How Ricciardo was ultimately doomed to F1 exile by McLaren

Daniel Ricciardo's F1 career was effectively over in August 2022 when McLaren elected to pay the Australian not to race in 2023. 

Jobless and with his F1 stock never lower, Ricciardo found refuge back at Red Bull as the third and reserve driver for 2023, appearing at a handful of races, in effect as a mobile billboard and to shake the hands of some sponsor or another.

It was unedifying for a driver who just two years before had been one of the best on the grid to be without a seat and left on the sidelines, although a reprieve was granted when the under-performing Nyck de Vries was booted from what was then AlphaTauri after the 2023 British Grand Prix.

A tyre test in the near-perfect RB19 at Silverstone in the days after that race ended with Ricciardo setting a time that would have put him on the front-row of the grand prix itself, just a couple of tenths slower than Max Verstappen's pole time. 

It appeared Ricciardo's career had been rescued. If he performed well alongside Yuki Tsunoda, and Sergio Perez underperformed at Red Bull, then maybe he could return to the seat he never should have left in 2019 to join Renault. 

But that is a lot of dominoes that needed to fall in the right order, and aside from two standout performances in Mexico City 2023 and the Miami 2024 sprint, Ricciardo never got even close to showing any flashes of his previous self. 

How a driver of such high-calibre can drop off such a cliff in such a short period of time raises some serious questions - to which some of the answers can be found in Ricciardo's 2021 switch to McLaren.

Ricciardo's McLaren struggle

By his own admission, Ricciardo was never a technically-minded driver in the mould of a Sebastian Vettel or a Nico Rosberg and whilst 'getting in it and driving by the seat of your pants' is a strategy that can work when things are going well, when a driver is out of form, 'vibes' will not get you anywhere.

He was also a driver unable to adapt to the machinery around him, a prerequisite for any driver who wants to be fast in a variety of situations as 'the perfect balance' is nearly impossible to find every weekend. A driver will almost constantly have one gripe or another in a race.

The biggest evidence for this is the 2021 McLaren and its unique traits. 

The MCL35M machine was a tricky car to drive, especially on corner entry, with it producing too much 'peaky downforce' instead of the stable, consistent platform drivers prefer. 

It was not just Ricciardo who struggled with the car as Lando Norris, incubated in McLaren's ways, also found it a tricky beast to cope with, but Norris was able to overcome the car to perform well. 

Both Ricciardo and Norris are drivers who prefer to 'U' a corner, in that they like to carry more speed through the apex, but both were forced to 'V' corners instead as they were forced to get the braking done early, turn in sharply and stamp on the throttle. They are very different ways of driving. 

Norris could adapt but the further Ricciardo got into the mess, the more his form collapsed. What also did not help him was the switch to the heavier ground-effect cars in 2022, which are more understeery by design. It was a vicious cocktail he just could not break, with his '22 campaign being truly dreadful beyond a late charge to seventh in Mexico. 

He began doubting his own driving style, and as Christian Horner put it, was "unrecognisable" in his driving habits when Red Bull gave him a run-out in the simulator in late 2022.

It is something Ricciardo himself recognised.

"It's not making excuses because those performances weren't good," he told The New York Times. 

"But it was clear to me that it wasn't me operating at 100%. Yes, I should have been able to figure it out, but I just couldn’t."

Other factors

As some fans would claim, Ricciardo was not 'found out' and is instead a driver who simply did not click with the machinery of 2022 onwards and could not get back to his very best. There is no shame in that, but is there another reason at play, one stretching back to 2019?

After the death of Anthoine Hubert in the F2 feature race ahead of the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix, Ricciardo was particularly vocal about his desire not to race.

"You question: 'Is it really worth it?'," he said at the time. 

"Yeah, it's our job and it's our profession and it's our life, but also it's still just racing cars around in circles."

"I know, weirdly enough, the best way we could kind of show our respect was to race, but I don't think any of us actually wanted to be here, or wanted to race - at least, I'm speaking for myself, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

"It was tough. It was certainly tough to be here and try to put on a brave face for everyone."

The year after in the aftermath of Romain Grosjean's fiery 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix accident, Ricciardo let rip at F1 for continually broadcasting replays of the smash. 

"I’m disgusted and disappointed with Formula 1 for showing or choosing the way to show it as they did, and broadcast replays after replays after replays of the fire, and his car split in half," he explained.

"And then, like that’s not enough, they go to his onboard. Why do we need to see this? 

"We’re competing again in an hour. His family has to keep watching that. All our families have to keep watching that ... It’s really unfair. It’s not entertainment."

Others also called F1 out for that, but none went as far or were as emotional as Ricciardo. 

Was he simply spooked by Hubert's death and Grosjean's miraculous escape from that Bahraini fireball?

The only person who can ever truly answer that is Ricciardo himself, but as he begins what is likely to be his post-F1 life now, it will be just a small consideration in a career well done and which eventually, just ran out of steam.