Daniel Ricciardo replacing Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri from the Hungarian Grand Prix onwards is still grabbing headlines, but what is Red Bull’s end game?
The only surprising aspect of De Vries’ sacking was the timing to be honest, as one would’ve expected that he be given time until the 2023 Formula 1 summer break following the Belgian Grand Prix. Other than that, the writing was on the wall for the Dutchman following his underwhelming debut at AlphaTauri.
But the Dr. Helmut Marko and Co seem to have been overly impatient to replace the struggling driver and with Sergio Perez’s time at Red Bull Racing still not up yet, Ricciardo was the obvious option.
GrandPrix247 Editor in Chief Paul Velasco penned an Inside Line on Wednesday, weighing in on the Ricciardo/De Vries saga linking that with Perez’s situation at Red Bull and what the future holds for him, and he laid out four options for potential endgames of the intra-Red Bull musical chairs.
And as Paul and I were discussing the matter, it dawned on me that Ricciardo’s move to AlphaTauri may not be just a stepping stone to a future drive with Red Bull, replacing the struggling Perez; the Australian may be staying with AlphaTauri – or whatever they may be called in the future – for the long run.
Now this scenario might be the least probable compared to Paul’s four options, but there is some reasoning behind it, so bear with me here.
AlphaTauri have been under pressure to perform – both on and off track – by the new Red Bull management that took over after the passing of Dietrich Mateschitz, and as soon as this piece of news started emerging, Franz Tost announced he would be retiring at the end of 2023, to be replaced by Ferrari’s Sporting Director Laurent Mekies and former FIA man Peter Bayer.
Soon after that, Marko revealed the Faenza team would be renamed in 2024, with plans to expand the team in UK as the lease on their current Bicester facility is ending, with a plan to move to Milton Keynes close to Red Bull, while production and race team remain in Italy.
The Red Bull junior team will be sourcing as many components for their car from their big brother currently dominating the Championship with Max Verstappen.
AlphaTauri need an experienced driver
With all this overhaul going on at AlphaTauri, the team would naturally need an experienced driver to spearhead the new plans, and Yuki Tsunoda is far from being that driver. As a matter of fact, the only reason Tsunoda kept his seat is that he had De Vries making him look good. Also Red Bull may still need to keep Honda happy until 2026 when they start producing their own power units with Ford.
Enter Ricciardo. He might be a broken driver following his McLaren stint, but he still knows how to provide useful feedback to the engineers and guide the car development, and regardless, should be better than De Vries. How he stacks up against Tsunoda is yet to be seen.
As for a future at Red Bull, Ricciardo ran once from Max’s Team, so will Red Bull be keen on putting him in their seat again even if Perez keeps getting worse?
There may be options other than Ricciardo to replace Perez. Sean Stevens in his latest Parc Ferme singled out Nico Hulkenberg as an option, that makes sense. Nico was also close to a Red Bull seat before the team opted for Perez in 2021.
Ricciardo might’ve been trumpeting that he won’t return to F1 to make up the numbers, but in the end beggars can’t be choosers, and maybe that’s what he was told when he was given the AlphaTauri option, and maybe that’s where he’ll be staying for some time.