Daniel Ricciardo says it is realistic to assume he will not race in F1 again after the Singapore Grand Prix and that if that happens he is content to lose his seat at RB.
When Red Bull overhauled their driver line-up in early August, they decided to appoint Sergio Pérez, leaving Ricciardo in RB with Liam Lawson waiting for a possible race seat. With Yuki Tsunoda confirmed for 2025, Ricciardo was hoping to hear back about next year after the Singapore race, but sources have suggested a switch could be in the cards before the next race, the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas, and Ricciardo has admitted that this is likely to be the case.
“Look, obviously it’s not realistic,” Ricciardo said. “Obviously the situation for Red Bull was very different from race to race, and in a way for all of us, and obviously for Checo, sometimes it felt like it was going one way, sometimes it felt like it was going another way.”
“Obviously the emphasis was on this weekend. It would have been nice to have a better weekend, but who knows if it would have changed anything or if the decision was already made before the weekend. Of course we’re ready for that. That’s why we tried to acknowledge some things to ourselves as well throughout the weekend.”
“I think I also recognise why I came back to the sport, sometimes you see the bigger picture and I always said I didn’t want to be just a guy on the grid fighting for points every now and then and that’s what this year has been like.
“Obviously, the aim this year was to do well enough to come back to Red Bull and fight for wins again and see if I still had it. I felt like I came up short, so I guess at the time I was thinking: ‘Okay, what else can I fight for here? What else will give me fulfillment?'”
“I was a young driver too and at some point I didn’t just want to take up space. Of course you have to be selfish, but for me, if I can’t fight at the front with Red Bull, then I have to ask myself why I’m staying on the grid. I’m OK with that.”
If it was to be Ricciardo’s final race in F1, he would have finished fastest lap after pitting from the back of the grid for soft tyres and taking an extra point from winner Lando Norris, giving Max Verstappen a point longer in the championship lead than he should have, and Ricciardo said he was aware that might have been a factor in his decision.
“I had an idea but I also thought they were just letting me have a bit of fun because I was quite far out of the points. I tried the softs to be a bit more aggressive at the start but I knew it was a bit of a difficult place to overtake, so you never know what’s going to happen on the first lap.”
“I didn’t have a good start to the year and the track was dirty so I knew if I put on the hard tyres I would fall back, so I thought I’d put on the soft tyres and see what happens, and if that doesn’t help I’ll pit early and try to undercut a few cars.
“In the end we just weren’t fast enough. I don’t know the full story of Yuuki’s race but I saw that he was outside the points, so that might also be evidence that we just weren’t good today. So I’m hoping for the fastest lap at the end and for Max to win by one point, because that would be a very nice Christmas present for me guaranteed. So sorry Lando!”
