Cruel twist of fate that set Ricciardo disaster in motion... and 'bigger ...

There’s no room for sentiment in the cutthroat world of Formula 1, but even by those standards Daniel Ricciardo’s treatment seems harsh.

The Australian was lined up to replace Sergio Pérez only two months ago on the eve of the mid-season break.

Pérez was then given a shock stay of execution, and Ricciardo was told he’d race at RB for the rest of the season — though it was clear there’d be another assessment of Pérez’s form after this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.

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But in the build-up to this race speculation exploded that the Red Bull program might drop Ricciardo instead.

The situation was simultaneously sudden and protracted — sudden for the terms of Ricciardo becoming vulnerable, protracted for the way the Australian was left to wither on the vine for days, fielding questions about his future he couldn’t possibly answer.

It would seem clear that his sacking is on the cards and that he knew Singapore could have been his last race, but even after the chequered flag fell he was given no confirmation that he was finished.

Now it seems he’s destined to be given the sack via press release, a situation seriously unbecoming for a driver of his calibre, regardless of his late-career difficulties.

It’s a remarkable decline in fortune for a man who could have so easily been seeing out the year with Red Bull Racing.

Of course Ricciardo owns some of the circumstances of his surprise sacking. He started the year poorly, and by the time he got himself up to speed, both Pérez and Yuki Tsunoda had signed contracts, leaving his as the last seat available in the program.

His strong middle part of the season also coincided with the RB car slipping well out of regular points contention.

But by no means has his season been bad enough to warrant being given his marching orders before the end of the year. In fact his RB bosses have often talked about the value of his experience in driving the entire team forward.

But this isn’t really about Ricciardo. It’s only barely about RB.

It’s the culmination of a Red Bull driver program that’s hit the skids and desperately looking for a reset.

RED BULL RACING’S DRIVER DILEMMA

The reason Ricciardo was given a lifeline at RB — or AlphaTauri, as it was then — is that Red Bull Racing’s faith in Pérez has been waning since his form slumped in the middle of last year.

“Daniel was our banker for if Sergio were to drop the ball,” Christian Horner admitted to Sky Sports on Saturday, leaving unacknowledged that Pérez dropping the ball this season has almost certainly cost his team the constructors championship.

But for a few days in July the plan to move Ricciardo to Red Bull Racing seemed set to be actioned.

Pérez had just completed a dreadful run to the mid-season break that saw him finish no higher than seven for two months while Verstappen romped to a significant title lead.

That culminated in the Belgian Grand Prix, where he finished an ineffectual seventh — last of the frontrunners — after having started on the front row.

Ricciardo had been primed to step up. He’d been given explicit goals to hit in the races up to the break, which he met. Leaving Spa-Francorchamps, it was supposed to have been a done deal.

Within 24 hours the team had reneged, choosing to double down on Pérez.

Retention of the status quo meant no announcement was made, but Horner hinted at the weekend that Ricciardo’s season as a whole hadn’t made him the sort of shoo-in the team wanted.

“Daniel’s had a reasonable season but it hasn’t been a stellar year,” Horner said.

“We know how he’s performed. We’ve got a lot of data. We’ve got a lot of knowledge of where Daniel is. It’s a much bigger picture within the whole driver merry-go-round of: what does the future look like?

“Inevitably we’ll sit down during this three-week period of off time and consider all of those options.”

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Given Ricciardo got his RB chance only as a potential Pérez replacement, the justification for holding onto him is great diminished — in fact it’s the same argument that dislodged Nyck de Vries to free up a seat for Ricciardo last year.

“I also have to acknowledge why I came back after the McLaren stint,” Ricciardo told Sky Sports. “I always said I don’t want to come back just to be on the grid; I want to try and fight back at the front and get back at Red Bull [Racing]. Obviously it didn’t come to fruition.

“I put my best foot forward. Maybe the fairytale ending didn’t happen.”

And Ricciardo, having debuted 13 years ago, is conscious of not overstaying his welcome.

“I’ve been a young driver as well, and at some point you don’t just want to take up space,” he said, per The Race. “Obviously you have to be selfish, but if I’m not able to go and fight at the front with Red Bull, then you have to ask yourself: what am I staying on the grid for?

“That’s something I’ve also come to peace with.”

PÉREZ STILL ISN’T SAFE

But implicit in Horner’s answer is that faith in Pérez remains low.

Pérez was given a four-race lifeline during the mid-season break to prove, at tracks around which his record is strong, that he can still cut it.

With the exception of Azerbaijan, where he had the outlier of outlying weekends, he’s failed.

His average qualifying deficit to Max Verstappen this year is a whopping 0.558 seconds when normalising every circuit to a 90-second lap to better compare tracks.

In the Netherlands his deficit was 0.497 seconds. It Italy it was 0.452 seconds.

In Azerbaijan he bucked the trend to end up 0.185 seconds ahead, but in Singapore he swung back the other way, lapping 0.902 seconds behind his teammate. He struggled to score a single point for 10th in a race-long battle with Haas’s Nico Hülkenberg and Williams rookie Franco Colapinto,

Given Pérez’s months of underperformance, it’s hard to argue his Baku weekend is anything more than an aberration at a venue where he’s the most successful driver in history.

If his form before the break put him at risk of being cut from the team, his form since is surely doing the same, particularly given the threat of his poor results losing the team the lead in the constructors championship has already been realised, with McLaren now 41 points ahead.

“The Red Bull system does demand results and demand performance,” Horner said. “Of course Max is delivering. Checo has been underdelivering this year; last year he did a good enough job to finish second in the championship and be constructors champion.

“These things are under constant review. There’s obviously a much bigger question other than just Daniel as we continue to look at all of our options as we move forward.

“It’s only natural that you’ll take stock and consider all of those options for the final part of the year.”

LAWSON MUST BE IN LINE FOR RBR PROMOTION IN 2025

There have been quiet rumours that Lawson’s mid-year promotion has long been inevitable, with a clause in his contract — signed after his impressive cameo last year — demanding that he get a certain number of races this year if he were to be signed as a full-time driver in 2025.

Regardless of whether that’s true, there’s a logic to the principal of him getting seat time in the final six races.

With Tsunoda — bafflingly — not in contention for a Red Bull Racing seat, the driver in the second seat is effectively Pérez’s understudy.

Red Bull Racing knows what Ricciardo’s capable of. His season was decent but unspectacular — and apparently not enough to dislodge Pérez while guaranteeing he’d be a definite step up in performance.

If cutting Pérez for 2025 remains a live option — and given the state of the constructors championship and expectations for greater competition next year, the team must at least be keeping its options open — it needs a replacement it can have confidence in.

Is Lawson that driver?

“The job that he did for us last year was very impressive,” Horner said. “Now, we took experience [Ricciardo] over that.

“The question is: how good is Liam? Sometimes difficult decisions have to be made in order to get those answers.

“We’re not quite sure. Looking at the likes of [Franco] Colapinto and [Oliver] Bearman and [Andrea Kimi] Antonelli, is he at that level? Only time will tell.”

Shuffling the drivers is also in the Red Bull program’s interests to make space for more of its young guns for the same reason, giving them an opportunity to prove whether they’re F1 material.

“We’re having to look further down the road,” Horner said. “We’ve got some great talent.

“We’ve got Isack Hadjar in Formula 2 that’s been until recently leading that championship.

“We’ve got very exciting young talent that I’m particularly excited about in F3, Arvid Lindblad.

“So we’ve got depth in our junior program, and that’s why there’s a natural point in time. We’ve got a gap now, but we just want to take time to consider: what do those options look like for the future?”

Giving Lawson a chance this year to prove he can replace Pérez next year ensures there could be space to reopen the path to F1 for Red Bull’s young guns.

THE BIGGEST QUESTION REMAINS UNRESOLVED

Red Bull’s driver development strategy has long been about churn. Rather than grooming one or two potential stars, it throws as many drivers at the wall as possible and picks the ones that stick.

The team has unearthed F1 greats Vettel and Verstappen this way as well as multiple race winner Ricciardo.

The brand has been unabashed in declaring its junior program is looking for the next world champion. A driver who uses their chance to prove they’d be merely very good rather than great is inevitably turfed.

Ricciardo was allowed to usurp Sebastian Vettel. Verstappen was allowed to usurp Ricciardo.

But it inevitably creates carnage, and today it’s left the overall driver program looking weak. Only Verstappen is excelling, and it appears Red Bull has no faith in any of its other three drivers.

One wonders whether there’s regret — certainly for Christian Horner, perhaps less so for Helmut Marko, the powerbroker who pulls the strings in the program — that it doesn’t have ready access to Carlos Sainz, Alex Albon or Pierre Gasly, all of whom have been cast aside as surplus to Red Bull’s requirements.

The lack of depth hasn’t been a problem until this year, when the prospect of Verstappen walking out of the team before 2028 became problematically real given there’s no-one close to his level in the program ready to replace him.

The risk of losing him in 2025 has obviously receded, but Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has been open in his courtship attempts. His next opportunity to tie down the Dutchman is 2026, when both George Russell and Antonelli will be out of contract.

Aston Martin is also rumoured to be touting a big-bucks offer to have him follow Adrian Newey from Milton Keynes to Silverstone.

Red Bull Racing must prepare for a post-Verstappen world. Even if it never comes to pass, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

And so it’s returning to its strategy of throwing drivers against the wall — Ricciardo, now Lawson, then perhaps Hadjar and Lindblad — to see if they stick.

“We’ve given a great opportunity to so many youngsters over the period of time,” Horner said, but equally warned: “We’re not afraid to go out of the pool.

“George Russell is out of contract at the end of the next year; we’d be foolish not to take that into consideration.

“There are other drivers, talented drivers, that could well be out of contract as well.”

It’s a messy, complicated driver situation cackhandedly managed, with indecision appearing to grip Red Bull management, particularly when it comes to dealing with Pérez’s underdelivery.

Ironically it’s Ricciardo’s end-2018 decision to quit the team that ultimately threw Red Bull’s driver program off its axis, even if no-one was to know it at the time.

You can draw a straight line from that move to today’s dilemma. The knock-on effects got Daniel his unexpected comeback chance last year, and the eight-time race winner, once so integral to Red Bull Racing’s Formula 1 program, is now roadkill to those same forces.

Red Bull giveth and Red Bull taketh away.