Sebastian Vettel defended his former Red Bull teammate Daniel Ricciardo, suggesting that McLaren failed to get the best out of him.
Ricciardo and Vettel were teammates at Red Bull back during the 2014 season. Vettel came into that campaign on the back of winning four consecutive World Titles with the team but suffered a lot with performance that year.
In his last ever season with Red Bull in 2014, Vettel finished P5 in the standings with 167 points to his name, which was 71 less than what Ricciardo scored. The latter finished P3 in the standings, and it was safe to say, he comprehensively outperformed his legendary teammate.
Vettel left the Milton-Keynes-based team the following year to join Ferrari. Ricciardo on the other hand stayed there until 2018, after which he left them as a seven-time race winner. He joined Renault, in a move people saw as bad at the time. He managed two podium finishes in his two seasons in Enstone.
In 2021, he joined McLaren and this was an appointment people thought was going to be perfect. However, it turned out to be a nightmare two-year spell for the 33-year-old.
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Shame to see Daniel Ricciardo leave McLaren, says Sebastian Vettel
Ricciardo won the 2021 Italian GP with McLaren and became their first race winner since 2012. Other than that, however, he has had a tremendously underwhelming stint with the Surrey-based team. His teammate Lando Norris has outperformed him for the majority of their time together.
This season, McLaren decided to pull the plug and ax him, despite him having another year left on his contract. The remaining nine races of the 2022 campaign will be his last for the papaya outfit, and his future remains uncertain as of now.
Ahead of the weekend’s Belgian GP, Vettel and Ricciardo were together in the Drivers’ Press Conference, when a reporter asked the former about his ex-teammate’s departure from McLaren.
Vettel admitted that it was sad to see him leave and praised his driving style. To add to that, he also suggested that McLaren were to blame for Ricciardo’s poor performances over the last two years, since they failed to get the best out him.
“McLaren failed to extract the potential that he has,” the Aston Martin driver said.
