Daniel Ricciardo would have been targeting a return to Red Bull for the 2025 season. Christian Horner gave him the chance to push the reset button on his F1 career at junior team RB.
Ricciardo initially left Red Bull at the end of the 2018 season, five years after graduating from what was then Toro Rosso. He felt he had a better chance of achieving his ambitions elsewhere as Max Verstappen became an increasingly dominant presence in the garage.
He gambled on French giants Renault, but they couldn’t mount a concerted assault on the front-running teams. His next team McLaren were more competitive, but Ricciardo wasn’t able to match Lando Norris.
The Australian’s struggles relative to his teammate saw him dropped for compatriot Oscar Piastri at the end of the 2022 season. It briefly looked as if his F1 career might be over until he received a call from Horner when Red Bull decided to axe Nyck de Vries midway through 2023.
Ricciardo looked like a ‘dead-cert’ to make a Red Bull comeback if he delivered this season. But while Yuki Tsunoda has extracted the full potential of the car by bagging 19 points, the 34-year-old has only managed five.
RB confirmed ahead of qualifying at the Canadian Grand Prix that Tsunoda would stay with the team for 2025. But that will only tighten the microscope on Ricciardo, who’s once again fighting for his future.
Christian Horner says Jacques Villeneuve ‘motivated’ Daniel Ricciardo
1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve has been intensely critical of Ricciardo in Montreal. Speaking on the F1 Show, he questioned why the eight-time race-winner was ‘still in F1’.
Villeneuve was also far from impressed after he adopted a special maple syrup-inspired helmet design for the race weekend. He called for Ricciardo to focus more on closing the gap to his teammate.
Speaking to Villeneuve and the rest of the Sky Sports F1 panel before qualifying, Red Bull team principal Horner shared the RB driver’s reaction to the viral comments. He insists they’ve only had the effect of firing Ricciardo up.
However, Horner stressed that Ricciardo was under no illusions about the need to improve. Reserve driver Liam Lawson is pushing for a 2025 seat in the background.
“He’s had an up-and-down start to the year,” he said. “I think you gave him a bit of a roasting yesterday. He knows he’s got to deliver. You obviously motivated him because he looked in good form this morning.”
Could Ricciardo walk away from F1?
Ricciardo’s overriding ambition right now will be to return to Red Bull. Given that he was also in this position more than a decade ago, you can see why Peter Windsor called his voluntary exit a ‘terrible’ mistake.
But ahead of this weekend’s race, the team confirmed that Sergio Perez had signed a new two-year contract. If Verstappen stays, that could lock Ricciardo out of a drive with the world champions until 2027, by which point he’ll be 37 years old.
A report this week claimed that the Perez announcement ‘drew into question Ricciardo’s desire to remain on the grid’. Much will depend on his appetite to scrap for the lower end of the top 10 at RB, having stood on the podium 32 times in his career.
With each race that passes, it’s looking more and more like his best days are behind him. And given that Red Bull have built their identity on exhibiting young talent like Verstappen, Sebastian Vettel, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon and, at one point, Ricciardo himself, they may ultimately decide that it’s Lawson’s turn.
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