The increasing hurdles in front of Ricciardo's potential Red Bull return

“The most excited people when Danny Ricc came back was Netflix.”

Nestling nicely in amongst Williams driver Logan Sargeant’s torturing of the English lexicon is a good point. One the American was making to a Netflix camera in the latest series of Drive to Survive. In 2023, the hit streaming show got back its undisputed biggest star, almost without him ever having to leave.

You can see the production company’s delight in the sixth series, where Ricciardo’s two returns are granted two episodes. But this was no Netflix navel-gazing exercise. The Australian became one of 2023’s biggest stories with his return to replace the ousted Nyck de Vries at what was then called AlphaTauri, plus his own second return – latterly from injury following his crash and broken hand at the Dutch Grand Prix.

Now in 2024, Ricciardo remains central to what should be one of the biggest off-track talking points of the new campaign. Will he now return to his previous cherished home at Red Bull?Before we get there, it’s important to consider two elements.

Ricc’s reprofiling

The first is the manner of Ricciardo’s return in 2023. After his chastening experience over two years at McLaren as Lando Norris went from strength to strength in the other orange cars – Monza 2021 and McLaren’s 2022 overall fallow period aside – Ricciardo cut a deliberately different figure.

“All of our profiles have grown in the last few years, in particular, since Drive to Survive,” Ricciardo said after returning from injury at the 2023 Austin race. “Just me with my personality and also just having some fun with the sport.

Ricciardo's pair of comebacks last year set up an intriguing dynamic in the Red Bull fold

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“That probably got a little bigger as well, because of that. It draws a few LOLs every now and then but I think generally, first and foremost, I see myself as a race car driver, not an entertainer or anything like that.”

He added: “Through all of this, it can maybe get away from you a little bit in time, so me coming back into it and having a little bit of that time off, it certainly made me figure out what I’m about and how I want to go racing. Removing a few things and kind of going back to a little bit of the basics. Just making sure that I am seen as a race car driver who’s still hungry and determined, and not someone who’s just here for a good time.”

That’s not to say he still wasn’t out to maximise his profile to a certain extent – Ricciardo appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live ahead of the 2023 Las Vegas GP. Yet, Lewis Hamilton has shown how a driver can dovetail on- and off-track interests and still succeed at the top level. 

"I realised that I was probably just doing too much sometimes and probably even just not prioritising myself in terms of my body and my recovery"
Daniel Ricciardo

Plus, for Ricciardo his changes since returning to the F1 fold centre on increasing his fitness levels away from the track or otherwise recovering properly from his exertions upon it.

“Having time off I realised that I was probably just doing too much sometimes and probably even just not prioritising myself in terms of my body and my recovery and all that,” Ricciardo said at the 2023 Abu Dhabi season finale.

“I want to see the headline: ‘Now Daniel Ricciardo Prioritises his Body!”, quipped Mercedes driver George Russell, speaking in the same press conference.

“It’s hard when you don’t take as many topless pics as George,” Ricciardo hit back neatly. “I hope I answered that in a way that made sense but yeah, that’s what I was getting at
[in those Austin comments].”

The F1 driver market appears to be wide open in 2024

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Tight fit

The second important element of Ricciardo’s 2024 ties into the first: how does this clearly rejuvenated figure fit in with the complicated 2025 driver market now detonated by Hamilton’s Ferrari move for next year?

The market had appeared to be set rather stable when Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris signed yet more contract extensions at Ferrari and McLaren respectively in late January. But Hamilton’s decision massively complicated matters for many other drivers.

PLUS: How F1's mad tea-party driver market could look if Verstappen moves to Mercedes

For Ricciardo, it changed less than others in terms of his options: stay with RB or move back to the Red Bull squad he left chasing that big-money move to Renault for 2019. But the second route is now rather much more complex.

Ricciardo’s option to stay at RB as a long-term team leader would seem to suit both parties well. He can ply his trade as the more dedicated professional F1 driver he says he’s now aiming to be in this second career coming; and the risks to that job ending are lower because not as much is expected from Red Bull’s second squad.

That’s other than doing better than the ninth and eighth places it scored in the last two constructors’ championships, results that prompted Red Bull GmbH’s post-Dietrich Mateschitz management to scrutinise its return on investment in a F1 second team more closely.

RB, a team growing with a major sponsor influx that led to the ridiculous naming saga at the start of the year, knows it has an asset in Ricciardo. Although, so too in his meme-able team-mate, Yuki Tsunoda.

“Honestly, both have been very helpful [for RB marketing], because Yuki is doing extremely well with a very young target group,” explains RB CEO Peter Bayer. “I’ve seen some F1 numbers that the under 14-year olds, they love him. And Daniel, given his popularity, has been definitely helpful.”

But there’s no denying that RB, even with its car’s current impressive low-speed cornering prowess, cannot deliver what all racing drivers ultimately want: victory. And with F1’s car
design rules set to remain stable until the next new chassis and engine era starts in 2026,
Red Bull’s current advantage at the head of the pack basically guarantees its drivers will be in victory contention at every round until then.

At the end of 2023, the second Red Bull seat for 2025 appeared to be a straight shootout between Perez and Ricciardo

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Checo him out

Sergio Perez’s current contract is of course up at the end of this season. Rumours suggesting he could even be replaced early this year if he continues to lag badly behind Max Verstappen permeated the paddock late in 2023. Red Bull has made ruthless in-season driver moves twice before, but, critically, not when it has been dominating F1’s two championships.

But Ricciardo has openly stated his F1 return halfway through last year had the clear aim of returning to Red Bull. That’s with the full knowledge Verstappen would most likely be his team-mate given his current contract runs until the end of 2028. Yet, there’s little sign Ricciardo is scared of such a scenario, or even of playing a clear number-two role to Verstappen, as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner suggested was the case back in mid-2018.

But Hamilton’s move has complicated what appeared to be a previously simple case of Ricciardo shining at RB and waiting for Perez to continue to underperform in another stunning Red Bull ground-effect creation.

It’s unlikely Red Bull will make any 2025 driver decisions before it even knows who its long-term team boss is going to be

Carlos Sainz, who matched up well with Verstappen during their one-and-a-bit seasons as team-mates at what was then called Toro Rosso (admittedly with the advantage of much more junior formula race experience at that stage), needs a new seat as Hamilton takes his at Ferrari.

It has been suggested it’s a formality Sainz will be heading to the soon-to-be-Audi team for 2026 given his father’s recent Dakar Rally win for the brand and good relations with its boss, Andreas Seidl. But it could well take Audi time to win in F1, if it ever does. And so, Sainz is wisely considering all options at the front of the grid. This is a picture made ever more vivid by every Fernando Alonso insistence he might valiantly race on ever long, plus Mercedes apparently eyeing a Verstappen-like promotion for its Formula 2 junior Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

It would take some concessions, mainly from Sainz’s side, to rejoin what was a fractious camp at times at Toro Rosso alongside Verstappen – Sainz pushed to be released from the Red Bull fold in 2017. But he possesses a much better recent F1 success record than Ricciardo, given how close he’s been to Leclerc in their time as Ferrari team-mates.

But the bigger threat to Ricciardo’s dream of a “perfect” move back to Red Bull to end his F1 career there comes from the current turmoil at the top of that team. Horner’s love for Ricciardo is now very much requited – judging by what explodes through in recent DTS scenes. But it was clear this was the case a year ago, when Ricciardo was Red Bull’s third driver. Horner then spoke warmly of working with him to “get his mojo back”.

Last year Ricciardo was shown the love by Horner, but the under-fire boss has bigger problems to deal with right now

Photo by: Mark Sutton

It’s unlikely Red Bull will make any 2025 driver decisions before it even knows who its long-term team boss is going to be. Whatever ultimately happens in this Netflix-worthy saga, Ricciardo understands the best way to secure that dream ending to his career is simply to shine right now where he is.

PLUS: What's behind efforts to bring down Red Bull F1 team boss Horner

“At the start of a new season, it’s not something on my mind in respect to where I currently am and a long season ahead,” he said pre-season.

“I think the way I get back to the front of a grid is try and hustle this car as hard as possible and produce weekends like Mexico [2023, where he qualified fourth and battled well against much faster cars to finish seventh] and obviously do that more consistently. Then obviously see what happens. But it’s also fully focused on where I’m at and trying to establish myself again.

“I feel like I started to do that a little bit last year coming back in. But I feel like there’s a lot of races this year to try and do that and prove it to myself and then obviously others around me.”

Can Ricciardo find his way back to Red Bull?

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool