Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko has defended the team over criticism of its handling of Daniel Ricciardo’s dismissal last week.
Four days after Ricciardo’s tearful departure following the Singapore Grand Prix, his RB team announced he had been replaced by Liam Lawson with immediate effect.
During the event, RB team principal Laurent Mekies said the team would evaluate their drivers’ performance after the race weekend. However Ricciardo’s demeanour after the race indicated he already knew his fate, and Lawson revealed he was told the team’s plan two weeks earlier.
Marko defended Red Bull’s handling of Ricciardo’s exit, saying the announcement of his departure was postponed until after the race “for compelling reasons related to commercial agreements.”
Ricciardo “was informed in good time,” Marko added, “and – to put it in his own words – he is at peace with himself.”
Marko justified the team’s decision to drop Ricciardo, saying he was given the chance to demonstrate he was quick enough to replace Sergio Perez at Red Bull, but his performances were not up to scratch.
“He was given a second chance that no one else would have given him,” Marko told the Red Bull-owned publication SpeedWeek. “And that was under the premise that a return to Red Bull Racing was possible if he performed well enough.”
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Ricciardo returned to F1 with RB last year, when it was known as AlphaTauri, but was forced to miss five races after sustaining a wrist injury. Although he was dropped before the end of his first full season, Marko said his time at the team was “always intended as a stopover.”
“But the necessary performance only came twice, once with a fourth place in the Miami sprint [race] this year and last year in Mexico,” he said. “Otherwise that speed was not there, and the consistency was not there either.
“The whole performance that would have justified a promotion to Red Bull Racing was missing. But that was the whole point of the whole thing.”
Marko said the team did not understand why Ricciardo was not at the same level today as he was in 2018, when he left Red Bull.
“If we knew why the performance was not as good as it should be, we would have done everything we could to change that,” he said. “But the same killer instinct was simply no longer evident. He was famous for his uncompromising overtaking and braking at the last point. But that was no…
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