When Daniel Ricciardo rejoined the F1 grid mid-way through the season last year, the multiple grand prix winner would have clearly hoped that 2024 would be his year to make his claim to return to Red Bull’s senior team.
But after a full season of racing alongside the much younger Yuki Tsunoda, has the veteran really separated himself from his team mate to be the clear superior option to the endlessly struggling Sergio Perez?
From the basis of the first 14 rounds of the championship, it’s difficult to make that case.
With so much experience and having been responsible for some of the most impressive and memorable grand prix wins of the last decade, it’s hard not to have expected more from Ricciardo than he has shown over the season to date.
His start of the season was especially challenging, suffering a rare late-race spin in Jeddah and failing to progress from Q1 in his home grand prix in Melbourne after falling foul of track limits on his final push lap. While he had a respectable performance in the race to finish 12th, he was several spots behind his team mate in the points.
Daniel Ricciardo
| Best | Worst | |
|---|---|---|
| GP start | 9 (x2) | 18 (x2) |
| GP finish | 8 | 16 |
| Points | 12 | |
Monaco was also a difficult weekend for a driver who can boast being a Monte Carlo winner. Ricciardo qualified five places below Tsunoda, then lost a place off the start line during both grid starts, eventually finishing 12th while Tsunoda again picked up points.
After getting his wishes in China with a new chassis after suggesting there was likely something about his existing one that was leading to difficulties, Ricciardo had a solid run in Shanghai and Miami, only for that momentum to seemingly abandon him once again. He put in his best weekend’s work of the season so far in Canada, qualifying a very strong fifth on the grid and taking four points in eighth, but from that moment on there has not really been much to separate Ricciardo from his team mate. Something you would not expect from a driver with as illustrious a history as Ricciardo.
Although there is still time for Ricciardo to make his case to be in that Red Bull instead of Perez over the second half of the season, he needs to put daylight between him and Tsunoda over this final part of the year. But to do that, he’ll first have to make up the points deficit between him and Tsunoda.
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Formula 1
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