Daniel Ricciardo claims he might return to F1 2024, says he has some ‘unfinished business’
Daniel Ricciardo has claimed he is gearing up for a comeback to Formula 1 racing in 2024.
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Red Bull‘s third driver and unanimously approved Formula 1 sweetheart Daniel Ricciardo has revealed some special news regarding his return to racing. At the end of the 2022 season, McLaren pulled a wildly expensive move by prematurely terminating Ricciardo’s contract with the team with a massive payout of $18M to the Australian. They had done this because of his poor results as they wanted to take up young talent Oscar Piastri in the Honey Badger’s place. This left Daniel Ricciardo looking for a seat at a time when all the teams had already announced their drivers except for Haas.
It has now been confirmed by Guenther Steiner that Daniel Ricciardo refused to move to Haas despite him not having a contract from any other team to race in the 2023 season. Finally, he settled for a third driver role at Red Bull, and this meant that fans would not find Daniel Ricciardo driving for the Milton-Keynes-based team throughout this year. But now, he has teased a possible return to racing as he said in an interview that a comeback might be in the cards once his “mental timeout” is over.
Daniel Ricciardo had won 8 Grands Prix during his long career in Formula 1 that ran for over a decade. The Australian has been featured on several Red Bull videos with Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez this year, and fans have commented on those posts time and time again saying that they want to see the Honey Badger race again. Speaking on this, Ricciardo said, “I’ll be ready to put myself in a position to be back on the grid next year. I feel like there’s still some unfinished business. I can’t just continue to do the simulator.“
Daniel Ricciardo says he will ‘try to remind’ Red Bull he has still got it so that they let him drive
After a sudden dismissal from McLaren and a switch to his old team Red Bull for a non-driving role, Daniel Ricciardo does not have a competing seat in Formula 1. But the Australian has reckoned he would be interested in going back to racing once the 2024 Championship walks in. He said, “I am staying in shape, and I’m giving myself a bit of mental timeout. I’m really enjoying this year, and I think I will continue to enjoy it, but by next year, I think I’ll certainly be eager to get back on the grid and compete. I’m going to naturally want to put a bit of pressure on myself for that and try to remind the team that I can still do it, and we’ll see where it goes.”
In other news, Red Bull is currently harboring a civil war between its own two racers–Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. They have a narrow gap of 14 points between each other after Perez failed to win the Miami GP and Max created history with his massive improvement from P9 on the starting grid to P1 by the end of the race. Now, it remains to be seen how things develop for the two teammates throughout the rest of the season as the drivers are scheduled to race again a couple of weeks later, at the Imola GP.
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Riddhi Mondal
(1821 Articles Published)