After McLaren Break Up, Daniel Ricciardo Refuses to Swallow His Pride for an Elusive F1 Return: “I Don’t See Myself…”

After two years of continuous failures, Daniel Ricciardo finally fell out of favor at McLaren. In both of those years, much younger Lando Norris outscored him on the points table. Resultantly, both parties mutually terminated the contract prematurely by one year. That was when the Honey Badger decided to take a year off from the regular action in F1 to come back stronger in 2024. Now he has cleared that it might not happen unless an opportunity worthy enough presented itself.

While Ricciardo was going through turbulent times, Haas was too. The team was looking for a driver to fill the cockpit left empty by Mick Schumacher. That was after they had decided to let go of the German driver. Team boss Guenther Steiner admitted to contacting Ricciardo, but the Aussie was clearly not interested.

Daniel Ricciardo will return to F1 only if a big challenger approaches him

The reason why Ricciardo rejected Haas’ offer was that he never intended on racing for a team that wasn’t good enough to challenge for race wins. That stance hasn’t changed as he serves Red Bull in a third driver’s capacity.

Speaking with Speedcafe recently, the Perth-born driver said, “I still am at a point where it’s not at any cost, it’s not just to be back on the grid. So a lot of the reasons of taking this year off, one of the things I said, I was like, I just didn’t want to jump back into a car, any car just to be one of the F1 drivers.”

“And I still feel that. I don’t see myself kind of starting from scratch and rebuilding a career from ground zero and going at it for another decade.”

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He then went on to talk about his hunger to compete at the top being his weakness as well as his strength. But will an attitude like that land him a seat of his choice? Only time will tell.

Ricciardo believes he thrives when in front of the grid, not in the middle

Ever since Ricciardo joined Red Bull as their third driver, rumors started to spread around him possibly replacing Sergio Perez next year. The Mexican Minister of Defence is experiencing some turbulent times with his teammate Max Verstappen and that became the reason for the rumors to pick some wind. Given how the Aussie does not want to settle for just any other team, this could turn out to be a golden opportunity for him.

He continued, “I want to be back with a with a top team and a team where I obviously have my confidence back, and my mojo. Maybe that’s a weakness of mine, but in a way a strength, is [I] better at the front of the grid and I feel like I perform best in those situations with a bit more pressure and a bit more emphasis on a win or a podium.”

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Currently, it is too early to say if any team will end up making a change in their driver lineup toward the end of the season. Until then, the former McLaren driver is free to argue his case in front of every top team.