The making and breaking of Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula 1 career shows why team mate contests are so important in Formula 1.
Few expected Red Bull’s new hiring in 2014 to put one over Sebastian Vettel, who had just won his fourth consecutive world championship. But Ricciardo did exactly that.
Given his recent struggles, it’s easy to forget why Ricciardo was so highly-rated by many in those early years. But imagine the impact a driver would make if Max Verstappen wins another championship this year – and then gets beaten by his team mate in 2025.
Verstappen was the first driver who asked serious questions of Ricciardo as a team mate. During their third year alongside each other, Ricciardo took the fateful decision to turn his back on Red Bull.
We now know he was leaving what turned into a championship-winning car. But how much of Red Bull’s subsequent glory he would have claimed is doubtful, such has been Verstappen’s grip on the team since then.
From there, Ricciardo spent two seasons at Renault where he held the upper hand over two different team mates. But at McLaren he found himself up against another challenging team mate: Lando Norris. This time there was no question of Ricciardo jumping ship early. McLaren cut his three-year contract short by a season, and Ricciardo’s F1 career seemed to be over.
Red Bull handed him a lifeline last year, placing him at their junior team AlphaTauri (now RB). However his comeback was almost immediately derailed by a crash which left him with a wrist injury.
Back in the car full-time at the end of the year, Ricciardo measured up poorly against his latest team mate Yuki Tsunoda. Red Bull hoped he would demonstrate himself worthy of a return to the top team, but he’s fallen far short, and his time in F1 now seems to be at an end.
2011: HRT
Team mate: Vitantonio Liuzzi*
Points were out of the question during Ricciardo’s mid-season debut with the struggling HRT team, which folded at the end of the following year. However he measured up impressively against a driver Red Bull knew well: Their former racer Vitantonio Liuzzi.
*Narain Karthikeyan was also Ricciardo’s team mate for one race
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2012: Toro Rosso
Team mate: Jean-Eric Vergne
For his first full season in F1, Red Bull moved Ricciardo to their junior team, known at the time as Toro Rosso. He went up against Jean-Eric Vergne, who began the year with zero racing experience.
2013: Toro Rosso
Team mate: Jean-Eric Vergne
Ricciardo’s one-lap pace proved consistently superior to his team mate’s, though Vergne gathered more points in their first season together.
But when Mark Webber chose to retire at the end of the year, Red Bull picked his fellow Austrian to take his place at the top team.
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2014: Red Bull
Team mate: Sebastian Vettel
The glory of finishing on the podium on home ground in his first race for Red Bull was soured when Ricciardo was disqualified for a technical infringement. But better days lay ahead: When the all-conquering Mercedes faltered in Canada he won, then did so again in back-to-back races in Hungary and Belgium.
This left world champion team mate Vettel thoroughly discomfited, and he left for Ferrari at the end of the year.
2015: Red Bull
Team mate: Daniil Kvyat
Ricciardo was now top dog at a recent championship-winning team, but their Renault power units weren’t up to the job. That was clear in 2015 when Ricciardo and new team mate Daniil Kvyat failed to win a single race.
Worryingly for Ricciardo, Kvyat also narrowly out-scored him. It was a close fight, however, and Ricciardo was slightly worse off in terms of unreliability. Kvyat’s propensity to get involved in incidents didn’t help his cause either, and four races into the following season he was demoted back to Toro Rosso.
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2016: Red Bull
Team mate: Max Verstappen*
Kvyat’s loss was Verstappen’s gain. Red Bull’s latest hiring proved he was a force to be reckoned with from the outside, snatching victory on his debut after the warring Mercedes drivers collided and Ricciardo ended up on a less-than-ideal strategy.
Ricciardo had the upper hand in terms of results over their 17 races together, but it wouldn’t stay that way.
*Daniil Kvyat was also Ricciardo’s team mate for four races
2017: Red Bull
Team mate: Max Verstappen
Red Bull continued to struggle with their underpowered and unreliable Renault motors in 2017, so much so that their two drivers only took the chequered flag together seven times in 20 races.
Ricciardo took the most advantage of those opportunities to finish, out-scoring Verstappen and claiming a terrific win in Azerbaijan despite falling to 17th at one stage. But Verstappen’s core pace advantage was becoming clear.
2018: Red Bull
Team mate: Max Verstappen
With two wins in the first six races, Ricciardo appeared to have an outside chance of fighting for the championship early in 2018. But he failed to score at round four in Azerbaijan after a contentious collision with Verstappen which put both drivers out and set Ricciardo’s mind to moving on.
He eventually decided to join Renault, but by the time he walked out of Red Bull there was no longer any doubt who the team’s ‘alpha driver’ was.
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2019: Renault
Team mate: Nico Hulkenberg
Could Ricciardo find championship success given a quick enough car? There seemed little cause to doubt it as he quickly made himself at home with Renault. He eclipsed Nico Hulkenberg so thoroughly Renault replaced his team mate for the following year.
2020: Renault
Team mate: Esteban Ocon
To the disgust of Renault team principal Cyril Abiteboul, Ricciardo decided to move on from the team before the pandemic-delayed 2020 season even began. An opportunity to join McLaren presented itself, and he grabbed it, though he later said it had been an even harder decision than leaving Red Bull had been.
Ricciardo continued to prove himself a formidable force, beating new team mate Esteban Ocon even more effectively than he had Ricciardo. But it proved the final time Ricciardo had the upper hand over a full season.
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2021: McLaren
Team mate: Lando Norris
Ricciardo’s victory in the 2021 Italian Grand Prix was a dream result, even a partial vindication of his decision to leave Red Bull. But it was taken in the teeth of a season-long beating by Norris, a driver 11 years his junior.
Even with the points bump from that victory, taken on a day when McLaren told Norris to follow his team mate home, Ricciardo was out-scored over the course of the season.
2022: McLaren
Team mate: Lando Norris
Shortly before the 2022 season began, McLaren renewed Norris’ contract for the second time in nine months. It was a telling sign of how the balance of power had shifted at the team.
If Ricciardo hoped he would get along better in his second McLaren chassis, built to the drastically overhauled technical regulations for 2022, he was badly disappointed. Norris routed him even more emphatically than the year before, and at mid-season McLaren announced they had cut his contract short by a year.
2023: AlphaTauri
Team mate: Yuki Tsunoda
Red Bull’s prodigal son returned at the end of 2022. The team offered their driver a potential route back to a top team, first as a reserve driver for Red Bull, then as a replacement for the struggling Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri.
To begin with the signs were promising. Ricciardo’s first weekend back in Hungary went well, but then he was forced out for five races when he broke a wrist at Zandvoort.
A superb second-row qualifying spot in Mexico after his return, followed by a seventh-place finish, seemed to indicate Red Bull had been wise to keep the faith in him. Tsunoda picked up more points, but could Ricciardo do better with a little more familiarity with the car?
2024: RB
Team mate: Yuki Tsunoda
The answer, we now know, was no. Again there were occasional glimpses of the old Ricciardo. He qualified and raced superbly well in the sprint event at Miami.
But nothing else gave Red Bull cause to keep the faith. Motorsport consultant Helmut Marko let it be known they would decide on their future driver arrangements in September, and during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend it became an open secret that this was his last race.
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