Daniel Ricciardo is aiming for a position with the Austrian squad for 2025, Red Bull team manager Christian Horner has said.
This weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix will be Ricciardo’s first race back in Formula 1 on a full-time basis after it was announced last week that he would be taking over for Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri for the balance of the season.
The Australian said earlier this year that his F1 career would come to a “fairytale” finale if he were to take over the Red Bull cockpit he left at the conclusion of 2018.
Max Verstappen, the current World Champion, has a contract that runs through 2028, while Sergio Perez’s current term expires at the end of 2024, and if his recent troubles continue, Ricciardo may be given the opportunity.
The Mexican driver has slipped 99 points in the Drivers’ Championship behind Verstappen as a result of failing to qualify for Q3 at the previous five races.
On the F1 Beyond the Grid podcast, Horner said, “Right now, there’s only something in place until the end of the season.” “There are therefore no more thoughts or expectations.
“Until the end of the year, we’ve loaned him to AlphaTauri. Naturally, Max and Checo will serve as our drivers once again in 2019. However, it’s always advantageous to have talent on hand.
“I believe Daniel is watching AlphaTauri, and he is adamant about vying for the 2025 Red Bull seat. That is his prime goal. And I believe he views going to AlphaTauri as the greatest way to make his argument for 2025.
After a turbulent two-year spell with McLaren, Ricciardo’s contract was terminated, and he returned to Red Bull at the beginning of this year as a reserve driver option.
Horner has maintained that the Ricciardo he met upon his return was very different from the one who left for Renault at the conclusion of 2018.
He stated, “I didn’t really identify the Daniel that we’d sort of grown so used to, that had grown up with us, over the last couple of years. “So that’s how it began.
The day after Abu Dhabi, or a few days after Abu Dhabi, “he came in and drove the simulator. He had developed every negative habit possible while working with this former engineer, and it was a complete nightmare.
But on Tuesday at Silverstone, Ricciardo was given the chance to drive an F1 car for the first time since December 2022 following a number of strong simulation runs.
The Red Bull chief adds that “that the plan was always to put him in for that Silverstone test” in the team’s RB19 car and underlines “the test was extremely impressive”.
He added: “What impressed me the most when I went up to have a look at the test was, bearing in mind he hasn’t driven this car, hadn’t been in a car for seven months, within his third or fourth lap he was down to a time that was within a second of what our drivers were achieving.
“You could see his confidence was rising as he made his first “real run,” as it were, on tyres that were comparable, and that first lap, which was likely his seventh of the day, would have put him on the front row of the grid. Therefore, it was really stunning.
He stated, “I was really happy to see that he was still able to function at that level.
“You could almost see the relief in his eyes and almost like the pressure release off his shoulders that he could still do it, that he wasn’t going crazy and the old Daniel was still there when I said to him ‘that would have put you on the front row of the grid’.”
The work he performed for Pirelli was flawless, and his long runs were also very noteworthy.
Ricciardo’s impressive testing performance led to confirmation that he would be driving for AlphaTauri for the remaining 11 races of the year, despite de Vries’ ongoing difficulties.
Ricciardo was aware of the potential of ending his hiatus and returning to the F1 grid even before the test began, according to Horner.
“Obviously before the test, there was some element of discussion with Daniel to say, look, if this goes well, would you be up for driving an AlphaTauri because things aren’t quite going as we’d hoped with Nyck,” he explained.
“Would you be up for that challenge? And he [responded] ‘Yeah, absolutely’. He was prepared, if you like, to take a step backwards to try and take two steps forward.”
De Vries had failed to score a single point in his 10 outings with AlphaTauri and had succumbed to a crushing 8-2 head-to-head defeat against team-mate Yuki Tsunoda.
Out of all the possibilities Red Bull had, according to Horner, replacing him before the summer break and substituting Ricciardo made the most sense.
While Nyck de Vries may have been new to Formula 1, there was still a lot of pressure on him because he is undoubtedly a very experienced driver, according to Horner.
“I believe that Nyck’s performance wasn’t quite hitting the mark in the broader population. What alternatives would we have if we were to change things around was the next inquiry. The option I found most intriguing from a Red Bull Racing standpoint was to watch Daniel’s performance. Therefore, that choice was made.
“Everything happened fairly quickly. For the Hungarian Grand Prix, he is seen here.
