The Formula 1 ‘silly season’ revved up recently with the whole Oscar Piastri-Alpine controversy. Earlier this month Alpine announced that Piastri – the team’s talented reserve driver – would take over Fernando Alonso’s seat for the upcoming season.
However, the 21-year-old denied that he would drive for Alpine in 2023. He has since been strongly linked to a move to McLaren, where he would most likely replace fellow Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who has been having a disappointing season.
And now, there is speculation that Ricciardo could leave Formula 1 entirely at the end of the season with McLaren set to terminate his contract.
To think that Ricciardo, who was once tipped to be a potential world champion, would be on the brink of exiting the sport due to awful form seemed unfathomable just a few years ago.
But as his Formula 1 2022 results have shown, the 33-year-old has declined to the point where it’s hard to see why any team would continue to take a chance on him.
So just how did it get to this point? Read on below as SBOTOP recounts the rise and fall of Daniel Ricciardo.
Rising star at Red Bull
Ricciardo got his start in Formula 1 in 2011 with Red Bull Racing. He served as Toro Rosso’s test and reserve driver at the start of the season before being contracted to Hispania Racing Team midway through the campaign.
Ricciardo then switched to Toro Rosso the following year and spent the next two seasons as a back marker. The Aussie’s results weren’t particularly impressive, but Red Bull nonetheless took a chance on him as they picked him to replace fellow Aussie Mark Webber as world champion Sebastian Vettel’s team-mate.
And Ricciardo certainly made the most of his tremendous opportunity to drive a top-tier car. He won three races that year – in Canada, Hungary, and Belgium – and to the surprise of many, finished third in the drivers’ standings, 71 points ahead of his world champion team-mate.
Vettel left for Ferrari the following season, leaving Ricciardo as Red Bull’s No 1 driver. After disappointing in 2015, Ricciardo bounced back the following year as he again finished third in the title race behind the two Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.
Shock Red Bull exit and mediocre form
After two third-place finishes in three years, it seemed like a matter of time before Ricciardo would reach the top of the Formula 1 mountain. But the next two seasons were quite a bit underwhelming for the Aussie, who finished fifth and sixth, respectively. And in 2018 he was outperformed by his precocious young team-mate, future world champion Max Verstappen, although Red Bull’s reliability issues certainly played a part in his disappointing results.
The following season, Ricciardo made the shock switch to Renault, which was an inferior team that was far from championship contention. Many saw that move as a step down in Ricciardo’s career, and they would be proven correct. Ricciardo spent two mostly disappointing seasons with Renault as he made just two podiums and no wins.
But despite those two seasons in the doldrums, the shine had not completely worn off Ricciardo’s reputation. He was still being linked with top teams, most notably Ferrari. He was being touted as a contender to replace Vettel in 2020.
However, that fabled Ferrari move did not come to fruition, with the Scuderia instead selecting Carlos Sainz. Ricciardo then moved on to McLaren, where he has spent the last couple of seasons.
Decline continues and demise coming
While Ricciardo’s first season with McLaren in 2021 saw him win at Monza – his first victory since his last Red Bull season in 2018 – it was again a mostly disappointing campaign. He finished eighth in the drivers’ standings, some distance behind team-mate Lando Norris, who finished on the podium three more times.
And the 2022 season has been even worse for the Aussie, who is once again being significantly outperformed by Norris and has claimed just 19 points, 12th in the standings. At this point, Ricciardo’s Formula 1 2022 odds of claiming another win are extremely remote.
With that sort of form, it’s no surprise why McLaren feel the time is right to move on from the 33-year-old, whose best days seem to be well behind him.
In hindsight, Ricciardo’s questionable move to leave Red Bull looks so much worse as his career has been on a downward trajectory ever since. Although, there’s no way to know if this steady decline would’ve happened regardless of whether he had stayed or not. As we’ve seen with the retiring Sebastian Vettel, even the very best drivers can suddenly go downhill and never quite get back up.
Still, it’s sad to see a driver of Daniel Ricciardo’s talent and promise suffering this sort of precipitous drop. With several years’ worth of subpar performances, there’s no doubt that his time as a title contender has long since passed, and his days as a Formula 1 driver could very well be numbered.
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