F1 pundits believe it would be a “real shame” if Daniel Ricciardo were to return to a “wingman” role alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull if he does rejoin the team.
Ricciardo’s return to the grid is the talk of the F1 world after he was granted a lifeline to drive for Red Bull’s feeder team AlphaTauri for the rest of the season.
He has finished 13th and 16th in his two races back, driving well if not unremarkably, in one of the slowest cars on the grid.
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AlphaTauri clearly isn’t the end game for Ricciardo, who has aspirations to return to a full-time seat at a top team like Red Bull, where he enjoyed the best results of his career.
Red Bull boss Christian Horner hasn’t been afraid to put pressure on Sergio Perez, saying Ricciardo’s best bet is to target the Mexican’s seat for the 2025 season after his contract expires.
Ricciardo has said a return to Red Bull would be a “fairytale” way to end his career, but it begs the inevitable question — has he just wasted the last five years to be back where he was as the Robin to Verstappen’s Batman?
Verstappen is rewriting the record books this season and will claim his third consecutive drivers’ championship in his Red Bull rocket ship.
Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 podcast, commentator David Croft said Verstappen’s Red Bull teammates almost have to accept that they will be the team’s No. 2 driver and have no chance of winning the championship.
Croft said: “Is it a weird paradox that to be a successful driver pairing to Max, you have to accept that you’re number two, but to be the best driver, you never accept that you’re number two and you’re in it to win. Isn’t that like impossible?”
Co-commentator Karun Chandhok, who drove in 11 F1 races, replied: “In Checo’s situation he’s got to accept he’s against one of the greatest naturally talented drivers ever to sit in a Formula One car.”
Chandhok made the point that while Red Bull is dominating F1 now, it will be crucial to have two strong drivers when other teams begin to get a handle on the new era of regulations and catch them up.
“For me, the point of all of this is at the moment it’s fine, right? Max is winning the Constructors’ by himself,” Chandhok continued.
“But the reality is, if Mercedes and McLaren and Aston and Ferrari do get it together, and the natural order of things is we will start to see convergence with the stability of rules, that’s just the way Formula 1 has always been, they will get closer.”
He said Perez’s struggles, particularly in qualifying, could give Red Bull enough justification to switch him out for Ricciardo at some stage.
“Then Max might need a support act and then you can’t have a teammate who’s not made Q3 for four or five weekends in a row,” Chandhok said, referring to Perez.
“And I think that’s the point I’m trying to make from Red Bull’s perspective. It’s not about this year, this they has done and dusted them, they’re going to clean it up.
“It’s a question of when rather than if, but it’s about what are they going to do for next year. And I think that’s where the Ricciardo factor starts to come into play here.”
Former Aston Martin strategist Bernie Collins said: “I wonder when we were talking right at the start of the conversation about Checo Perez being comfortable as the number two.
“So as long as you’re comfortable with that, then you might be more successful.
“I wonder if someone like Daniel Ricardo is able to have that same mindset shift as well when we think about why he left Red Bull at the beginning.
“If he can have that same shift and go, ‘You know what, I’m not gunning for World Champion. I just want to be a phenomenal number two driver’.
“And then maybe I wonder if he will get to that.”
Ricciardo famously left Red Bull at the end of the 2018 season after several skirmishes with Red Bull’s emerging golden child Verstappen, including at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
F1’s race caller Croft has previously said he still doesn’t understand why Ricciardo left Red Bull and he reiterated it would be a “shame” for the Aussie to have a No. 2 driver mindset and be back in the same position all these years later.
Croft said: “Wouldn’t that be a real shame? If he did, there would have been absolutely no reason to have left Red Bull in the first place.”
Collins replied: “Exactly that. You can’t rewrite history. But that was the reason why he left.”
Croft: “If he could, he’d never have left in the first place.”
The F1 season will resume at the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday August 27.