Two years ago Daniel Ricciardo’s stock was sitting at its highest level since he had departed Red Bull at the end of the 2018 season.
Fresh from securing his first podium with Renault at the Nurburgring, Ricciardo lay an unexpectedly strong fourth in the drivers’ championship. Only the two Mercedes drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, plus his former Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen lay ahead of him in the standings.
Having already locked down Ricciardo to a three year contract months prior, McLaren’s Zak Brown and Andreas Seidl would likely have felt thrilled about the future for the team. With Lando Norris showing promising signs of development in his second season, the arrival of an experienced, race-winning veteran like Ricciardo to replace the departing Carlos Sainz Jnr felt in many ways like the best possible solution. And when McLaren ended the season in third place, it appeared the best was yet to come for the Woking team.
Fast-forward to October 2022 and now Ricciardo looks almost certain to be off the grid next season, despite being in no way ready for his Formula 1 career to come to an end.
In just over a year and a half with Ricciardo in their team, McLaren have felt one of the strongest examples of buyer’s remorse any F1 team has ever experienced. Despite the best efforts of both team and driver, and a mutual desire for the partnership to work, consistently underwhelming performances left McLaren with no choice but to cut their losses – and Ricciardo’s contract, which they are terminating a year early. But while McLaren have replacement Oscar Piastri lined up, Ricciardo is currently without a seat for 2023.
The only two teams left to confirm their driver line-ups for next season are Haas and Williams – both teams sitting at wrong end of the constructors’ championship table in joint-eighth and 10th places, respectively. While the doors to a place on the grid next season haven’t fully shut to Ricciardo, he clearly has little appetite to sign with either the two teams who are among the smallest on the grid.
“If he’s interested in us, he’s not shy to call me up. I am not going to chase him down,” Haas team principal Guenther Steiner told the Associated Press yesterday.
By his own admission, Ricciardo is setting his sights not on next year, but on 2024. “I think the reality is now I won’t be on the grid in 2023,” he admitted at Suzuka. “It’s now just trying…
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