Daniel Ricciardo might well be taking part in his final Formula One race at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Ricciardo, whose McLaren contract has been cut short one year early, is set to be Red Bull’s third driver next year, meaning he will not be racing in Formula One for the first time since mid-2011. It’s quite a remarkable situation for one of F1’s top talents to find himself in, and it is hard to see a clear route back to the grid.
How did it come to this? ESPN has spoken to numerous sources in the paddock with knowledge of Ricciardo’s moves through the years to look at why things played out the way they did — and why dream moves to Mercedes and Ferrari just never materialised for the Australian.
Leaving Red Bull
Ricciardo’s decision to leave Red Bull in 2018 is well-known now, and many consider it to have been a big mistake, with the benefit of hindsight. When looking at why Ricciardo decided to leave, several key moments stand out.
The first happened 10 months before he put his signature at the bottom of a Renault contract, in October 2017, when Red Bull signed Max Verstappen to a big contract extension. It turned Verstappen’s two-year deal to 2019 into a three-year deal to 2020 and made Verstappen, who had just turned 20 and claimed his second F1 win, the higher paid of the team’s two drivers. It was a huge statement and ended speculation of Verstappen leaving for Mercedes.
The deal caught Ricciardo by surprise and felt like a bit of a slap in the face. While Ricciardo has always appeared to be on good terms with Verstappen on a personal level, it is clear this deal started the feeling that the team was mobilising around his young Dutch teammate. Several things would happen in 2018 that would reinforce that feeling.
Entering 2018, Ricciardo was in a contract year. He had signed a two-year extension in 2016 and the consensus in the paddock was he would remain at Red Bull for another contract cycle at least, unless Mercedes or Ferrari were seriously interested in his services.
The second major moment, which appears to have been a catalyst for what followed, is a comment made by Helmut Marko, the head of Red Bull’s driver programme and a key supporter of Verstappen behind the scenes, shortly before the Monaco Grand Prix. During contract negotiations with Ricciardo’s agent at the time, Glenn Beavis, Marko said, off the cuff: “I want to win the title with Daniel in 2018, and then win it with Max in 2019 and 2020.”
Beavis, in the middle of negotiating a deal for…
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