Daniel Ricciardo will need to be consistently beating new teammate Yuki Tsunoda by the end of the season if he’s to have any hope of mounting a case for promotion to Red bull Racing.
AlphaTauri stunned the F1 world by ruthlessly sacking rookie Nyck de Vries after only 10 grands prix to sub in Ricciardo starting from the next race in Hungary on 28–30 July.
Ricciardo had been sitting out the season as Red Bull Racing’s third driver with the target of returning to the grid in 2024 but seized the opportunity of an early opening at the Red Bull-owned backmarker.
The eight-time race winner had previously said he wouldn’t consider racing for a team that couldn’t offer him the chance to fight for wins or podiums but has lately softened his stance, saying a lower ranked constructor with a path to the front would pique his interest.
His placement at AlphaTauri puts him on a potential trajectory to take over from Sergio Pérez at Red Bull Racing at the end of the Mexican’s contract in 2025 or potentially as soon as next season.
But the move to drop him back into a full-time race seat on short notice is also a high-stakes stress test of his ability to return to the form that earnt him a reputation as one of Formula 1’s most formidable racers before his ill-fated move to McLaren in 2021–22.
Any hint of difficulty in the next 12 races could spell doom for his F1 career and end his comeback as quickly as it started.
“It’s going to be a big 12 races for Daniel,” said Matt Coch, co-host of Fox Sports podcast Pit Talk.
“Basically, if he’s not beating Yuki Tsunoda consistently by the end of the year, I’m sorry — I hate to say this, because I’m a big fan of Daniel — It’s not good enough.
“He has to beat the established benchmark. That’s the way Formula 1 works. It is a meritocracy, and you either beat it or you beat it, basically.
“There are no guarantees here. And if this doesn’t work, Daniel’s Formula 1 career is pretty well done, because after McLaren, if he doesn’t succeed against Yuki Tsunoda at AlphaTauri, I’m sorry, no-one’s going to want him.”
Measuring success at the backmarker team will be difficult.
AlphaTauri is the last-placed team in the constructors championship with only two points to its name. The nest-best team, Alfa Romeo, has more than quadruple the score.
Its raw qualifying pace places the AT04 at the back of the pack, half a second slower than Alfa Romeo and almost a full two seconds slower than Red Bull Racing.
“That fundamental issue with a backmarking team remains that it’ll be really difficult to prove himself,” Pit Talk host Michael Lamonato said. “The benefit is that the team he’s aiming for owns this team, so they will see [his form] in the data.
“But it is a really fascinating situation, because unless he scores some really big results and he’s obviously smashing or being smashed by Yuki Tsunoda, it’ll be difficult to know how it’s going.
“He’s probably going to be finishing out of the points, often 14th, 15th, something like this. It’ll be hard to know what success looks like.”
Unless the team enjoys a shock turnaround — or, even less likely, the car proves to be more competitive in Ricciardo’s hands than it’s looked with Tsunoda and De Vries at the wheel — points will be off the table at all but the most exceptional races.
“I don’t think we can put a measure of needing to score 10 points or he needs to score points at three races,” Coch said.
“I don’t think we can read anything into that and put a number on it, because we just don’t know and probably the team doesn’t know how it’s going to fare.
“Hungary — let’s not read anything into that. That’s going to be learning experience. Daniel’s been at that team before, but it was a long time ago. We’re talking 10-odd years. So there’s going be an adjustment period, there’s going to be a case of learning the team, learning the car — all that sort of stuff.
“We won’t know how he’s going until probably maybe Japan or Singapore, because after the break you go Netherlands and Monza. So that’s four races, either side of the break that he’ll be learning.
“We need to cut him some slack, because I don’t think we can have a high bar for him to clear straight off the bat.”
But Ricciardo won’t have a long grace period before needing to mount a case that he’s back on song.
“What we need to see is Daniel in the first couple of races inching his way towards Tsunoda and then from there on being right with him, if not a little bit ahead,” Coch added.
“Beyond that, it’s going to be in the finer detail, in the data that we don’t see.
“There’s all this data behind the scenes that they’ve got access to that could also be a measure of success or failure, but we’re never going to know that could very well decide the future of not just Daniel but potentially Sergio.”
