How Ricciardo's 2024 task for Red Bull F1 promotion is now much harder

“In an ultra-tight midfield, you fall off very quickly as soon as you don't get everything perfect.”

New RB team principal Laurent Mekies succinctly outlines the serious sum now facing half the Formula 1 grid. For Haas, Williams, Sauber and maybe one day Alpine too, in 2024 they are fighting for whatever Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll might leave available in terms of points, if none of the other frontrunners hit trouble. That they haven’t so far in the new campaign means Haas’s savvy/cynical (delete as you see fit) point via Nico Hulkenberg in Jeddah has the American squad sixth in the constructors’ championship. Those others have none.

There is a sense pervading the paddock that the gap between the frontrunners and the midfield has increased compared to 2023. We’d revive the ‘Class A vs Class B’ captioning, but the reality is Red Bull is in the top class all alone, with two congested but separate packs chasing on behind.

“It feels bigger,” Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu said in Jeddah. “It seems like at the moment if there’s no big issue or drama going on ahead, it’s difficult to achieve [big points]. We’re fighting again for that P9, P10 position. Unfortunately, that’s the case for now.”

The season’s stats don’t actually back up the trend, if from a very small sample size of the opening two races. Using the supertimes method – where the fastest single lap by each car at each race weekend is expressed as a percentage of the fastest single lap overall (100.000%) – the gap between the frontrunners in 2023 (Red Bull, Ferrari, Aston and Mercedes) after two races was 0.493%. Right now in 2024, the gap has contracted to 0.445%.

But critical the difference is McLaren’s major in-season gains last year mean the frontrunning pack swelled and has now stabilised at the same size from the off. At the same time, Alpine has fallen from sixth to towards the back. The outcome is a severe squeeze on the points chances left for the rest in this era of impressive reliability.

The opportunity for midfield teams to score points in 2024 are few and far between

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Those lower midfield teams simply require perfection and even if they get it, 11th might be the best result on offer.

But, so far, RB isn’t even getting that from its driver line-up. And for one of them, that significantly alters the narrative of what had long been set to be a key theme of 2024.

“To end my career as a Red Bull driver would be perfect,” Daniel Ricciardo said after making his return with the then AlphaTauri squad last year. “Not that I'm looking at the end, but if I go back there, then I'll certainly make sure I finish there.”

Worse was to follow for Ricciardo in the Jeddah race, where a 40s pitstop delay under the safety car meant he was trapped at the back of the pack. But he capped a dreadful weekend with a poor solo spin after “just taking a bit too much kerb” at the opening turns late on

Ricciardo was and is openly targeting a return to his old job alongside Max Verstappen – the Australian hoping to replace Sergio Perez at Red Bull in the context of the Mexican’s relatively poor showings against this era’s dominant driver. That was the plan, anyway. But 2024 has started both badly for Ricciardo and, again, relatively, well for Perez.

Ricciardo has so far failed to outqualify team-mate Yuki Tsunoda in either of the season’s opening rounds. In Bahrain, Ricciardo put this down to “I didn't put it together” – a moment at the tricky Turns 9/10 complex proving costly. Then, in failing to make Q3 in Jeddah when Tsunoda did with a 0.48s overall edge on his team-mate, Ricciardo firmly blamed “some things [discovered] afterwards” in terms of car set-up that “even if we didn't have parc ferme, it's probably nothing we can fix in 24 hours”.

The difference was Tsunoda kept improving as qualifying went on, whereas Ricciardo plateaued and missed the cut.

Ricciardo has been outqualified by team-mate Tsunoda in 2024 so far

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Analysis of the GPS traces between the two at Q2’s end in Jeddah shows Ricciardo making gains on Tsunoda under braking – the critical area where he struggled during his painful two-year stint with McLaren – but getting done consistently on corner exits.

This can often be a symptom of a driver trying too hard and seeking to find time where none is available. It was a charge levelled at Perez during his many qualifying struggles against Verstappen last year.

Worse was to follow for Ricciardo in the Jeddah race, where a 40s pitstop delay under the safety car meant he was trapped at the back of the pack. But he capped a dreadful weekend with a poor solo spin after “just taking a bit too much kerb” at the opening turns late on.

He now heads to his home race in Melbourne, seeking a fast reset. At least the presence of a second Australian driver competing in Oscar Piastri – for the first time since Mark Webber and Ricciardo lined up there in 2013 – might help the pressure factor for Ricciardo too.

That has been amped up by Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko writing in a column for the Red Bull-owned Speedweek website that “Ricciardo has to come up with something soon”. This could be a gambit in the war at the top of the senior team, which we’ll get to, but equally when Nyck de Vries was dismissed after, as Marko claimed, “he never once did a super lap that amazed us”, it emphasises how complex Ricciardo’s rise back to Red Bull has become.

Ricciardo must "come up with something soon", according to Helmut Marko

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

In Melbourne, the pressure element also swings more on Perez. It was here in 2023 that his campaign went both figuratively and actually off-track, with Red Bull’s braking struggles at this brutally tricky track. A repeat mistake as big as Perez’s 2023 Melbourne Q1 off would be much harder to overcome than his two slim qualifying defeats to Charles Leclerc (and in Bahrain also to George Russell and Carlos Sainz) so far this team. We know that because even with Red Bull’s aerodynamic efficiency prowess on a track that is more similar to Jeddah than Bahrain, Perez could only recover to fifth last year from that exact scenario.

But, in backing up Verstappen in each race so far in 2024, Perez has registered the maximum points haul Red Bull expects from its dominant car package. There’s little sign he’s shouldering the mental burden of actually trying to win a championship battle with his team-mate – as depressing as that is for the neutral – and that, it seems, is boosting Perez.

Red Bull currently has no reason to realise Ricciardo’s senior team return dream.

Ricciardo’s focus is much more short term. His insistence that post-Jeddah “a few things would go back to the factory and come back with a fresh car in Melbourne” points to low-hanging fruit in his bid to kickstart his faltering 2024 campaign

And that’s before considering the current chaos atop its F1 management structure. There’s just no way it’s going to be making a big call in deciding on Perez’s future when there’s so much peril surrounding Christian Horner, Marko and now Verstappen too.

MORE: Did secret contract move open door for potential Verstappen Red Bull F1 exit?

Ricciardo isn’t alone on the grid in facing early-season pressure. Zhou’s Jeddah FP3 crash and missed qualifying is hardly the stuff of a driver making the vaunted ‘year three step’ of a long-term F1 racer. And Tsunoda’s petulance and disgraceful post-race driving in Bahrain hit his reputation even after his impressive qualifying speed.

But there’s hope for all three.

Zhou performed well in Bahrain in executing Sauber’s attacking undercut strategy and is soon heading for his first home race in China – exactly the market Audi is targeting a boost in sales and it will be the manufacturer that ultimately decides his future. Tsunoda’s Honda links also make him a potential asset for Aston considering all the change that’s coming for 2026.

Ricciardo isn't the only driver facing early-season pressure

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Ricciardo’s focus is much more short-term. His insistence that post-Jeddah “a few things would go back to the factory and come back with a fresh car in Melbourne” points to low-hanging fruit in his bid to kickstart his faltering 2024 campaign.

Longer-term, Mekies insists “we have rediscovered a driver who works technically to a very high standard, beyond his speed he brings a lot of added value to the team”. Then there’s his obvious value to the team’s sponsors with his fan popularity, plus he holds Horner’s favour if the war for Red Bull’s future goes the way of its current team principal.

But all that will count for little if Ricciardo can’t get his 2024 story back to where it was expected to head. There’s a very real risk consistent errors or underperformance in the congested trailing pack will cost any team on the days when the leading teams do leave points available.

And Red Bull’s war of succession really began with AlphaTauri/RB being put on notice this time a year ago. Constructors’ championship slips cost not just cash, but F1 futures too…

Ricciardo won't earn a step to Red Bull if he can't maximise points scoring chances for RB

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