Pink Bull crew principal Christian Horner says the shortage of consistency that Daniel Ricciardo confirmed this season ended up costing him his race seat in System 1.
Ricciardo has been changed by Liam Lawson for the remainder of the 2024 season at RB, successfully ending his time in F1 after 257 race begins. The Australian was given a race seat partway by way of 2023 to see if he might be a possible alternative for Sergio Perez in future if wanted, however Horner says an incapability to ship common high-level performances proved expensive.
“I believe it was the shortage of consistency,” Horner stated. “I imply he began the season roughly, then Miami was a weekend of two halves, the Friday and Saturday morning was improbable and it regarded just like the Daniel of outdated – defending towards Ferraris and out-driving the automotive – however then Saturday afternoon and the Sunday have been disastrous.
“Even round Barcelona, Helmut (Marko, Pink Bull Racing director) needed him out of the automotive, and there was already a number of stress on him there. However by the point we acquired to Montreal it was really pricey outdated Jacques Villeneuve who acquired him correctly wound up by giving him a tough time. (ED: The 1997 world champion was crucial of Ricciardo within the media).
“It undoubtedly fired him up as a result of the way in which he drove the automotive that weekend, he grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and put collectively a really sturdy race weekend. So I did say, ‘give Jacques a name each grand prix for the remainder of the 12 months!’ as a result of no matter he stated it undoubtedly labored.”
However after having given Ricciardo an opportunity to return to Pink Bull, Horner stated the model of the driving force that rejoined the crew from McLaren on the finish of 2022 was very completely different to the one he’d identified beforehand.
“I didn’t acknowledge the Daniel on the finish of his tenure at McLaren,” he stated. And I stated to him ‘why don’t you come and be a part of us, rediscover your ardour for the game, we’ve acquired a complete bunch of sponsors and companions and Max [Verstappen] hates doing all that stuff, so that you’re going to must shake just a few palms and switch up to some occasions, but when there’s a chance to stay you again within the automotive we will see if you happen to’ve nonetheless acquired it, if you happen to rediscover your mojo’.
“He picked up some actually dangerous habits when he got here again from McLaren, within the automotive, and little by little, working by his outdated engineering crew, he began to search out his type once more. Then we caught him within the automotive for a check at Silverstone, simply after the grand prix, and he knew that was a giant check for him as a result of Nyck de Vries had been barely underwhelming within the AlphaTauri on the time, and naturally we wanted a backup resolution for Sergio if he weren’t to ship.
“So Daniel put in an impressive efficiency at Silverstone, after which primarily based off that we determined to place him into the AlphaTauri for the rest of the 12 months, and sadly, he had an important begin in Hungary, however then shortly after, the race at Zandvoort, he had an innocuous-looking accident however clearly the lashback on the steering wheel broke his hand fairly badly.
“That knocked him out for 4 or 5 races, at which level gave Liam the chance to step in and it’s like ‘OK this child can drive as properly’. So in the long run we elected to take expertise over youth as a result of the aim of Daniel… he wasn’t a junior driver, he was there as a backstop within the occasion Sergio wasn’t discovering his type.”
