What’s happened to Daniel Ricciardo?

Ask anyone who has worked with Ricciardo and they’ll tell you how good he was at his zenith. Nico Hulkenberg couldn’t match Ricciardo when they were teammates at Renault in 2019 and lost his drive as a result. He is not alone in being baffled by his drop in form.

‘It doesn’t really make sense and I don’t understand it,’ says the Haas driver, ‘he’s still good, but back then he was stronger, maybe.’

No one would argue with that. Ricciardo was demonstrably a stronger driver then, not only during his glory years with Red Bull from 2014-18 but also in those two years with Renault, when he still put in outstanding performances in machines unworthy of his talent. So ignore those who argue his reputation was unfairly earned on the back of a Newey-designed Red Bull and remember also that in his last season there he pushed Verstappen harder than any teammate has come close to doing since.

His career only truly nosedived when he joined McLaren in 2021. While he took McLaren’s only win since 2012 at Monza, he was comprehensively beaten by Lando Norris over the season. In 2022, Ricciardo struggled even more with the new-generation ground effect cars and had to be paid off to make space for Oscar Piastri in 2023.

Fundamentally, the problem is down to the way the car behaves. At his best, Ricciardo thrives with a strong front end, which is precisely what the Red Bulls offered. They still do, which is why Verstappen – who wants the same characteristics – is so damn quick in them and why every teammate since Ricciardo has found him so hard to keep up with. Even the Renaults, though less effective than the Red Bulls by far, were limited by their grip at the rear, not the front. This meant he could attack on the way into low- and medium-speed corners, carry the momentum into the apex, live with the loose rear end and be quick.

But at McLaren in 2021 he was lumbered with what he called a ‘peculiar’ car, held back by a weak front end. To make it work it had to be chucked into the apex, provoking it into turning, almost against its will, a technique Norris mastered but Ricciardo did not. The result for him was a car that under-rotated and therefore travelled through what amounted to a longer corner, with the application of full throttle for the ensuing straight delayed.

Then came the rule change. The current ground effect cars produce enormous downforce from their powerful under floors, but every team battles with understeer on entry to slower and medium-speed corners where the floors aren’t working so hard – the worst possible characteristic for Ricciardo. Last year, he made some progress with the AlphaTauri because he was able to modify the setup in a way that allowed him to use something approximating his early-braking, high-entry-speed style because the car was responsive enough mid-corner to provide the rotation he needs. This year, the limits of that progress have been laid bare and he’s been outclassed by Tsunoda, who favours a Norris-style late-braking, aggressive turn-in approach.

‘Most of the time, I struggle in FP1 and FP2 more than him, he drives quite well but we always consistently turn it around overnight,’ says Tsunoda. ‘On the driving side, we are similar but my strength is braking. I have good confidence that not many drivers can do my [late] braking, so I’m able to maximise performance there.’

If you have a car that responds best to that late-braking style to get that quick initial rotation, Ricciardo is not the driver for you. With a stronger front-end like that enjoyed by Verstappen, he has the feel and ability to respond and balance the car well even if the rear is a little unstable. That’s reflected in the fact that across the first four qualifying sessions of 2024 he was, on average, two-tenths slower than Tsunoda. By F1 standards, that’s a huge margin in the same car.

His dejection after qualifying in Australia was striking. There, he talked of producing a ‘mega’ lap in Q1 that was still a tenth off Tsunoda. His surprise when, during his round of interviews after being eliminated from qualifying, he saw Tsunoda’s Q2 time was revealing. He questioned whether there might be a car problem but, given the team had been right through it after similar questions in Saudi Arabia – finding some small weaknesses but nothing that explained the gap to Tsunoda – he appeared to be grasping for answers. That was simply the best he had, and it wasn’t good enough. He improved a little at Suzuka, lapping half-a-tenth off his teammate in qualifying having made changes to eliminate the confidence-inducing understeer he’d dialled in at Albert Park.

Inside the RB team, there is confidence he will make progress. It was always anticipated that he might need a little more time to extract the best from himself, and hope remains that the old Daniel Ricciardo has not shown his face for the last time. Alan Permane, the team’s new racing director, worked with Ricciardo at Renault in 2019-20 and rates that ‘old’ Ricciardo as one of the best.

‘Race pace was one of his absolute strengths,’ he says of Ricciardo’s time at Renault. ‘In the races, he would be a couple of tenths, or two and a half tenths [faster], and would just pull away. To me, that’s what makes the very good ones – the ones that deliver in qualifying but don’t lose it, they just keep going.

‘That’s how Daniel was back then. What happened at McLaren was very surprising. I don’t think anybody understood that, although he was up against a very formidable driver in Lando. The aim here is to get him back to those levels that I know well from working with him before.’

Where Ricciardo has improved since his McLaren nightmare is his technical approach. There, he battled in vain to rewire himself to be a more technical driver, delving into that side of his game and building greater understanding. The trouble was that he was trying to force himself into a counter-intuitive driving style that didn’t work for him. He became lost, disillusioned and couldn’t wait to get away from F1. The time out was good for him and he returned revitalised in the middle of last season to replace an underperforming Nyck de Vries, which is what makes this poor start to this season so hard to square. And he’s now all too aware of the speculation about his future, not helped by Marko’s negative comments about his performances.

‘I came into this weekend deep down believing we were going to have a very good weekend,’ said Ricciardo after finishing 12th in Australia, five places behind Tsunoda. ‘In terms of the noise, I’m on this journey at the moment and need to focus on myself. If I let any of the noise in, it’s going to distract me from the path I’m on. I haven’t let any of the negative stuff creep in.

‘I didn’t expect to start the season like this. Not only me, a few people are wondering why. The important thing is that I stay calm and on course. It’s not that my head is filled with nonsense, I honestly feel good. Unfortunately the results haven’t made me feel awesome. But deep down behind the wheel I do feel good and excited and just want to keep racing and I’m sure I’ll find a bit more in myself and I still believe maybe we’ll find a little something on the car.’ His wish of a new chassis will be fulfilled for the next race in China, although that’s a scheduled change rather than the result of a problem with the existing monocoque.

Ricciardo must take the optimistic view because the only alternative conclusion is that his skillset as a driver is fundamentally at odds with the prevailing characteristics of today’s F1 cars, especially given, in contrast to the McLaren days, he feels comfortable with the car but is still lacking pace.

There’s still time to turn it around, but the cold, harsh truth is that in a cold, harsh sport, even those who recognise how remarkable he was at his best have lost confidence that Ricciardo can ever again become the driver he once was. Time is running out and everyone knows that if he leaves F1 again, there’ll be no road back.