Helmut Marko claims Daniel Ricciardo is already on the level with Yuki Tsunoda at AlphaTauri

Currently, Tsunoda has scored all the three points for the team.

Helmut Marko claims Daniel Ricciardo is already on the level with Yuki Tsunoda at AlphaTauri

Helmut Marko (Credits: Planet Sport), Daniel Ricciardo (Credits: SBNation.com) and Yuki Tsunoda (Credits: Sports Illustrated)

Red Bull seems very happy with their decision to fire Nyck de Vries for Daniel Ricciardo. Although the Australian still has zero points and finished behind his teammate Yuki Tsunoda in one out of his two races, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has recently claimed that Ricciardo is showing potential to surpass Tsunoda within this season.

Helmut Marko claimed that Ricciardo has already gotten closer to Tsunoda than De Vries, finishing at an average of three to five-tenths behind the Japanese driver. Marko also said Ricciardo was very close to the points in the Belgium sprint, where he finished tenth, two places, and six seconds behind eighth place George Russell.

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“While De Vries was three to five tenths slower than Tsunoda on average, the gap to Ricciardo is much smaller, I’d even say he’s on par already. We have ten races left so we’ll see how things play out in AlphaTauri,” Marko told Motorsport Magazin.

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Marko also talked about Daniel Ricciardo’s future. He acknowledged the Australian’s aim of getting the second Red Bull seat. Marko said that they still have to talk about how Ricciardo wishes to go about it, and whether he will be willing to commit his full 2024 season with AlphaTauri in hopes of getting the Red Bull seat in 2025, when Sergio Perez’s contract runs out.

“You have to know what Daniel’s intentions are. We know his goals, but we have to see how he wants to achieve them and if he is ready to play a full season with AlphaTauri in 2024 with full commitment,” he added.

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Daniel Ricciardo says he has already gotten more familiar with AlphaTauri

Daniel Ricciardo
Daniel Ricciardo (Credits: The Independent)

Ricciardo’s run with McLaren was nothing short of poor, as he only managed to get a single podium (which was a victory) in his two seasons with the Papayas. He finished eighth and eleventh in the 2021 and 2022 seasons, respectively. Now, the Honey Badger looks much happier with AlphaTauri as he has claimed that he feels more familiar with them in just two races than he did with McLaren in two seasons.

Ricciardo explained that he and McLaren tried to solve their issues in 2022. However, he slowly realized that the tuning between him and McLaren’s car was just ‘off’ and that nothing could be done at that level to solve the problem. In contrast, Ricciardo said that with just one lap in with AlphaTauri, he already felt the connection between him and the AT04.

“It was all in everyone’s [McLaren] best interests, trying to make it work but I felt like I’ve come to the realisation that wasn’t working for me… On lap one [with AlphaTauri AT04], I already felt like I was getting kind of the feedback that maybe I would expect or like, so that was important,” Ricciardo said.

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