Daniel Ricciardo started the season with an eye on returning to Red Bull. Six Grands Prix later, he has had to adjust his sights. It is the fine line that drivers in Formula 1 tread between success and failure.
“Yes, I haven’t had a great start to the season, but I’m not a rookie trying to establish myself in the sport and prove something,” he said. “I have a track record and proof I can do it.” He said his team, Visa Cash App RB, “believes this and knows I can.”
It has been a continuation of the roller-coaster ride from last season when Ricciardo returned to Formula 1 eight months after McLaren released him with a season remaining on a three-year contract. After winning seven Grands Prix with Red Bull from 2014 to 2018, he rejoined the team as the third driver after leaving McLaren. Then in July, he replaced Nyck de Vries at Red Bull’s sister team, AlphaTauri.
In the Dutch Grand Prix last year, his third race with AlphaTauri, Ricciardo broke his left hand in multiple places in a crash during a practice session. He missed the next four races, but drove in the final five. He scored the team’s best result of the season in Mexico City, where he was seventh.
“The big picture is that I would love to work my way back up to the top team,” he said in an interview in August. After the first four races of this year, Christian Horner, the Red Bull team principal, said Ricciardo “by his own admittance would feel he has underperformed this year.”
Rather than a return to Red Bull for 2025, Horner was asked if Liam Lawson, the reserve driver, could replace Ricciardo this season. Lawson drove for Ricciardo last year when he was injured.
“I think it’s pretty much in Daniel’s hands,” Horner said. “He needs to show the kind of head-turning form to make not only ourselves, but potentially to make others, take notice.”
At the fifth race in China this year, a change of chassis on Ricciardo’s car helped him qualify above Yuki Tsunoda, his teammate, for the first time.
Ricciardo said the team had found nothing wrong with the previous chassis. “It’s just to clear my mind and have it,” he said. “I’m sure deep down it will help in one way, shape or form.”
After finishing 11th in the sprint, Lance Stroll of Aston Martin and Ricciardo crashed during the Grand Prix. The damage to his car forced him to retire after 33 laps.
Laurent Mekies, the Visa Cash App RB team principal, said he was happy with the progress Ricciardo had made.
“We have been saying for quite a few races that he was getting more and more comfortable with the car, and it proved to be the case in China,” he said in an interview. “I’m sure it’s not the last step forward that we will make with him.”
“It was clear that Daniel was uncomfortable with some of the characteristics of the car since the very beginning,” he added. “Some of it we are trying to address in the short term, some of it we are going to address a bit later in the season.”
At the last race, in Miami, Ricciardo finished fourth in the sprint, scoring five points, his first points of the season. He said the result “felt like a statement” after the first few races in which “everything that could have gone wrong kind of felt like it went wrong.”
“It’s nice to still have that dog in me,” he said. “A lot of people like to talk, so it’s nice to subtly show them a couple of middle fingers.”
The tumult for Ricciardo continued a few hours later when he qualified 18th for the Grand Prix. A three-place grid penalty for an infringement in China had him start last. He finished 15th.
“Just as quickly as you can have a good race, you can have a bad race,” he said. “At this level you have to be perfect, and when you are, things can look pretty spectacular. I’ll definitely hold onto those, still work on a few flaws, and keep this train going.”