Horner reveals Marko wanted to sack Ricciardo months ago

Christian Horner has revealed that Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko wanted to sack Daniel Ricciardo after the Spanish Grand Prix in June. 

Following the recent Singapore GP, it was announced by RB that Red Bull reserve driver Liam Lawson will take Ricciardo's seat for the remaining six races of the season. 

It brings an almost certain end to Ricciardo's 13-year F1 career, which started in 2011 at HRT. Unfortunately, the Australian has been outperformed by Yuki Tsunoda for the majority of the season. 

Except for a positive performance in the Miami sprint race and the Canadian Grand Prix, Ricciardo has failed to deliver consistently good results. 

As highlighted by Red Bull team principal Horner, it was "the lack of consistency" which resulted in action being taken - although it could have been far sooner only for him to have the final say over Marko.

"He started the season roughly, and then Miami was a weekend of two halves," Horner told the F1 Nation podcast.

"The Friday and Saturday morning was fantastic, and it looked like the Daniel of old, defending against the Ferraris and out-driving the car.

“But then the Saturday afternoon and the Sunday were disastrous. And even around Barcelona, Helmut wanted him out of the car, and there was already a lot of pressure on him there.

"But by the time we got to Montreal, dear old Jacques Villeneuve got him properly wound up by giving him a hard time. 

"And it definitely fired him up, because the way he drove the car that weekend, he grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and put together a very strong race week."

Ricciardo performance 'never compelling enough'

Horner managed to buy Ricciardo time after the Spanish GP to try and improve and avoid the axe falling. 

Ricciardo's goal was to return to race for Red Bull, although his form was never good enough to replace Sergio Perez. 

Whilst Perez's form has also been poor for the majority of the season, Ricciardo failed to deliver enough strong performances to warrant a driver switch.

“I’ve done my very best to buy him as much time in the car to allow him to deliver, otherwise he would have been out of the car after Barcelona,” Horner revealed.

“I think that all the drivers are under pressure to deliver, but the reason Daniel was in that car was to get himself back into a position to ultimately be there to pick up the pieces if Checo didn’t deliver.

“And the problem was they both had issues with form at varying times. Checo started the season very well, very strongly, and Daniel was struggling. 

"And then obviously, as Checo lost form, Daniel found a bit of form, but it was never compelling enough to say, ‘Okay, you know, we should switch the two drivers.'”