Christian Horner admits Daniel Ricciardo could’ve stayed at RB ‘in a perfect world’
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner gave his thoughts on Daniel Ricciardo getting replaced by Liam Lawson at VCARB.
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Liam Lawson, Daniel Ricciardo and Christian Horner (Via: Imago)
The tale of the 2024 season has been the unpredictable championship fight and driver transfers. One such move that left the fans shocked was Daniel Ricciardo getting sacked by VCARB (or RB) mid-season in favor of Liam Lawson. Despite the Aussie’s ambitions of making a return back to Red Bull, the team supremo, Christian Horner, explained that the return to Milton Keynes-based team was only possible in a perfect world.
Daniel Ricciardo‘s contract at McLaren was cut short due to his subpar performances and had to spend the 2023 season on the sidelines. He then got an opportunity at Red Bull‘s second team to forge back his career. However, this was short-lived as he finds himself again on the sidelines now after the management decided to replace him with Liam Lawson.
Though Ricciardo envisioned a return to Red Bull, that move had multiple issues to contend with, as Christian Horner explained.
In a perfect world, that’s what we would have done. But from a broader perspective, we need answers for the bigger picture in terms of drivers. There are six races remaining, and it’s a perfect opportunity to line Liam up alongside Yuki.
Christian Horner said on the F1 Nation podcast
With VCARB refocusing on its main objective of being a stepping stone for Red Bull juniors, Ricciardo’s time was bound to be cut short. Horner & Co. now have the liberty to look at the driver pair of Yuki Tsunoda and Lawson in the next few rounds to assess their status in the driver pool.
Christian Horner reveals his role in the Jacques Villeneuve-Daniel Ricciardo saga
While Daniel Ricciardo’s second stint in F1 was short-lived, he had many recognized figures criticize him for blocking a path for junior drivers to progress into F1. One of them was 1997 F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve, who outrightly urged the Aussie to say sayonara to the sport.
However, such words acted as fuel for Ricciardo as he exhibited a strong pace all weekend at the Canadian GP, where Villeneuve voiced his criticism. This gave Christian Horner a glimmer of hope that the 34-year-old could get back on track.
It was actually dear old Jacques Villeneuve who got him properly wound up while giving him a hard time. And it definitely fired him up. The way he drove the car that weekend, he grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and put together a very strong race weekend. So I said give Jacques a call every Grand Prix for the rest of the year, because definitely whatever he said it definitely worked.
Christian Horner said on the F1 Nation podcast
On the other hand, Lawson is bound to have a torrid weekend in Austin due to a grid penalty that he would receive. Thus, the 22-year-old Kiwi driver might require a few races in order to score his first points of the season.
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Geetansh Pasricha
(772 Articles Published)