, and Jones is excited about the future.
“Australia has always boxed above their weight, really, when you look at our population compared to the Europeans, we’ve always produced pretty good drivers,” he said.
“At the moment, I think we’ve got quite a few young guys. There’s young Jack Doohan in Formula 2, and another (Tommy Smith and Hugh Barter) in Formula 3.”
Asked about Doohan’s prospects in the sport, Jones warned of putting too much pressure on the 20-year-old son of motorsport legend Mick Doohan.
“Mick has been fantastically supportive, like any father would be, and I think he’s giving Jack every chance in the world to succeed,” he said.
“And they’re on the right path. I mean, I think he’s probably having a little bit of undue pressure put on him, by Alpine themselves, to be honest.
“I don’t think it’s the wisest thing in the world for the Alpine boss to come out and say we’re expecting him to win the Formula 2 championship.
“I mean, that’s putting a little bit of undue pressure on the kid.
“But you know, I think he’ll go well, and I think he’s in with a real good chance of winning the Formula 2 championship, but having a team say things like that just I don’t think really helps a great deal.”
Doohan is signed to Alpine, driving for them in the Formula 2 World Championship this season in addition to his role as the team’s reserve F1 driver.
F1 boss Stefano Domenicali sparked a debate in F1 recently with the suggestion that free practice sessions could be scrapped in the future.
Jones said it would be a misstep for the sport as time on the track was necessary from an equity perspective.
“You’ve got to give people practice, you’ve got to give them time on the track,” he said.
“If you’re going to cut down their test days in the off-season, or when they’re away from the circuit, you’ve got to give them a little bit more on race weekends.
“It’ll just force everyone to be doing more and more in the simulator, and then once we’re there, there’ll be cries of ‘he’s got a better simulator than me’.”
The 76-year-old has recently been critical of Formula 1 and said the sport needed a shake-up, critiques of the consistency of rule-making.
But he refuted the idea he was referring to the infamous conclusion to the 2021 season, which saw the back of then-race director Michael Masi and the first of Max Verstappen’s two World Championships.
“I think Michael Masi didn’t do anything wrong there,” he said.
“I think he did a fabulous job for the time that he was race director.
“And then, all the experts hiding in their mum’s attic or cellar with their laptops as shields jumped on the bandwagon and attacked him, I think very unfairly. I think he did a really good job.”
Jones clarified he meant with regard to the day-to-day rules enforcement of the sport.
“One day it’s okay to cross the white line, the next day it’s not,” he said.
“One day you get a five-grid-position penalty, the next you get the back of the grid.
“It’s just all inconsistent.”
