Why F1 history warns against Ricciardo's Renault move

Timing is everything in Formula 1, and for a driver being in the right place at the right time is a prerequisite for success. Daniel Ricciardo is staking his immediate future on his timing being bang on.

But history tells us this is a huge risk. Usually, when top drivers sign new deals they either move up the grid or cement an existing relationship with a strong team. But Ricciardo has turned down an extended stay at a race-winning squad to join one that hasn't been on the top step of the podium for more than five years.

Comparisons have been drawn between Ricciardo's decision to turn his back on Red Bull and sign for Renault for 2019 to Lewis Hamilton forsaking McLaren for Mercedes ahead of the '13 season. Superficially, there are similarities, but it's a dangerous analogue because Renault is some way short of where Mercedes was when Hamilton signed on the dotted line in September '12.

Mercedes had emerged as a race-winning team before Hamilton signed, whereas Renault hasn't even had a podium finish this year. It's far earlier in its trajectory, and therefore Ricciardo cannot be as confident about it reaching its destination as Hamilton was.

McLaren was very competitive in 2012, stronger than Red Bull is now, and arguably could have won the world championship but for reliability and operational weaknesses. But it was on the brink of a spectacular slump thanks to losing its works status and plans were already being worked on to link up with Honda.

Mercedes had also started work on the 2014 engine regulations long before anyone else and was widely expected to dominate once the new power units came in.

Sure enough, Hamilton won a race in 2013, then the championship the year after. Ricciardo is unlikely to win a race next year without a spadeful of luck, and the 2020 title is a desperate long-shot. In 2012, there was already buzz about Mercedes being the team to be at in '14, but nobody is tipping Renault for a world title in '20 right now.

There's no doubt Hamilton's example is in Ricciardo's mind, not least due to a desire to be the main man at a team rather than have what he sees as an unequal share of the Red Bull limelight alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull. He made clear that Hamilton's Mercedes leap might be influential when asked about potential McLaren and Renault interest earlier this year.

"I'm not going to say 'no it doesn't interest me at all', probably more because of what Lewis was able to with Mercedes," said Ricciardo at last month's French Grand Prix. "They [Renault and McLaren] are not quite in that position yet, but could they be? Maybe. The thought of that, it has some appeal. I wouldn't say it's top of my list right now, but I wouldn't dismiss it.

"Obviously, McLaren and Renault aren't there today, but maybe they will be there in a year or three years' time. You never really know.

"Lewis pulled the trigger pretty well. Whether he fluked it... he says that he really knew it was going to happen [but] I don't know.

"Obviously he's done well for himself with that move, so whether it's just a fantasy for everyone else, I don't know. But at least there's a little bit of proof that something like that could potentially happen again."

Only Ricciardo knows exactly why he has taken the plunge, and what Renault sold him to convince him that he was making the right choice

Only Ricciardo knows exactly why he has taken the plunge, and what Renault sold him to convince him that he was making the right choice. Perhaps as much as anything it was the desire to get away from Verstappen and into a new environment that persuaded him to leave? If so, Renault was the only viable option.

But whatever the myriad reasons churning around in Ricciardo's mind when he backed away from a one-year Red Bull deal he was on the brink of inking were, let's hope he's going into it with his eyes open.

There's a seductive allure to moving to a team still on the up - make it your team, build it in your image, put in the hard graft, then be the one to benefit from all the hard work. Who wouldn't want that? The trouble is, this gambit fails more often than it succeeds.

Usually, when a driver moves from a winning team to one that isn't winning, it's the consequence of circumstances rather than choice.

Recent examples of that are Felipe Massa moving from Ferrari to Williams in 2014, Rubens Barrichello going from Brawn to the same team in '10, Heikki Kovalainen going from McLaren to Lotus Racing in '10 and David Coulthard washing up at Red Bull after McLaren in 2005.

But this isn't what Ricciardo has done. He's still in his prime and Red Bull not only wanted him but thought it had him for next year - and had been willing to offer him big money to ensure he stayed.

The more relevant recent comparison is Sebastian Vettel moving from Red Bull to Ferrari for 2015. Ferrari hadn't won a race in '14, while Red Bull - through Ricciardo - scraped together three wins. Given the relative success of Vettel's switch, that has to go down as a successful move.

Vettel, seemingly like Ricciardo now, felt he needed a new challenge away from Red Bull. But Ferrari wasn't in the same situation as Renault, it was a team just having a poor year after starting work on the 2014 regulations too late. Joining Ferrari, even in a difficult year, is rarely backing a lame horse these days.

Talking of Ferrari, there are also comparisons with Michael Schumacher's move from Benetton after back to back drivers' championships to Ferrari in 1996. The team was then built up around Schumacher, and although it wasn't until the fourth season that the combination won the constructors' title, and had to wait another year to win the drivers' crown, it was an inspired move.

But Ferrari had won races in each of the previous two seasons and was a regular on the podium. Again, a stronger platform competitively than what Renault offers Ricciardo.

Gerhard Berger is an interesting comparison. In 1992, he was in his third season with McLaren-Honda alongside Ayrton Senna and decided to take a big-money offer to return to Ferrari for the following season.

While Ferrari did not win a race in 1993, no surprise given its terrible '92 season, Berger did go on to spend three seasons there and won the '94 German Grand Prix. On paper, it seems to be a bad move given Senna won five races the following season. But as Berger himself said in an interview with McLaren's website two years ago, "I'm not so sure if the wins were more due to Ayrton than anything else".

But Berger's choice was made because he saw, justifiably, McLaren as a team on the slide. After the relatively successful 1993 season, McLaren spent three years in the winless wilderness.

Berger, of course, previously made a success of a move from a winning team (Benetton) to a winless Ferrari for the 1987 season. That switch he then made in reverse for 1996.

Fernando Alonso's move from Renault to McLaren for 2007 is another obvious comparison. Renault had won back to back championships in 2005/06, while in the second of those years McLaren had failed to win a race.

Time and again, there are examples of moving to lesser F1 teams that hurt drivers

But while Alonso's first alliance with McLaren was ill-fated, it wasn't a bad move to make. Firstly, it's important to note that he originally agreed to join McLaren in late 2005 - a season during which McLaren had the fastest car. Secondly, he knew Renault wouldn't sustain its form, so engineered a switch to a team that he thought could.

That it unravelled spectacularly and forced Alonso to return to Renault for the following year, is by the by. Alonso's move made perfect sense, and Renault's form slumped after he left - it didn't win a race in 2007.

But time and again, there are examples of moving to lesser teams that hurt. Damon Hill had no choice in leaving Williams for 1997, but he threw his lot in with the Yamaha-powered Arrows team and Tom Walkinshaw's ambitious plans for a revival there. Briefly, it seemed exciting - and at the Hungarian GP the combination almost won. But overall, it was a failure.

This, however, was a case of Hill joining a team well behind where Renault currently is. To say Ricciardo is following that path would be an overstatement.

Niki Lauda turned his back on a winning Ferrari to join Brabham in 1978. This was partly down to what he saw as a lack of support when he had his life-threatening crash at the Nurburgring in '76 and Ferrari drafted in Carlos Reutemann. Lauda did win a couple of races in '78 but he retired - temporarily - during the following season.

Perhaps there's a valid comparison there in that Lauda felt undervalued by Ferrari and sought a new home. But while there was some success at Brabham, it ultimately didn't work out. Similarly, John Surtees quit Ferrari during 1966 because of a perceived lack of support, and although he went on to win a couple more races - one for Cooper and one for Honda - his title-winning days were over.

He's not the only driver to have walked away from a struggling Ferrari. Jacky Ickx joined Brabham in 1969, primarily because the deal allowed him to also race for John Wyer and win the Le Mans 24 Hours in the Ford GT40. He then returned to Ferrari the year after.

There are cases of drivers with teams on the wane rolling the dice on new projects. Jacques Villeneuve left ailing Williams, which no longer had works Renault support, after a winless season, for the new BAR team in 1999. That proved not to be a wise move, and he never won again.

Further back, Phil Hill was part of a Ferrari breakaway that created the ATS team (not to be confused with the team of the same name in the 1970s/80s tied to the German wheelrim company). That turned out to be a disastrous move for a driver who won the world championship for Ferrari two years earlier.

The most infamous move of this type was Emerson Fittipaldi leaving McLaren to join brother Wilson's Copersucar-backed team. This was the end of Emmo's top-line grand prix career and meant he spent the next five years feeding on scraps.

Among these examples of drivers putting faith in new projects, there is one of success: Jackie Stewart leaving BRM to join Ken Tyrrell's Matra squad for 1968. But BRM was on the wane, and this was Stewart reigniting a pre-existing relationship. It paid off, big-time, but at that point Tyrrell was simply taking a chassis from Matra then developing and running it.

Similarly, Dan Gurney left race-winning Porsche to join emerging Brabham in 1963 - albeit with the German manufacturer pulling out.

Perhaps Jack Brabham's decision to create his own team is the best comparison for Ricciardo, the example of a doughty compatriot making things work with his own operation. The differences being that Brabham was already a two-time world champion, and he had full control over his own team whereas Ricciardo is only trying to build a team around him.

If it pays off, Ricciardo will look like a genius. If it backfires, he'll go down as a fool. But his audacity deserves to be rewarded

In fact, there seems to be something about Australians making these choices, because Alan Jones left Shadow - a fortuitous race winner with him at the wheel in 1977 - for the emerging Williams Grand Prix Engineering in '78 for its first year as a constructor. That didn't turn out badly at all.

Ricciardo isn't going to a start-up, but an established team with a continuous history stretching back to 1981 - making those comparisons moot. But there are plenty of warnings there.

It's no coincidence that there's no entirely analogous example in grand prix history of a top line driver joining a team at this point in its rise and then going on to success.

It's difficult to get into a winning grand prix car - this year there are only three - and you've got to be pretty sure of yourself if you jump out of one.

For Renault, it's still a question of if rather than when it will re-emerge as a championship contending force. And even if it is when, that is almost certainly outside of the scope of Ricciardo's two-year deal.

If it pays off, Ricciardo will look like a genius. If it backfires, he'll go down as a fool. But his audacity deserves to be rewarded.

Statistical data provided by Joao Paulo Cunha using FORIX.