Daniel Ricciardo is a very lucky man.
Just 12 months ago there was serious doubt over whether we’d see Ricciardo in Formula 1 again.
The ever-affable Aussie was burnt out. His two torrid years at McLaren had left him badly bruised, and his sacking with a year still to run on his contract had damaged his self-esteem.
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There were seats available to him, but they’d have had him racing at the back of the pack. Uncertain whether he was motivated to continue, he chose instead to risk a year out of the sport to find himself.
It might prove to be the best decision he’s ever made.
The first move of his gap year was to reunite with Red Bull Racing as a reserve driver. Milton Keynes gave him access to the simulator, the crucial tool with which he began to unpick the unnatural driving habits he’d developed attempting to tame his two McLaren cars.
And then came the test.
It was early last July when Ricciardo donned Red Bull Racing overalls in a private tyre evaluation that doubled as an audition. He spun the car early but didn’t put a foot wrong from there. The lap time he ended up with would have been fast enough to qualify on the front row for the British Grand Prix the weekend before.
The motivation was back. The light had returned to his eyes. His self-esteem was boosted.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Ricciardo had undertaken the preparation. The opportunity followed when AlphaTauri lost faith in rookie Nyck de Vries after 10 rounds.
For the second time in his life Ricciardo got the call-up to race for Faenza.
Lucky.
He never really hit his stride thanks to a broken hand limiting him to seven races, but there were enough glimpses of the old Daniel to warrant a full season behind the wheel at the rebranded RB team in 2024.
Now the hard part starts.
ONE YEAR TO MAKE IT OR BREAK
Ricciardo isn’t trying to hold his seat at RB. His miraculous half-season comeback last year is the first step of a far more audacious plan to arrive back at the title-winning Red Bull Racing team in the place of Sergio Pérez.
To get there he’ll need some more of that luck.
“I’ve had the preparation,” he told the F1 website ahead of the season. “I got a bit of a head start last year, so I know the team well.
“Come Bahrain there’s nothing left on the table. There’s nothing we’re still trying to figure this out.
“From a preparation point of view there are no more questions.”
It’s a markedly different approach compared to this time last year, when Ricciardo was determined to rediscover his mojo through a gap year off the grid.
It took only half a season, but those five months off worked wonders. Still energised, the 34-year-old has trained hard during the off-season. The longest break from his regimen was three days, and even then he remained active.
“I mentally stayed in it the whole time, so getting back in the car won’t feel like I haven’t driven in a few months,” he said.
He’ll need all the preparation he can get, because measuring himself against Yuki Tsunoda will be no easy task.
Tsunoda, 11 years Ricciardo’s junior, is perennially underrated. Raw speed was the foundation of his rapid promotion to Formula 1 after a single season of F2, and it remains his greatest strength. His ability to coax single-lap performance from the car has grown only stronger the longer he’s been with the team — and the more he’s been challenged by external arrivals.
The Japanese driver’s only weakness is consistency, and it’s for this reason Red Bull Racing has never considered him seriously as a potential partner for Verstappen. But even this aspect of his game was much improved last year, and there’s every chance Tsunoda will take another step forward again in 2024.
But the fact Tsunoda has yet to convince RBR makes Ricciardo’s mission only more pressing.
A minor victory — or worse, no clear result — would be a blow to perceptions of the Aussie’s potential. Total victory will be required to force the issue.
“Ricciardo has to show that he has Tsunoda clearly under control,” Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko told Servus TV. “Then he could be a candidate.”
Tsunoda will know this too. His career could be on the line every bit as much as Ricciardo’s is.
Young gun Liam Lawson impressed standing in for Ricciardo last season. He’s without a seat this year with what appeared to be a clear intention from Red Bull to get him into one of its cars by 2025 at the latest rather than lose him to a rival.
A heavy defeat would leave Tsunoda vulnerable to replacement. It could be a zero-sum season.
PÉREZ STILL HAS A ROLE TO PLAY
But preparation will only deliver for Ricciardo if he gets the opportunity. Unfortunately for him, it’s not entirely within his hands.
Sergio Pérez is incumbent at Red Bull Racing, and a contract extension is within his grasp.
Pérez at his best is exactly the driver the team needs. Think the Pérez in Abu Dhabi 2021, whose defensive tactics ahead of Lewis Hamilton were integral to keeping the Briton within Verstappen’s safety car window, which ultimately delivered the Dutchman the championship.
Victories in Saudia Arabia and Azerbaijan were also excellent, on both occasions matching Verstappen for pace. His win in Singapore in 2022 was a pressure-absorbing masterclass.
But he’s tailed off in each of the last two seasons, drastically so in 2023. In the most dominant car in F1 history he for long stretches looked unlikely to secure second in the standings. He eventually did so, but he scored fewer points than he managed 12 months earlier.
If the field is to home in on Red Bull Racing this year — even if only a little bit — an underperforming Pérez could put the constructors championship and a one-two in the drivers title in jeopardy.
“Obviously people are aware of the challenge that I’m facing,” Pérez said at the launch of the RB20. “It’s a massive challenge. Max is a driver that really takes the maximum out of you, so it’s a great challenge and one I’m looking forward to massively.
“If we are performing well on track, there will be plenty of opportunities out there. That’s my main target and my main motivation for this year — to really perform well.”
Marko has suggested Pérez will have until August before he makes a call on contract offers for 2025, giving him a 14-race run to mount his argument.
But the early signs haven’t been strong.
Pre-season testing is difficult to read at the best of times, and comparing teammates can be treacherous given they never share the track at the same time, but early analysis in particular of long-run pace suggests the gulf between Pérez and Verstappen remains as large as ever.
If Red Bull Racing has developed another car that only Verstappen can drive, it will leave Pérez on the ropes very early.
RB AIMS FOR MORE
If Ricciardo is to have the best opportunity to convince as Pérez’s replacement, he’ll need to hope RB takes a step forward in both competitiveness and consistency lest he become lost in the fog of the back of the pack.
There’s been much hype around the newly rebranded RB, mostly because its repositioning has involved forging a much closer technical relationship with Red Bull Racing.
The highest profile change has been the establishment of a design office in Milton Keynes on the Red Bull Racing campus.
Fears among rivals that this year’s car would essentially be last year’s title-winning RB19 have proved unfounded. There are clear differences between the two machines, and the VCARB-01 didn’t trouble the top of the testing time sheets.
But it does appear to have made strong progress.
“Q3, points — that has to be our target,” Daniel Ricciardo said during testing. “Obviously that puts us front of the midfield. If we’re not there next week, we certainly want to be there soon.”
AlphaTauri scored points just eight times last year. If RB were to score regularly this season, it would find itself in the battle for fifth in the constructors standings. It’s never finished higher than sixth.
Raw pace estimates after testing ranks RB fifth and in competition with Aston Martin but well ahead of Alpine, Sauber, Williams and Haas — notwithstanding making definitive statements based on pre-season data is a fraught exercise.
Educated guesses based on trackside observation have variously put it on the tail end of the frontrunning pack or in the no-man’s land ahead of the midfield and backmarkers, similar to Alpine’s position last year.
“The team has always taken itself seriously, but this is another step up now,” Ricciardo told the F1 website. “It’s no longer just a platform for Red Bull Racing. It’s time for us to fight at the front of the midfield.
“There’s something about the team. The mindset’s a little bit different. Kind of like a point to prove.”
The opportunity to regularly fight for top-10 places on the grid and score points would be a meaningful stage on which Ricciardo could sell himself as a frontrunning driver.
It’s the sort of zone in which the sport tends to provide one or two genuine giant-killing performance per season, especially in a campaign as long as this.
IT’S A CHAPTER RICCIARDO CAN OWN
Ricciardo will also have the chance to own that progress. His experience was highly sought after by the team to aid its push up the order.
At RB he has the opportunity to lead from the cockpit in a way he was expected to do at McLaren.
“It’s something I also enjoyed,” he told the F1 website. “I saw it coming into the team last season.
“Naturally with my experience I’m going to give a tonne of feedback and try to help not only myself but of course the team move forward.
“I could see how receptive and engaged everyone was and how they appreciated the experience [from] the other teams I’ve worked with … and how I was able to try and just maybe get them thinking in other ways or maybe get them out of the circle they’re in.
“It’s like a fresh set of eyes. But it also then encouraged me to find more — ‘Okay, they’re listening and this is working, so let’s keep working and pushing everyone’.
“You could tell there was a boost, and I think once we saw it translate to lap time and I was happier in the car, then everyone’s like, ‘Okay, we’re onto something let’s keep digging’.”
The environment, in other words, in conducive to driver and team getting the best out of each other.
Ricciardo is undertaking the preparation. He has the opportunity in the Red Bull system and with an RB team he can mould around himself.
“My will is as high as it’s been in a long time, and I think I’ll just put that to good use. Then the results will hopefully show,” he said.
The only question is: does he feel lucky?