Daniel Ricciardo says he’s satisfied to have secured a year-long extension with the backmarker AlphaTauri team after a tumultuous middle chapter of his career.
The contract keeps him in the frame to secure a promotion to Red Bull Racing in 2025, when Sergio Pérez’s contract will have expired.
Ricciardo left RBR at the end of 2018 to forge a career independent of the energy drinks brand, first joining Renault before switching to McLaren just two seasons later on what was billed as a blockbuster three-year contract to take the British team back to the top.
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But rather than take his already sky-high stocks to the moon, Ricciardo’s reputation took a battering. Unable to gel with the car, he was comprehensively beaten by junior teammate Lando Norris and dropped by the team with a year still to run on his contract.
His career has now come full circle, re-signing with Red Bull Racing as a reserve driver at the start of the year and picking up Nyck de Vries’s AlphaTauri drive in July.
Despite his circuitous resume, Ricciardo insists he has no regrets about his career choices.
“I think it’s probably at that age now as well where I don’t really look back on anything with regret,” he said after filming a campaign video for Tourism Western Australia. “I think they’re not necessarily losses, they’re lessons learnt.
“Of course I would love to have won more in my career, but then maybe winning would have got boring and maybe I would have not appreciated it as much or whatever.
“I wouldn‘t change it. As long as I can continue to grow and become better from experience, then I’m pretty content.”
The 34-year-old’s return to the grid followed months of soul-searching prompted by the breakdown of his McLaren deal.
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He admitted late last year that the demoralising end to his time at Woking had him questioning whether he had the desire to continue in Formula 1, with his planned sabbatical as a reserve driver designed to give him the space he needed to understand what he wanted from the rest of his career.
“This time of year ago I was honestly unsure about really just what I wanted,” he said. “My whole life has really been racing, and I’ve put everything into it, so you‘re not really sure when that time is going to come where, ‘Oh, maybe is it time for change?’.
“I was definitely questioning, ‘Oh, am I going to have those feelings that this is it?’.
“The first part of this year I learnt a lot about myself and what I want and how I want to go about my career moving forward. It really reignited me and gave me that second wind that I was hoping for but I wasn‘t forcing.
“So now that I’ve got that and have something confirmed for next year, I‘m a very, very hungry young man again.
“I’m very excited to be with a contract on the grid for next year.”
Ricciardo is currently sidelined with a hand injury sustained in a crash during practice for the Dutch Grand Prix in August.
His intention was to return to the cockpit at next weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix, but his new deal has reduced the urgency for him to get back behind the wheel to justify his place on the grid.
The United States Grand Prix on 22 October is firming as his most likely return date, giving him a full eight weeks out of the car from the date of the breakage.
“His recuperation is going well, but he’s fixed in the seat for next year. Does he need to rush a hasty return for Qatar?” Red Bull Racing principal Christian Horner told Sky Sports. “It might be better to use that time in preparation for Austin.
“He’ll drive the simulator next week and then we’ll make some decisions based on that.”
The delayed return will give Liam Lawson a fifth grand prix with which to stake his claim for a promotion to a full-time seat sooner rather than later — though with Yuki Tsunoda re-signed alongside Ricciardo, the Kiwi will likely have to wait until 2025 to get his chance.