Daniel Ricciardo’s forced exit from F1 takes him away from the swirl of rumors and question marks regarding his performance and allows us to take a step back, look at the big picture and reflect on his entire career.
The question is, how good was he?
This issue, and the fact that his achievements as a Grand Prix driver are a relevant point of debate, is itself revealing.
The vast majority of drivers will never get such a rating, simply passing through F1, perhaps grabbing headlines along the way, but with a series of great enough to warrant such a detailed rating. Never built a job.
However, Ricciardo is different and is rather simply a driver whose career is defined only by the turning point of his decision to leave Red Bull for Renault in 2019 and the subsequent idea of being ‘discovered’ by the team. It’s much more valuable than a simple story. performance.
To break down that argument, we have to start with that.
Don’t underestimate the year of Renault
First impressions are important and the early races in my first year at Renault were certainly difficult. But Ricciardo kept his head down, figured out how to adapt from a do-what-you-want Red Bull to a somewhat passive Renault, and quickly established himself as a prominent midfielder in F1.
Two podium finishes and a number of ‘loose change’ points in the Yellow and Black look like part of a downturn when placed alongside the rest of his career results, but he produced The performance speaks for itself. Another story.
In 2019, even during a difficult first half of the season, he produced some Ricciardo magic, particularly in Monaco where he qualified sixth with a spectacular lap. He had consistently good results in the second half of the season, finishing anonymously in 14th place at Spa in a damaged Renault, which he considered his best performance in F1, and leading the midfield pack on four occasions. He also decisively outperformed teammate Nico Hulkenberg.
2020 was a similar but more consistent story, with a clear advantage over new teammate Esteban Ocon and a particularly good third place at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola. We have produced some great drivers. That year, he was ranked fourth among The Race magazine’s top 10 F1 drivers of the season (listen to our podcast discussion of this below).
Few doubted that Ricciardo was delivering a top-notch performance in a substandard car. He didn’t realize it at the time, but the mistake he made was signing with McLaren in 2021 to replace Carlos Sainz at Ferrari. What happened next was painful.
What McLaren’s tragedy reveals
A difficult McLaren to drive in 2021, Andrea Stella, McLaren’s executive director of racing at the time, characterized it as the car that would best respond to the driving style that Ricciardo was on the “other side” of. Low-speed and medium-speed corners, especially long ones, required the driver to brake and attack the corner hard. As Stella said, “He’s a driver who likes to pick up speed in the corners and doesn’t necessarily need to brake as much as our car would like.”

On high-speed circuits and circuits with short corners such as Monza, where Ricciardo scored an impressive victory, he was able to perform reasonably well, but on other tracks he was completely out of form. Click here for more information.
2022 was expected to be a better year for Ricciardo, as he would be at Databank for a year and a new car would be introduced. But that wasn’t the case. He became increasingly lost and frustrated by his inability to adapt his style to suit the car.
While his issues with the 2021 McLaren were based on its esoteric characteristics, the real problem became clear as the introduction of current ground effects cars pushed the general trend of F1 cars away from Ricciardo’s comfort zone. Ta.

If there’s one thing these cars aren’t good at, it’s cornering at low speeds. To accomplish that, teammate Lando Norris typically utilized a more unstable rear end, but Ricciardo ended up adjusting a bit of safety understeer to avoid under-rotating the car. I drove many, effectively much “longer” and slower corners.
He simply couldn’t adapt and got lost trying desperately to understand the demands of the car and how to adjust himself.

Ricardo could never do it. Upon his return to AlphaTauri in 2023, he initially made promising progress, adapting the team from a set-up that was best suited to late braking and aggressive turn-in, favored by teammates Hiroki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly. contributed to. Before that year, he was leading the team well.
But Ricardo seems to have hit a wall. Performance fluctuated, and every time a corner was turned that promised a new start, setbacks due to recession were inevitable. Ricardo sought a simpler approach that wouldn’t get bogged down in technical complexity. It worked sometimes, but it didn’t work consistently. His driving was perfectly competent, but no more.
His time with McLaren and RB exposed Ricciardo’s limitations both technically and in terms of adaptability. What makes the difference between the very good and the truly great, the rare legends, is usually the ability to change their driving style to suit a wide range of demands. This means that Ricciardo falls into the group of people who can be considered the ‘number one-half’, drivers who can achieve great things when the conditions are right. And that’s exactly what they were in the early days.
early signs of something great

Ricciardo was able to enter F1 thanks to Red Bull’s support in 2008 after testing. With the presence of juniors in Red Bull and Toyota, two of the few remaining F1 organizations, they wisely focused their limited resources on the 2007 Italian Formula Renault campaign. That’s where the driver scheme came into play.
After winning titles in Formula Renault 2.0 WEC and then British F3, HRT became desperate and promoted to F1 midway through the 2011 season. This was a profitable 11-race stint, allowing him to familiarize himself with F1 before moving to Toro Rosso in 2012.
During his two years there, Ricciardo put in some surprising performances at times. The first time he looked like something special was qualifying sixth for that year’s Bahrain Grand Prix. Even in 2021, he said this performance was probably the best Saturday showing of his F1 career. Furthermore, despite pressure from Michael Schumacher, who was faster and on fresher tires, his stoic defense kept him in 10th place in the final stages of Suzuka. Those two days in particular were the moment when I started to think of Ricciardo as real first-team material.

The following season saw more of the same, particularly on the weekend of the Chinese Grand Prix, where he qualified 7th and made an impressive comeback after difficult weekends in Monaco and Canada, with teammate Jean-Eric Vergne was active.
With Mark Webber announcing his retirement from F1, a promotion to Red Bull Racing was on the horizon, and Ricciardo took advantage of the opportunity. During his two years at Toro Rosso, he outperformed Vergne (a very capable driver who also had some impressive moments) with a clear advantage in qualifying pace, a key characteristic.
That gave Ricciardo a chance at Red Bull, which he took relentlessly. He was a jovial person outside the car, not a word many people associate with Ricciardo, but inside he was brutal.
Vettel falls

In a 2013 interview after he signed with Red Bull, I remember him talking about his chances and saying he was going to beat Vettel and aim for a fourth consecutive title. It seemed like a fantasy, but that’s exactly what happened. He won three races in his first year at Red Bull Racing and made the team his own.
The problem is that while he was outstanding in 2014, so much so that I would put him first among Autosport’s top 10 drivers of the year, Red Bull was not.
Ricciardo won three times and established a reputation for brilliant late-braking passes, outscoring Vettel, who was struggling with a car that did not inspire as much confidence as the previous year’s car, which had a blown exhaust, but the Renault engine That wasn’t the case. Strong enough.
And that story continued in 2015, where he was behind new teammate Daniil Kvyat but outperformed him overall. And in 2016, he won just one race with a car that was inherently limited by its power unit package. It’s been a really great second year for Ricciardo. My colleague Ben Anderson has written extensively about this period in Ricardo’s career.
There is no doubt that at this time, and in 2017, Ricciardo could have performed at a championship-threatening level with the right car.

Contrary to his reputation for braking a little earlier, rather than braking late, to overtake at a reasonable speed while achieving the required rotation, he has a way of getting the most out of this generation of cars. I knew. He learned the basics during his time at Toro Rosso and it served him well.
Next came Max Verstappen.
turning point
Ricciardo put up a good fight, but he knew which way the wind was blowing. Although it was a season in which Verstappen had a decisive advantage, he continued to perform well in 2018, but suddenly decided to move to Renault.

He cited a number of reasons, including the need for a new challenge and doubts about the Honda engine coming in 2019, but in reality Verstappen’s rise was the key. Ricciardo wanted to be at the front of the team, with Renault as his only port.
But even if he didn’t go down that path, there would still have come a point when the 2022 car arrived and Ricciardo would struggle to adapt. A move to McLaren furthered his woes, but although no one could have known it at the time, he was already on a collision course with F1’s typical vehicle dynamics conditions. It brutally exposed his limitations and turned a sometimes great driver into a much more patchwork driver.
Some argue that age has something to do with this, and it’s not impossible, but the sudden change in 2020-21 and the struggles he went through in his first year at McLaren and the subsequent car We cannot ignore the commonality of their behavior.
How will F1 remember Ricciardo?
Going back to the original question, where does Ricciardo stand? At his best, he was really great, but lacked the adaptability to maintain it throughout his career.

But from 2014 to 2020 he was outstanding, and during those seven years he was consistently one of F1’s best drivers, respected by world champions Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Verstappen, Vettel and Nico Rosberg. was. In the golden era of Red Bull, in the right car, or with the right engine, he had the ability to join the ranks of title winners.
But there’s no arguing that while he could have been, he definitely should have been world champion. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It just means you’re not Stirling Moss. But Ricciardo stands out among almost all the men in F1 history, a winner with thrilling victories, a great racer, a brilliant qualifier, and a man who enjoyed a distinguished career. He has a strong willed personality.
In doing so, he performed admirably off the track as well, creating a large following and gaining respect not only from his rivals but also from F1 officials. Having had the privilege of following his career closely, I’d like to include myself in that number.
Even as the struggles of recent years fade from memory, the Ricciardo I remember is not a lost soul who has been reclaiming what he once had in recent years, but a great overtaker with an adventurous spirit who was one of the stars of the 2010s. I am a person.
At his best, he was right there. It’s just that he didn’t quite check all the boxes that a true all-time great does. He was a great driver, but my only regret is that we never got to see his dignity put to the test as he fought through stiff competition in the car that won him world titles.
If he had the chance, he could have won the top prize. At his best, Ricardo was truly amazing.