Daniel Ricciardo will make a sensational return to front-line Formula 1 racing at the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix, with the Australian set to replace Nyck de Vries at the AlphaTauri team for the rest of the season.
Wow, did not see this coming. I know he hasn’t performed at Yuki’s level yet, but given De Vries’ previous achievements I would assume that he would eventually adapt. Feels like something must have gone sour internally between him and the team to get chucked out before the summer break.
I think you also have to keep in mind the position that de Vries and redbull is in:
- Redbull is looking for a second verstappen-level driver. That’s always been the case not only for redbull, but all tier 1 teams: Their aspirations are championships, not points or even podiums.
- De Vries is a 28 year old rookie. That’s usually the time that drivers retire or lean on their superior experience to make up for their loss in reaction speed and overall pace. The problem is that De Vries has no experience, while being older than Verstappen by close to three years. The fact that he got to race at all is a miracle: He would have to beat Tsunoda every week by quite a margin to become relevant for RedBull. If he doesn’t become relevant for redbull, then why have him at alpha tauri?
Meanwhile they have a young driver in the form of tsunoda which exists in a limbo due to him having nothing to compare against: He could be the fastest driver on the planet in a trash car, or he could be underdelivering without anyone noticing due to the lack of comparison.
This is bad for two reasons:- you don’t know whether tsunoda is an option for redbull
- you have no idea how good alpha tauri is over all, which is doubly bad considering that they want to make major changes to how alpha tauri operates.
On the other hand, you have a perfectly good Ricciardo sitting on his hands that performed really well at silverstone. Realistically, you aren’t going to lose anything from having Riccardo drive the rest of the season compared to having de Vries drive, but you have to potential upside of more context to the quality of tsunoda and the team, which you wouldn’t get otherwise.
In general I’m more suprised that they ever gave De Vries a chance considering his age and the context to his big achievements:
In formula 2 his stiffest competitor was Nicholas Latifi (He won with 266 vs Latifi’s 214 points) in what can be described as a dud year after the majority of now F1 mainstays had already graduated (he also needed 3 years to win F2, which is never a good sign).
If you have ever seen an formula E race, you will notice that it is quite a chaotic crash-fest with very weird rules and other nonsense. Just not crashing and not driving to quickly can get you really far by surviving the carbon-fiber mayhems and fuel-conservation issues.
To put it into perspective, here are the race records in the year that De Vries won formula E [1st, 9th, retired, retired, 1st, 16th, retired, 9th, retired, 13th, 18th, 2nd, 2nd, 22nd, 8th] or, in short if we ignore all DNFs we get a mean position of 9th!In short, there’s a reason why Mercedes never even tried to get him an F1 spot: He’s not a bad driver, but being “not a bad driver” is insufficient for a top team like mercedes and redbull. There’s little incentive to put him into any car, even less so nowadays considering his age.
This is such a good post. Well done sir.
@rullstolsroger @sboulema
lmao right? I was telling everyone don’t trust the news. we’ve entered silly season, only to be linked to an official article 😮I didn’t see De Vries being replaced so soon, but you’ve been living under a Ric if you didn’t hear about the short leash Marko was giving him. His clock started ticking ages ago and he hasn’t shown anything since then.
De Vries doesn’t have any significant achievements when you actually look at the details of the F2 and FE championships he won. He’s just not a good driver.
Ah yes, he won a formula 2 and E championship without being a good driver.
It took him 3 years to win the F2 championship and during the year he won, Latifi was his biggest competition.
The year he won the FE championship, there were tons of issues with the structure of qualifying and the races, and the championship standings don’t reflect the skill of the drivers well. His average finishing position that year was 11th out of 22 drivers and he was in the best team. The following year with a revised system that was much better, he finished 9th while he teammate won the championship.
Wasn’t aware of his background… what made him standout to get the F1 seat? Surely the people making decisions knew all of this
Last year during the Italian GP in Monza, de Vries did an FP session for Aston Martin. That same weekend Albon had a sudden case of appendicitis, taking him out of the GP for urgent medical treatment. Since de Vries was already present, Williams decided to put him in Albons seat. He finished the race 10th, after which multiple teams were considering to give him a seat for the 2023 season.
Edit: it was 9th position.
People seem to forget half the grid took an engine penalty that weekend, and that track was particularly suited to the williams. Wasn’t impressive in the least.
Why even give him a seat in the first place then? The guy got 9th place last year in a Williams.
Checo must be sweating and praying Ricciardo still hasn’t found his groove.
From The Guardian’s article on this:
The Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, said at the British Grand Prix that the team were still committed to Pérez. “He’s the type of guy that just needs an arm around his shoulder and you work with him,” he said. Tellingly, in 2020, Horner said of Albon, then also struggling at Red Bull: “We need to be patient with him and we’ll put an arm around his shoulder and make sure he feels he’s got the support.” Albon was replaced at the end of the season by Pérez.
We need to have an arm around them to just push them off the cliff. So telling.
That is fairly damning.
Lol at that comparison to Albon. Perez has produced some of my all-time favorite drives but there’s no question he’s in a big slump at the moment, and RB is rutheless with their non-Max drivers. I hope Ric does well enough to at least keep a seat somewhere on any team, even if it’s not RB
If you consider Austria as a win or at least podium for Albon and remove all of Perez’s wins because Max had defects or a penalty, he isn’t convincingly better than Albon imho.
This cat has 9 lives. Really hoping he lands on his feet and does well at AT. He truly is one of my favorite drivers both on and off the track. Really wish him the best and hoping he finds a good drive next season.
Unfortunately Riccardo has always had the Problem that he’s inconsistent. He can win races and challenge for the podium. But he can also barely make it to Q2 a few races later.
Not that I blame him for that. It’s just that there are more consistent driver out there.
He’d make a great team mate with perez
Devries was consistent. Not the kind of consistent a team wants though.
I hope ND gets another shot someday but glad to see DR is back behind the wheel.
This is wild, I thought De Vries would at least finish out the season.
I’m very surprised they cut him mid season. Really curious what happened. I heard Horner did not like him so maybe that played a big role.
I guess this means we will get a Daniel Ricciardo focused episode in the next DTS after all :D
What we all really wanted anyway
Considering that Ricciardo’s struggle with McLaren was the bad and weird braking performance and considering that tsunoda has struggled with braking several times in the alpha tauri this may not end good for Ric. It will be good to see him back though.
I mean, the writing was on the wall but I’m still surprised that RIC is actually coming back (after stating that he has no intention to drive for a midfield team).
He’ll be a good indicator whether TSU really improved from last year, or if it’s just DEV being so bad.
no intention to drive for a midfield team
AT is not midfield team :)
But jokes aside, AT is part of RB and it is they way to RB. If RIC shows speed Checko is out if he doesn’t find his mojo back.
AT is not midfield team :)
lmao
He’s right though. They’re a rear-field team.
Yes, thats the joke
Weren’t people crying that Mick got replaced by Hulk after 2 years of not performing, but suddenly it’s okay if a younger driver is replaced after 10 races by an underperforming veteran?
Because it’s two completely different situations. Yes, Mick has the sympathy bonus because of his name BUT: One was a young driver cutted in the age of 23 after coming directly from F2 after winning it in the second season and showing that he’s evolving. The other one is 28, won F2 in his third year (being older than Mick when he was cutted by Haas), didn’t make it to F1 and didn’t really shine in Formula E while getting lucky to win it 2021 with a randomized qualifying format and a shit show farce in Valencia.
I perfectly understand what you’re saying, but one had 40 races to adjust and one only 10, and to have so much difference is reactionist at least. I just don’t get the hype behind Ricciardo in 2023.
At least we agree on that. I don’t get the hype about Riccardo either.
This is typical of Red Bull. No one should be surprised by this. Hell Kyvatt was ahead of Ricciardo in championship points when they demoted him to Toro Rosso, and then he got replaced again in the middle of the season for Max.
Albon had a short stint at Red Bull, they did Pierre Gasly dirty too.
These are all examples of drivers who showed strong races and have gotten podiums.
Nyck never raced well this year.
To be honest, apart from Kvyat, I don’t feel bad for Gasly or Albon. Albon had 30ish races and was woeful and Gasly argued with Newey of all people. Red Bull got to do what they got to do, however, why Ricciardo and not a RB junior?
Albon and Gasly have demonstrated they are good drivers. My point was even good drivers get the boot at cutthroat Redbull.
That move in (I think) Canada where De Vries got himself and Magnussen almost stuck in the run-off area blew my mind. I felt like he was done there.
I’m excited to see Ricciardo back but I’m scared for him!
Curious to see how this fares out. Would be fun to see Iwasa getting the seat in the future.
Both Happy and Sad for DR. He gets a drive but I think the Haas would have been the better car for him to shine in. The AT could very well be the nail in the coffin of his F1 career.
I think AT could prove hes worthy of an RB seat. With Alex showing his worth at Williams there could be a few contenders though.
I just don’t see it happening at AT. The car is a backmarker and Yuki is not exactly a top tier benchmark. Put DR in that Williams and we might have a better chance to see something special from him.
Sincerely hope to be wrong though!
No way that will ever happen. Red bull would rather wait to grab a younger star like Leclerc or Norris. This is just a convenient way to put more pressure on Perez.
I don’t think more pressure on Perez will actually produce results. If they want constructor points Red Bull might want to consider taking the bananas risk of producing a car that both their drivers can drive at full tilt.
Now what if Perez keeps shitting the bed and Ricciardo makes the AT look better than Yuki and Nick have…
de Vries has become debris very quickly eh?
People say what about the car, what about the mental state, what about the team… And I say I’m just damn happy to see the honey badger get another shot. Give them hell Danny!
Nyck getting the Latifi treatment…will be 21 out of 20 drivers.
Ironic, wasn’t de vries the one to push him to 21 after scoring 9th? And now de vries has also been given the boot.
True that!
The goal Ric must have been given would be beat Checo in quali to get his position next year. With perez being demoted to AT.
Would Checo have a shot at an AT seat? If they choose someone else for the second RB seat are there any FP2 drivers waiting in the wings?
Maybe for sponsorship money
