If you were lucky enough to be part of the capacity crowd at the Australian Grand Prix, you’d have been forgiven for thinking Daniel Ricciardo was still racing this season.
No driver was better supported or more comprehensively mobbed than Ricciardo. Any speculation that his dire two seasons with McLaren might have dented enthusiasm for his permanent grin proved absolutely unfounded. If anything, he seems more popular now, back in the Red Bull Racing colours that made him a household name.
But there is a tiny little asterisk on the scenes of seemingly boundless adulation.
The crowd was hungry for an answer: which team would he be racing for next season?
It was only the third race of his sabbatical season. It would’ve been easy for Ricciardo to keep expectations low, to bat the questions away knowing that breaking back into F1 once after stepping away is a tough feat.
But instead he leaned in.
“The signs are pointing towards getting back on the grid,” he said, per ESPN. “I feel like that’s where I’m tracking in my head and a few of the habits that I’m having or doing is pointing towards that.
“It’s only been a few months [out of F1], but I think some itches have been scratched, so to speak.
“I’ve actually weirdly found that the days that I’ve had no schedule are the days when I’ve actually done training and I’ve done things like I would before.
“Being my own boss, writing my own schedule has actually brought out a lot of the things in me. When I thought I might just sit on the couch and watch movies all day and eat junk food, I’m just not. That’s not me.
“So even these things have made me realise how much I do care about it.”
It’s a response that no doubt delighted his partisan home crowd.
But it was an undeniably odd thing to say, because unless Ricciardo is sitting on a monumental secret, the driver market looks as closed to him in 2024 as it did for this year — with one possible exception.
THE BAR IS STILL SET HIGH
Of course Ricciardo did have options to remain racing this season, but his heart genuinely didn’t seem in another season, such was the emotional battering of his time at McLaren.
“I really felt like I needed this year to take a step back,” he told fans at the grand prix.
“If it was to be another difficult year, especially for me as an individual, I know that would probably drive me that step further away from the sport. I was certainly in fear of losing the love for it.”
And the odds of a bad season are always higher in the midfield, where good weekends are harder to come by.
It’s why Ricciardo is still not taking an F1-at-all-costs approach.
“It’s not just to be back on the grid,” he said, per ESPN. “A lot of the reason for taking this year off was that I didn’t want to just jump back into a car, any car, just to be one of the F1 drivers.
“I still don’t see myself starting from scratch and rebuilding a career from ground zero and going at it for another decade.
“I appreciate I might not have every opportunity under the sun, but I want to win. I want to be back with a with a top team and obviously a team where I have my confidence back and my mojo.
“To go back and try to put myself in just any seat or something that‘s fighting at best for a top-10 finish, I don’t think that’s going to bring the best out of me.
“I see myself, at least in my head, wanting to go back on the grid, but there are still some terms and conditions, so to speak.“
Those terms and conditions narrow the field of options considerably.
At the moment there’s only one winning team in Formula 1, and that’s the one he’s currently with: Red Bull Racing.
ISN’T HE ALREADY A RED BULL RACING DRIVER?
Ricciardo’s third-driver role at Red Bull Racing comes with no guarantees of a race drive — as you’d imagine with Max Verstappen under contract until the end of 2028 and with Sergio Pérez signed up until the end of next year.
While Red Bull Racing has form sacking drivers, it’s hard to imagine on what grounds Pérez would be dismissed, at least this early in the season.
“His confidence is sky high, and that‘s exactly what we want,” Christian Horner said of Pérez in Australia. “We want two drivers that are going to be pushing and challenging each other.”
Although really that would be better parsed as Horner wanting two drivers who push each other enough to win the constructors championship, with Verstappen far enough up the road to secure individual honours.
Given the RB19’s level of dominance over the field, it’s difficult to imagine Red Bull Racing not securing another teams championship and Pérez not locking down second in the standings comfortably.
Ironically it might take exactly what Horner said he wanted — effectively a title battle between his drivers — and it blowing up in acrimony to change the driver line-up.
Without that, Ricciardo would have to be somehow sensational in the simulator and during some private testing later in the year to convince the team to sub him into Pérez’s place.
SO WHAT ARE HIS OTHER OPTIONS?
There are three other frontrunning teams this season: Aston Martin, Ferrari and Mercedes.
Aston Martin has Fernando Alonso on a two-year deal expiring at the end of 2024, and the Spaniard has already made the point emphatically that age is just a number. If Aston Martin continues to improve, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him stay longer.
Lance Stroll races on a perpetual deal thanks to his father’s ownership of the team, but his gutsy drive with broken wrists and a broken foot in Bahrain have silenced those who doubt his enthusiasm for the sport.
At Ferrari both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz are under contract until the end of next year in a popular and effective line-up.
Mercedes is the only team with at least one and possibly both seats out of contract.
Russell is on an undisclosed multiyear deal that could be up for renewal this season, but Mercedes considers him its future, and it’s unimaginable that he’d be allowed to slip out.
Lewis Hamilton’s future is always a topic of conversation, but both he and Toto Wolff have said to expect a new deal.
“I feel amazing about [my future at Mercedes],” he said in Australia. “I see myself being with Mercedes until my last days, to be honest.
“As long as I can continue to help drive the team forwards and really contribute … if there‘s ever going to be a point where I feel like I’m not able to do that, then it’s time for youngsters to come in and take my seat.
“But I’m still feeling pretty young and in pretty decent shape.”
Maybe a comprehensive beating by George Russell would sway him, but that’s an enormously tenuous hypothetical.
WHERE ELSE?
We’d really have to stretch the terms and conditions to find Ricciardo a home next season.
Alpine is all signed up. McLaren is obviously off the table. AlphaTauri wouldn’t make any sense. Williams is surely a step too far down the grid.
Haas has both drivers up for renewal, and though Guenther Steiner didn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand, he said he wanted to give both Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen a chance to cement their places.
“It’s a little bit early to speak about a driver change already for next year,” Steiner said. “For sure at some point maybe I speak with him, but I cannot promise anything, because if our two guys do a good job…”
That leaves one last possibility: Sauber.
The team will give up its Alfa Romeo sponsorship at the end of this year ahead of full Audi ownership in 2026, and the buy-in of the Volkswagen brand makes it one of the sport’s sleeper teams.
While Valtteri Bottas is under contract until at least the end of next season, Zhou Guanyu is out of contract this year.
Parachuting into Hinwil wouldn’t be the kind of move into the podium places that Ricciardo described, but Audi has big ambitions for 2026 and beyond — a time line that still suits the 33-year-old Australian. Being in place ahead of the official handover would give him an influential role in shaping that all-important first car and make him a works driver, a coveted status in grand prix racing.
Bottas is also a known quantity. Though he’s not known for his wheel-to-wheel racing, his speed is undisputed. It would be a reasonable bar against which Ricciardo could start his reputation rehabilitation.
But even if the Aussie decided he was willing to take what he’d hope would be a temporary step down the grid, the seat isn’t certain. Zhou Guanyu has had a great start to the year, having made a clear step forward on his rookie season, and is every chance of fighting for retention.
Which brings us back to square one: there is no obvious option for a Ricciardo comeback, certainly with his stipulated terms and conditions for a frontrunning seat.
That’s not to say it can’t be done or that the early-season form of some drivers won’t evaporate later this year or that Ricciardo doesn’t appeal as a prospect on both a competitive and commercial level. It’s just that his route back to the sport still relies on some upsets in the driver market working in his favour.
Chance will still have to play a significant role for the enraptured home crowd to cheer on an on-track Ricciardo at next year’s Australian Grand Prix. But sometimes all you need is a bit of chance.
