After the recent Singapore Grand Prix, Red Bull announced that reserve driver Liam Lawson would replace Daniel Ricciardo for the remaining six races of the season.
This marks the end of Daniel Ricciardo’s 13-year Formula 1 career, which began in 2011 with the HRT Team. Unfortunately, the Australian was consistently outperformed by his teammate Yuki Tsunoda for most of the season.
Aside from a few positive performances in Miami and Canada, Daniel Ricciardo was unable to achieve consistent results. As pointed out by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, it was Daniel Ricciardo’s “lack of consistency” that led to the decision to replace him. However, Christian Horner managed to buy him more time after the Spanish Grand Prix to try to improve.
“He started the season in a difficult way, and then Miami was a weekend of two halves,” Christian Horner said during his recent interview for the F1 Nation podcast. “Friday and Saturday morning were fantastic; he looked like the old Daniel, defending against the Ferraris and overtaking the car. But then Saturday afternoon and Sunday were disastrous.”
Daniel Ricciardo’s goal was to return to racing for Red Bull, but his form was never good enough to replace Sergio Perez.
Although Sergio Perez has also struggled this season, Daniel Ricciardo could not perform consistently enough to justify a driver swap. “I did my best to give him more time in the car to prove his worth, otherwise he would have been out of the car after Barcelona,” Christian Horner revealed.
“The problem is that both of them had form issues at different times. Checo started the season very well, very strong, and Daniel was struggling. And then, of course, as Checo’s form dipped, Daniel found a bit of form, but it was never convincing enough to say, ‘Okay, you know, we should swap the two drivers.’” – he concluded.
Helmut Marko also recently weighed in on the reasons for Daniel Ricciardo’s dismissal. In this article, you can read the comments of the Red Bull team’s top advisor.
Leave a Reply