“All the love was in Max’s direction” – Sky Sports F1 pundit Martin Brundle explains what led to Daniel Ricciardo leaving Red Bull to join Renault.
Martin Brundle believes the ‘Max Verstappen factor’ led to Daniel Ricciardo leaving Red Bull in 2018. The Aussie then went to join French team Renault, and had a decent outing there, without making a sizeable impact. Brundle was talking up Ricciardo In The Fast Lane Podcast.
“He probably should have stayed at Red Bull, but he felt all the love was in Max’s direction and I can understand that completely. Renault was a mistake, which we all kind of suspected at the time. But I think that was him needing to get out of Red Bull as much as anything.”
McLaren Ricciardo’s last shot at world title?
Daniel Ricciardo is one of the unfortunate to have deserved a world title, but not won it (yet). In this ‘list’, one would add the likes of Felipe Massa and Rubens Barichello. Brundle believes he will have to be patient with McLaren if he wants to remove his name from the aforementioned list and join the list of greats who won a season.
“This might be his last big chance at a World Championship.
“I came home with Daniel from Bahrain, had a good chat with him. He’s a lad just the same as I remember him in the early days, very easy to approach, very easy to talk to. I’m a huge fan of him, the way he drives, the way he gets the job done.
“McLaren have signed off a new wind-tunnel, they currently use the Toyota one in Cologne and with Covid they haven’t been able to use that much either. So I think he will have to be patient there. The fruits of this new wind-tunnel are not going to come through for two to three years, and I think he has got that with them.
