Daniel Ricciardo lost his Formula 1 drive for the second time midway through the 2024 season. Ricciardo completed 18 races with RB before the bosses at Red Bull decided to draft in Liam Lawson.
Ricciardo wasn’t dropped for performance reasons alone. While he clearly failed to meet expectations in 2024, he wasn’t as far off the pace as most other drivers sacked in-season.
Yuki Tsunoda was beating him, but the margins were respectable – 22-12 on points, 12-6 in qualifying. Ricciardo actually finished ahead in eight of the 14 Grands Prix both drivers completed.
The Australian also showed occasional flashes of the talent that earned him eight victories earlier in his career. His P4 in the Miami GP Sprint remained RB’s highest finish of the campaign, and he also qualified fifth in Canada.
The problem is that Ricciardo turned 35 in July, and RB is supposed to be a junior team. If he was no longer good enough to merit a Red Bull promotion – and few would argue that case – then there was little sense in keeping him around.
Christian Horner and Helmut Marko wanted to give Lawson a chance to audition for the 2025 seat alongside Max Verstappen. After McLaren paid Ricciardo £23.6m to break his contract in 2022, he once again dropped off the grid in ignominious circumstances.
Daniel Ricciardo considers his F1 career ‘over’ after Red Bull released him
Many F1 fans were unhappy with Red Bull because they didn’t afford Ricciardo a recognised farewell. It was an open secret in the Singapore GP paddock that he wouldn’t return for Austin, but he couldn’t mark it officially.
But there seems to be little prospect of the veteran driver returning to make it right. According to ESPN, ‘sources close’ to Ricciardo say he considers his F1 career ‘over’.
That means he has ‘no interest’ in joining Cadillac, who will enter the sport as the 11th team in 2026. The luxury American brand hadn’t made contact regardless.
Earlier this week, Ricciardo’s camp downplayed Toyota ‘rumours’ after their technical deal with Haas. It’s likely that he would have represented them in another capacity, but it would inevitably have led to F1 comeback chatter.
The ‘very strange’ issue Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo both faced in F1
Ricciardo rejected a marketing role at Red Bull as Horner tried to keep him around. As one of the most popular drivers in F1, his value extended beyond racing.
It seems he has no desire to be in the paddock right now after his dream was shattered. He may yet return in a team management or media capacity, but it could take years before he discovers that appetite.
Between the start of 2014 and the end of 2020, he was almost universally regarded as one of F1’s elite talents. Fernando Alonso called Ricciardo the best F1 driver in 2016, and he was still at the top of his game when he joined Renault, even if they didn’t deliver a contending car.
It was when he joined McLaren that his decline set in. Nico Rosberg says Ricciardo had the same problem as Sebastian Vettel, his former teammate, in that they suffered a ‘very strange’ drop-off against emerging young guns (Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc).
