Why Ricciardo fate is hard to stomach as brutal missteps spark F1's ...

Timing is everything in Formula 1, but it’s not just the stopwatch that counts.

Success in Formula 1 is the meeting of potential and circumstance. The best driver in the world can’t win in the slowest car on the grid, and even a great car can be made to look ordinary by a driver of a lesser calibre.

Whenever Daniel Ricciardo looks back on his career, he might reflect on whether he ever met the circumstances that allowed him to make the most of his potential.

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His arrival on the grid was undoubtedly perfectly timed. The Red Bull program rocketed him through the junior series with a pair of titles impressive enough that he was placed at the struggling Hispania team halfway through 2011 before moving to Toro Rosso, now RB, for the following two seasons.

Mark Webber’s retirement ahead of 2014 eased his way into the senior Red Bull Racing team, the dominant four-time constructors champion.

Everything seemed to be coming up Ricciardo.

From there, though, circumstances — often external but sometimes brought about by himself — conspired to ensure this championship-calibre driver never had the chance to make good on that potential.

RICCIARDO JOINS RED BULL RACING DURING LEAST SUCCESSFUL INTER-TITLE ERA

Ricciardo’s career and reputation are based almost entirely on his five-year stint with Red Bull Racing.

His breakout year was undeniably 2014. Not only was he the only non-Mercedes driver to win a race — and he won three — but he comfortably accounted for his teammate, reigning four-time champion Sebastian Vettel.

That year cemented him as a frontrunning force and earnt him future-champion status.

It was during his stint at Milton Keynes that he forged his fearsome, intimidating on-track style as a relentless and creative overtaking machine. His feel for grip and his touch on the brakes were sublime, earning him seven of eight career victories and delivering countless highlights to broadcasters.

But after five years he’d managed only seven victories — far fewer than his form warranted.

The team’s record book makes clear why.

When Red Bull Racing’s victories were won

Wins 1–10 (China 2009 to Europe 2010): 23 races

Wins 11–20 (Great Britain 2010 to Monaco 2011): 16 races

Wins 21–30 (Europe 2011 to Great Britain 2012): 22 races

Wins 31–40 (Singapore 2012 to Italy 2013): 23 races

Wins 41–50 (Singapore 2013 to Belgium 2014): 19 races

Wins 51–60 (Spain 2016 to Austria 2019): 97 races

Wins 61–70 (Germany 2019 to Austria 2021): 38 races

Wins 71–80 (Belgium 2021 to Monaco 2022): 20 races

Wins 81–90 (Azerbaijan 2022 to USA 2022): 12 races

Wins 91–100 (Mexico City 2022 to Canada 2023): 11 races

Wins 101–110 (Austria 2023 to Mexico City 2023): 11 races

Wins 110–120 (Sao Paulo 2023 to Spain 2024): 13 races

Since 2009 Red Bull has been winning on average one race for every 2.25 starts, but it took the team 97 starts to claim wins 51 to 60 between 2016 and 2019. During that period it was winning once every 9.1 races.

Ricciardo’s time at the team spanned 2014 to 2018, his tenure coinciding with Red Bull Racing’s the least competitive era since becoming a race-winning team.

Red Bull Racing won just 12 races during his 100 grands prix at the team. That’s a 12 per cent hit rate for a win every 8.3 races, way below its average.

Expunging Ricciardo’s 100-race tenure from RBR’s history would bump up its strike rate to an absurd 63.5 per cent — one win for every 1.6 races.

Ricciardo’s run at Red Bull Racing was central to his reputation, but the timing of his arrival there ultimately short-changed him.

The team gradually returned to its winning ways in the years after he left, with Max Verstappen winning the title in 2021 and the Dutchman leading the team to two championships doubles in the following two years.

BEST YEARS LOST TO RENAULT RABBLE

Ricciardo stunned the F1 world when he announced that he’d switch to Renault in 2019.

Not only was Renault still rebuilding from the midfield, but the French manufacturer’s engine was central to the Australian’s litany of technical retirements in 2018.

But Renault was on the up. By 2018 it was up to fourth in the constructors championship, having more than doubled its points haul from the previous season. Though the gap to Red Bull Racing in third on the table was enormous, he at least appeared to be joining a team heading in the right direction.

He took time to get up to speed in his first year, but by the end of 2019 he was flying, and his 2020 season is easily the most underrated of his career.

The Australian collected a couple of unlikely and hard-earnt podiums — the team’s first since it returned to the sport in 2016 — and obliterated teammate Esteban Ocon, almost doubling the Frenchman’s points to finish fifth in the standings, equal to or better than three of his five title finishes at Red Bull Racing.

The performance ranked him among the top four drivers of the year by the sport’s team principals.

The results of previous years are included below for context.

Ricciardo’s ranking by F1 team principals

2014: 3rd

2015: 9th

2016: 4th

2017: 4th

2018: 5th

2019: 8th

2020: 4th

He was similarly well regarded by his fellow drivers in the annual vote among his contemporaries.

Ricciardo’s ranking by fellow drivers

2018: 5th

2019: 6th

2020: 3rd

But what might have been the best years of his career were squandered on a team on the brink of management-induced catastrophe.

Already in 2019 he could see the cracks. Progress stalled, with the team falling to fifth in the standings, and Ricciardo believed he could see a ceiling on what Renault could achieve.

Spurred by a pandemic-induced driver market frenzy, he committed to joining McLaren before the first race of 2020.

“There was no management,” new Alpine F1 adviser Flavio Briatore said, per Autosport, has since reflected on Renault’s troubled return to F1 almost a decade ago. “I believe the problem of Alpine was this one: at one point I believe they chose a few wrong managers.

“I think the list of the wrong ones was quite long. We have no list of the good ones.

“And it is difficult to manage in Enstone. Enstone is a big team, a big monster. You need to be there. It’s very difficult to manage one team like Alpine from Paris or from another place. You need the presence — daily presence.”

In retrospect Ricciardo admits that his Renault move burnt him.

“I think at the time obviously in my head everything made sense, but was it the best decision of my career? Of course you could argue, no, it wasn’t,” Ricciardo told Sky Sports. “I’m okay with that. It’s one of those ones.

“Also there’s no guarantee that if I’d stayed [at Red Bull Racing], I would’ve done amazing and won this and that. You never know.

“But of course I’m not going to stand here and say that was the greatest decision of my life.”

But the worst was still to come.

RIGHT INSTINCT, WRONG YEAR TO JOIN MCLAREN

Ricciardo jumped ship to McLaren, which beat Renault to fourth in 2019 and then finished third in 2020, believing he was joining a project with more potential.

He was right, but he was wrong about the timing, with Woking still several years away from coming good.

Instead the 2021 and 2022 seasons were difficult for both team and driver.

McLaren dropped to fourth and then fifth in the standings during Ricciardo’s ill-fated two-year stint as it grappled with a car wracked by peculiar handling requirements that proved insurmountable for the Australian.

Despite winning the team’s first race in a decade at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, patience rapidly wore thin during his continued struggles alongside Lando Norris, who had rapidly risen from young gun protégé to team leader.

But it took the appearance of a genuine alternative to Ricciardo to convince McLaren to axe his expensive three-year deal one season early.

Ironically that was thanks to his former Alpine team’s mishandling Oscar Piastri’s contract.

Piastri was widely regarded as F1’s next big thing but had been sidelined by Alpine after winning the Formula 2 title. The French team subsequently colossally bungled his contract offer, giving him nothing binding and allowing him to play the market for 2023.

Manager Mark Webber went directly to McLaren, where team principal Andreas Seidl was known to him from his Porsche days in the World Endurance Championship. They did a deal that ensured the team had an option to replace the struggling Ricciardo.

By the middle of the year, with Ricciardo still stubbornly off the pace, the trigger was pulled to dump the older Australian with a year still to run on his deal.

The coincidence of events couldn’t have been worse in substance or timing.

Not only was Ricciardo without a drive for 2023, but halfway through that season McLaren finally turned around its years-long slump.

The team became a regular podium contender in what would have been the last six months of Ricciardo’s contract, and this year it took control of the constructors championship for the first time in a decade. Norris is even an outside chance at winning the drivers title.

What could have been for Ricciardo had he arrived only a year or two later — or had he clung on for just a few more months?

RICCIARDO WAITS TOO LATE TO DELIVER AT RB

Ricciardo sought refuge in the Red Bull program, where he became the team’s third driver in 2023 in the hope of finding a way to replace Sergio Pérez at Red Bull Racing.

For the first time since he joined the team, it looked like luck was finally on his side.

Nyck de Vries flopped at AlphaTauri, creating an opening for him to slot into.

Pérez, meanwhile, turned a strong start to the year into a devastating form slump that shook the team’s faith in him.

Ricciardo’s races last year were generally inconclusive, but he had the handicap of skipping five grands prix with a broken hand sustained in just the third race of his comeback. His highs — notably a strong weekend in Mexico — were enough to justify keeping him in 2024 to see what he could do with a clean swing at it.

But now it was his turn to guarantee circumstances were against him.

Ricciardo started his critical make-or-break season poorly. In the first third of the campaign — the first eight races — he outqualified and finished ahead of teammate Yuki Tsunoda just once.

Those squandered three months changed everything.

By the time the sport arrived in Canada — the first race of what turned out to be Ricciardo’s turnaround — both Pérez and Tsunoda had signed new contacts for 2025, leaving the Australian as the only Red Bull driver without a deal.

It massively limited his potential and would’ve required a remarkable set of circumstances to undo.

Incredibly, those circumstances briefly looked as though they’d aligned just in time to save him.

Pérez’s form slump was so deep that Red Bull Racing was beginning to seriously consider alternatives. Meanwhile, Ricciardo was finally taking the upper hand in his battle with Tsunoda, having been the better RB performer on all but one weekend between Canada and the mid-season break.

At the Belgian Grand Prix, the last before the northern summer adjournment, Ricciardo was lined up to replace Pérez. Against the odds — many of which he’d stacked again himself — his Red Bull Racing fairytale seemed set to come true.

But the spectre of that poor start to his campaign hung heavy when it came to pulling the trigger. It’s believed Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko, who wasn’t keen on him returning to Faenza in the first place, wasn’t sold on what he’d seen this year, playing a role in obstructing the plan.

It didn’t help that he’d timed his run of good form just as RB’s car began regressing down the field and out of regular points contention with a series of botched upgrades, making it more difficult for Ricciardo to make an impression.

Red Bull Racing changed its mind, deciding instead to double down on Pérez, at least for the following four races, ending with this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.

Though Pérez hasn’t improved — his good weekend in Azerbaijan aside — the goalposts had already shifted on Ricciardo.

Speaking ahead of the Singapore weekend, the Australian joked that a podium finish would instantly silence rumours he was about to be cut.

Marko picked up on that comment, telling Austrian broadcaster ORF: “He said that if he finishes on the podium, the situation will look completely different. I totally agree with him.”

Ricciardo was asked about Marko’s response on Saturday night after qualifying 16th and by which time rumours had intensified that he was set to be axed.

“You can’t just go from one race to another. Like, that’s not okay,” Ricciardo said, with ESPN reporting his body language changed as he chose his words carefully. “But I did think today was going to be okay.

“Yeah, no, that’s … yeah, I’ll say no more.”

In a final twist of fate, the pressure on the team to cut Ricciardo stems from his injury last year.

Had it not been for his five-race absence last year with a broken hand, Liam Lawson would never have got the seat time he needed to prove he deserved an F1 shot. His odds of getting into F1 were slim before that.

It was only ever a matter of time until the Kiwi took Ricciardo seat in a cruel final irony.

But Ricciardo feels no bitterness.

If he’s just had his final hurrah, he’ll bow out of Formula 1 an eight-time race winner (39th in F1 history), a 32-time podium getter (35th) and with 257 starts (10th).

Statistically he’s the fourth most successful Australian in F1 history, behind only title winners Jack Brabham and Alan Jones and one win short of Mark Webber’s tally.

“I’m also grateful for the career,” he told Sky Sports. “Getting to Formula 1 was a dream, let alone being here for over a decade and having the chance to fight for wins.

“I don’t want to look back and be, ‘Poor me’. I think it’s been great.

“I’m proud.”