Daniel Ricciardo has quashed rumours ahead of this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix that he has two races to save his F1 career, with the Australian revealing he does not expect similar treatment to Nyck de Vries.
De Vries was infamously sacked by the Red Bull sister team after just 10 races last season and was replaced by Ricciardo following the Australian's successful test at Silverstone.
Whilst the eight-time race winner demonstrated strong speed in the latter stages of 2023 following his return from injury, Ricciardo has endured a lacklustre start to the current campaign.
After four races, Ricciardo is yet to score a point and is being comfortably out-performed by Yuki Tsunoda. To add to his concerns, Ricciardo's deficit to Tsunoda on average in qualifying this year has been worse than De Vries' was after the opening four rounds of last season.
When asked if there are any thoughts of being ousted in the back of his mind, Ricciardo told media including RacingNews365: "No, there isn't. Anything can happen so I'm also not naive but I haven't had any indication of that.
"Again, it probably goes back to a little bit of maybe what I did in the past, but I think they know even last year I showed the signs of speed and everything that yeah, maybe I didn't always show with McLaren.
"We felt like we got that back out of me and, okay, for whatever reason it hasn't quite been there to its probably fullest so far this year, but I think they know it's there and also what we're doing on the sim, like they can see that it's there so we just now got to put it together."
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'I'm not a rookie'
Ricciardo does have a new chassis at his disposal for this weekend at the Shanghai International Circuit; however, he will only have first practice to get a feeling for it, due to China hosting the first sprint race of the season.
Amid mounting pressure on his shoulders, Ricciardo has denied he has been given a specific target by the RB team.
"No, I haven't," said Ricciardo, when asked if he has been given an ultimatum.
"I think because I'm obviously around the team every day, so to speak, that I would hear it from them. You know what I mean? I'm of course, like, yeah, I know that we're not where we want to be.
"But I think everything we kind of keep going back to each other is like, we're still in this, we're on the path, like we know what we're doing. I think as well, yes, I haven't had a great start to the season.
"But I'm also not a rookie that's trying to kind of establish myself in the sport and prove something, obviously, I do have a track record, which there is some proof there that I can do it.
"And the team believes this and knows I can, so it's just trying to clean it all up and making sure that we can get it. I don't want this to take a whole year and I don't expect it to, because on the one hand, I'm not a rookie as I got experience so that should also speak for something."
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