Daniel Ricciardo makes two notable confessions in fight to save F1 ...

Daniel Ricciardo admits he needs to “work harder” to extract the performance these days, but insists that he is “not losing it”.

With Red Bull reserve Liam Lawson now destined for “a drive” in F1 2025, either with Red Bull or out on loan, the pressure is on for Ricciardo to secure his Formula 1 future, with his VCARB seat the only Red Bull-run seat not yet spoken for looking ahead to next season.

Additional reporting by Sam Cooper

A strong return from the summer break would have provided a major boost, but it did not start out that way for Ricciardo, who was furious with himself after a Q1 exit. Race day went far better though as Ricciardo recovered to a solid P12, five positions up the road from VCARB team-mate Yuki Tsunoda.

And speaking to media including PlanetF1.com at Zandvoort, it was put to Ricciardo that Formula 1 seems more extreme than ever in judging performance, now on a session-by-session basis.

Ricciardo would agree, and while admitting that he feels he must “work a bit harder for it these days”, he insists that he still has the performance as he looks to string it together and retain his place in F1.

He said: “It’s tricky. It’s like you can go from, yeah, from one day to the next you can feel like, s**t, you’re hanging on. I don’t want to say hanging on for dear life, that’s extreme, but you can definitely get a bit low. And then 24 hours later, you can be like, ‘Oh, I’m back. We’re good. We’re good’.

“I do my best to try and stay levelled and just maintain that kind of constant level of confidence and self-belief, but yeah, it does still sway a little bit up and down.

“I know I am getting older and all that stuff, so I know that’s like an easy, probably excuse at times, or an easy kind of viewpoint for maybe some people in the outside, but I know that that’s not it, in terms of I know that some of my inconsistencies, it’s not just, ‘Oh, he’s getting older’.

“I think I said in Canada, like, it’s true, sometimes I feel like I do have to work a bit harder for it these days. But the disappointment from yesterday [qualifying] is there because I know that this isn’t it, like I know that I’m not losing it, I know that I’ve just got to work a bit harder for it, but I know it’s still there, and so it eats at me a bit.

“But yeah, I still love it and I still care a lot, so I’ll just make sure I put it together and then it’ll all be okay.”

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Ricciardo returned to the Red Bull fold after a nightmare spell with McLaren which led to the early termination of his contract, though Ricciardo explained that his “ups and downs” of now are nothing like what went on at McLaren.

And whatever happens from here in his F1 future, the feelings he had at McLaren will not be replicated.

Asked if this is still a step up compared to what he went through at McLaren, Ricciardo replied: “Yeah, it is.

“I look back, it’s funny, because 2020, my first season with McLaren, I was having the lows and the highs and that was already like, ‘Oh, this is a bit strange’.

“But then that compared to the second season, I look back at the first season like, actually, the first season wasn’t too bad. My second half of the season was actually pretty good. So yeah, when I thought it was bad, it kind of got worse. And then I think, as I said, that just spiralled a bit out of control.

“And not only did it mess with the on track stuff, but then off track, I was just not really as excited to race, because ultimately, I lost confidence in myself, and you’re just in that negative cycle.

“So I definitely don’t feel like I’m there. And whatever happens from this point moving forward in my future, I will certainly, whatever day it is that I leave the sport, I won’t feel those feelings that I felt then. I was definitely in a different place. So, yeah, the ups and downs are different to the ups and downs of a few years ago.”

Ricciardo has scored 12 points to Tsunoda’s 22 so far in F1 2024, with VCARB sitting P6 in the Constructors’ Championship.

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