Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula 1 career, which spanned 15 seasons and included eight grand prix victories, deserved a more fitting end that the one which transpired in Singapore.
But his RB team has now indicated he won’t return to the cockpit for the next race. Making the circumstances all the more poignant, F1 is heading to Austin next, a venue the charming and enormously popular driver has developed a deep affinity for.
Ricciardo arrived in Singapore facing fresh questions over his future. To begin with, RB admitted to no more than their intention to review the performance of their drivers following this weekend’s race.
But following the grand prix came an unmistakeable change of tone. RB team principal Laurent Mekies claimed in the team’s press release that they allowed Ricciardo to make an extra pit stop and push to set the fastest lap because “this may have been Daniel’s last race.”
Many were sceptical about this version of events, not least McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown. He pointed out that, while Ricciardo stood to gain nothing from the fastest lap, it deprived race winner Lando Norris of a vital bonus point in his pursuit of Max Verstappen.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, however, was grateful for the efforts of their second team’s driver. Of course neither Red Bull nor RB admitted any connection between the two.
But whatever the true motivation behind Ricciardo’s fastest lap bid, it produced a moment rich in symbolism. Horner and Brown are both former employers of Ricciardo, and what successes might they have enjoyed together had his career taken a different course?
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Ricciardo lingered in the cockpit of his RB 01 after taking the chequered flag, sitting quietly in the darkness before emerging to face the inevitable questions. Including, once again, the most inevitable of them all: Did he make a mistake by leaving Red Bull six years earlier?
“At the time, obviously in my head everything made sense,” he told Nico Rosberg, the latest person to ask him, on Sky. “But was it the best decision of my career? Of course you could argue no, it wasn’t.
“I’m okay with that. It’s one of those ones, also, there’s no guarantee that if I stayed I would have done amazing and won this and that. So you never know. But of course I’m not going to stand here and say that was the…
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