What’s happened to Daniel Ricciardo?

It’s been a decade since Daniel Ricciardo exploded onto the Formula 1 scene, combining on-track performances to humble his four-time World Champion teammate at Red Bull with the kind of charisma that’s as rare in F1 today as anyone other than his old team winning a race.

What remains today is a pale shadow of a driver once headed for the stars. Then we all asked when he would win his first World Championship; today just hanging onto his seat until the end of the season is looking an increasingly tall order.

The 34-year-old headed into 2024 driving for the terribly named Visa Cash App RB team, formerly AlphaTauri, expecting to stake his claim to replace Sergio Perez as Max Verstappen’s teammate in 2025. He’d shown flashes of the old promise in seven outings in 2023 despite being sidelined for five races with a broken hand; being comprehensively outperformed by teammate Yuki Tsunoda across the first four races of the new season wasn’t in the script.