The inadvertent farewell that F1 risks not appreciating

Daniel Ricciardo is poised to make a calculated gamble. In only two races’ time, he will hit pause on his frontline racing career to seemingly occupy a third driver role. That spell on the sidelines, he hopes, will better position him to bag a strong seat for 2024.

The Australian, bought out of his McLaren contract a year ahead of schedule owing to his current nadir, has admitted to being caught a little off-guard by the madness of the driver market silly season just gone. And with Alpine unwilling to reunite with an old flame, while Ricciardo didn’t fancy plying his trade towards the back of the grid at Williams or Haas, suddenly his options to retain a race seat looked a little lean.

While Mercedes insists nothing is signed with any driver, Ricciardo appears to be the prime contender to land a test and reserve driver role. For one, there’s been noise of such a move since September’s Italian Grand Prix. No smoke without fire and all that. Second, with Monza supersub Nyck de Vries being poached by AlphaTauri and Stoffel Vandoorne cutting ties with the three-pointed star to defend his Formula E crown with DS Penske, Mercedes has a vacancy that needs filling.

Aside from helping with the development of its ground-effects car, should Lewis Hamilton or George Russell be forced to miss a race, the team could do a lot worse than Ricciardo. It’s a move that makes absolute sense where the Silver Arrows are concerned.

It's certainly more of a risk for Ricciardo. For some time, it’s been clear Russell is the future of Mercedes. He will be the sporting face of the marque when Hamilton eventually retires. Hence why he is under lock and key with a “long-term” deal. And now, seven-time champion Hamilton’s stance has softened – he's said he will absolutely sign an extension beyond his current 2023 deal. So there will be no room at the Mercedes inn for 2024, should Ricciardo have ever considered replacing Hamilton a plausible option.

If the Mercedes reserve role does come to pass, perhaps the shrewdest part of Ricciardo’s backseat switch will be aligning himself with Toto Wolff. Russell, Valtteri Bottas and Esteban Ocon (who also was forced into a year on the sidelines at Mercedes) are all proof that good things happen to those close to the Austrian.

Could Ricciardo be on his way to Mercedes as its new reserve driver?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

While Ricciardo, 33, is considerably older than those three were when Wolff helped them make their career-defining moves, he is an eight-time grand prix winner and has time on Hamilton (37) and Fernando Alonso (41). With Wolff backing his corner, Ricciardo could certainly engineer that expertise into a comeback.

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Nevertheless, if that is the end goal, as before, it can only be described as a calculated gamble. The chain of events that followed Sebastian Vettel announcing his retirement, with Alonso jumping ship to Aston Martin and the Alpine-McLaren contract saga over Oscar Piastri, shows how quickly the driver market can move. While there might not be an FIA F3 and F2 champion knocking on the door to F1 anything like as loudly as Piastri was, Ricciardo could again find himself caught out.

Certainly, having watched that famous, broad smile diminish as a torrid 2022 term has worn on, a year out of F1 to rekindle his love for the top flight might help Ricciardo no end. Given his achievements and experience, he can be an asset to most teams. He would arguably improve the driver line-up of all but Mercedes and Ferrari should he hit the heights of his Red Bull and Renault peaks. Whether he can do so, of course, is a big question mark.

If the Mercedes reserve role does come to pass, perhaps the shrewdest part of Ricciardo’s backseat switch will be aligning himself with Toto Wolff

However, there is zero guarantee that Ricciardo comes back at all, no matter how much he might want to. His stock has fallen considerably after his toils in the McLaren. Last year's unlikely victory at Monza aside (not forgetting that even then, Norris was the quicker of the two MCL35M drivers) doesn’t fully repair the damage of what have been two hugely underwhelming seasons.

The big-money move to Renault for 2019 might also have created a scenario where Ricciardo and a team cannot agree terms. Either because he reckons he deserves a bigger paycheque, or he is overlooked altogether under the assumption that he will ask for too high a salary, so it’s not even worth opening talks – though it is his management’s job to dispel that notion.

All told, we could conceivably be entering Ricciardo’s two final races in F1 – regardless of how much we hope that isn’t the case. F1 is a fickle business, after all.

Should it really be game over for the Aussie, it is surely better to go into Brazil and Abu Dhabi aware that Ricciardo might not come back and therefore celebrate his career. If Ricciardo is dead set on a comeback, he won’t want to acknowledge that his time could plausibly be up. That attitude is too defeatist.

But as the planned 2002 sabbatical for Mika Hakkinen or the 11th-hour replacement of Rubens Barrichello at Williams for 2012 proved, every now and again, an F1 hero can unwittingly bow out to almost no fanfare.

Mika Hakkinen intended to take a sabbatical after 2001 - but never returned to F1

Photo by: Motorsport Images