Daniel Ricciardo hasn’t been at the level at which McLaren hoped him to perform over the past two years and it could end their alliance early.
In 2021, with several hopes, McLaren hired Daniel Ricciardo. However, the Australian race driver fell short of the expectations and has been inconsistent ever since.
With rising competition in the grid, and McLaren’s patience running out, Ricciardo could be axed before 2023. Recently, McLaren boss Zak Brown claimed on SkySports that the 32-year-old race driver hasn’t performed to expectations.
In response, Ricciardo didn’t shrug away Brown’s comments and agreed as he also didn’t like his own results. Now, ahead of the race in Monaco, Brown has talked about the mechanisms in Ricciardo’s contract that can see the eighth Grand Prix winner losing his McLaren seat.
“I don’t want to get into the contract [details],” Brown said. “But there are mechanisms in which we’re committed to each other and then there are mechanisms in which we’re not.
“I’ve spoken with Daniel about it, we’re not getting the results that we both hoped for, but we’re both going to continue to push. I think he showed at Monza he can win races.”
“We also need to continue to develop our race car, it’s not capable of winning races, but we’d like to see him further up the grid. We’ll just play it – I don’t want to say ‘one race at a time’ because we’re not going to one race at a time – but we’ll just see how things develop, what he wants to do.”
Also read: Lewis Hamilton offers himself to Daniel Ricciardo to serve as his agent for contract negotiations
Daniel Ricciardo may not get any other place on the grid
With Ricciardo almost losing out on his McLaren seat, there are hardly any places where he could ply his trade. He surely wouldn’t be able to climb up.
Daniel Ricciardo redemption day:
27th of May, 2018. pic.twitter.com/6dE72zMF7C
— Osservatore Sportivo (@OsOfficialF1) May 27, 2022
This situation leaves him only with two possible options Aston Martin and Williams, where Sebastian Vettel and Nicholas Latifi have threats to their spots.
Therefore, it would be better for Ricciardo to upscale his performances and bring out results consistently. Otherwise, the brutality on F1 would now see him as an easy sacrifice.
Also read: Why F1 Twitter misunderstood Daniel Ricciardo race engineer in Monaco?
