There’s an unusual amount of interest in Pirelli’s two-day tyre test at Silverstone this week.
On Tuesday and Wednesday Formula 1’s sole tyre manufacturer will be assessing whether its new tyre compounds are good enough to be used without tyre blankets in 2024.
It’s important work that makes the sport tick behind the scenes. But let’s be honest, it’s pretty dry.
Except for the fact that Daniel Ricciardo is involved.
Red Bull Racing is one of three teams fielding a car to help Pirelli do its work, and reserve driver Ricciardo is being deployed for duty in what will be his first time in contemporary F1 machinery since his final race for McLaren last November.
It’s not unusual for the bigger teams to save their race drivers a couple of days of extra work, but the context of Ricciardo’s first appearance in race-ready Red Bull Racing car in more than four years is what makes it interesting.
The Aussie has expressed serious interest in an F1 comeback. Sergio Pérez is underperforming at the senior team. Nyck de Vries is under pressure at the junior team.
Both RBR team principal Christian Horner and motorsport adviser Helmut Marko have talked about the test as a sort of evaluation of Ricciardo’s potential to race competitively after his debilitating seasons at McLaren.
If the eight-time race winner is going to get back on the grid, the route goes through this week’s test.
“I didn’t recognise the Daniel of the last couple of years, so I’ll be very interested to see what kind of job he does on Tuesday,” Horner said this weekend, per ESPN.
“It’s an important test for Pirelli, but it’s also going to be great seeing him back in a Red Bull car and seeing him where he’s at, both on pace and mentally, physically and to get his feedback on this car as well.
“So I think it’s a good opportunity for him to get back behind a wheel of a car that’s just won the British Grand Prix.”
RICCIARDO CONFIDENT OF F1 RETURN
It was notable that as early as the Australian Grand Prix in April Daniel Ricciardo started talking about making his comeback, and since then he’s sounded only increasingly certain that there’s a route back for him.
“I’ve had enough of a break now where I’ve got ants in my pants, in a positive way,” he told SpeedCity Broadcasting on Sunday about his impending return to the cockpit for the test.
“I’m letting it all happen as it comes, and I have confidence I’ll be back on the grid at some point.
“Obviously I’m not 100 per cent sure of it, but I’m confident it will happen again one day.”
This weekend he also told Crash that he had reconsidered his self-imposed ban on seats at lower ranked teams — so long as they offered a path to a race-winning constructor.
The obvious implication is a seat at AlphaTauri to prepare for a possible vacancy at Red Bull Racing in 2025.
“I’m remaining open-minded,” he said of a possible AlphaTauri drive. “If it’s like, ‘This is you and you are signing a three-year deal and that’s the only place you are going to be’, then no, that’s maybe not the deal I would look for.
“But … if that creates a path to get back [to Red Bull Racing], then yeah, it’s something I would look at, because ultimately this is the place where I want to get back to.”
And there was that confidence again.
“If you were, like, ‘Gun to head, you have to say yes or no’, my answer is yes as opposed to no.
“I have a bit more confidence that I will be than I won’t be.”
Ricciardo knows the state of play in Formula 1. Seats are hard to come by as a rookie and even harder to get back once you’ve stepped away. His recent racing record at McLaren wouldn’t be helping his cause.
So surely he wouldn’t be talking so relatively openly if that confidence weren’t genuine.
THE PATH BACK TO RED BULL RACING
Daniel Ricciardo’s most likely destination has firmed in recent weeks as AlphaTauri, where rookie Nyck de Vries is under growing pressure after an underwhelming first 10 rounds.
De Vries has been outqualified and outraced by teammate Yuki Tsunoda at every race bar two this season. That’d be passable for a fresh-faced rookie but not for a driver boasting his level of experience outside F1, not least a world championship in Formula E.
Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko has already given him a “yellow card” for his lacklustre start to the year, and he’s even expressed regret about putting him in the full-time race seat, revealing he’d done so contrary to Christian Horner’s opinion.
“The last [driver decision we disagreed on was] Nyck de Vries, and at the moment it looks like [Horner] is right,” he told the Inside Line podcast. “He was not a fan of Nyck de Vries.”
AlphaTauri principal Franz Tost would have preferred Mick Schumacher, but Marko wasn’t comfortable with the Ferrari connection.
The situation is so dire that there have been several reports in the last week that De Vries is at risk of losing his seat as soon as the mid-season break.
Marko appeared to hint that changes were afoot when speaking with Germany’s Sky Sports.
“Tuesday is the tyre test and then we’ll see,” he said.
When asked specifically if Ricciardo is in the frame for an AlphaTauri seat, Marko reportedly smiled before dead-batting the question.
“We’ll look at the tyre tests and then we can talk.”
BUT IT’S NOT A DONE DEAL, AND DOUBTS REMAIN
While the Pirelli tyre test makes use of a current F1 car on a representative circuit, it won’t be a great indicator of performance. The entire day, including run plans, are dictated by Pirelli, and they’re set up to avoid teams gaining an unfair advantage over those not running.
It’ll be enough to validate what the team is seeing from Ricciardo in the simulator — where he’s worked hard to iron out the McLaren-based kinks from his racing — but not to understand whether he’d back to his best in the heat of a competitive weekend.
It’s why he’s not being considered for a direct Red Bull Racing promotion despite Sergio Pérez’s dire run of form.
Pérez is 99 points down in the championship, having lost an average of 15.5 points per race to his teammate in the last six weekends thanks largely to an atrocious qualifying run that’s seen him qualify inside the top 10 just thrice and knocked out of Q1 four times.
That’s a worse record than Alex Albon in his Williams, who’s been eliminated in the bottom five only twice.
That gives Pérez the seventh-best qualifying record on the grid behind Verstappen, the Ferrari and Mercedes drivers and Fernando Alonso. His average qualifying result of 8.75 is identical to Lando Norris’s in what has been a much slower McLaren until the last fortnight.
But his recovery jobs on Sundays have been enough to ensure he’s still clinging to second in the drivers championship, and that’s boosted Red Bull Racing to a practically unassailable 208-point lead in the constructors standings.
“That’s what distinguishes him from Nyck de Vries,” Marko said in an epic backhander that managed to criticise two Red Bull-backed drivers at once.
“There’s no need for action at the moment. There’s no-one who could replace him.”
There’s been a lot made of that comment — that “there’s no-one who could replace” Pérez — the implication being that Ricciardo’s comeback plans have been dealt a fatal blow.
But that’s not the case.
Marko is only expressing what’s already clear — that Ricciardo’s reputation will have to be rebuilt before he’ll be considered for a top drive. Some simulator runs and a non-competitive tyre test won’t be enough.
“It’s not something that we’re planning, that’s for certain,” Horner said about putting Ricciardo in one of his two race seats. “It was right to give him the opportunity this year to remain within the team and keep him around the sport. I think it would have been a loss to the sport for him just to disappear.”
But that need to prove himself again could also be held against him in the fight for an AlphaTauri drive — which isn’t a done deal, as Ricciardo has emphasised.
Red Bull-backed New Zealander Liam Lawson is also in the frame. He’s currently competing in Japan’s Super Formula, where he’s second in the championship just 12 points behind the leader.
Success in Super Formula by non-Japanese drivers is rated highly in Europe given the series races exclusively on domestic circuits rarely visited by those on the European racing ladder.
At 21 years old, Lawson fits the AlphaTauri brief to blood young talent, and as a race-winner in Formula 3, Formula 2 the DTM and now Super Formula, he mounts a credible case.
Ricciardo is also reportedly off the table for a mid-season switch. If the axe were to swing on De Vries in the August break and Lawson were to get the nod, it’d be difficult to imagine another driver change at the end of the season given Tsunoda’s greatly improved form this year.
The F1 silly season moves quickly, and Ricciardo’s participation in this week’s tyre test seems certain to play a role in which direction it takes.
But while it feels like his F1 comeback is closer than ever, there’s still much to be decided before it becomes a reality.
