The Daniel Ricciardo era is seemingly coming to an end. The ‘fairytale’ ending that our beloved Honey Badger was expecting didn’t account for a young Yuki Tsunoda consistently outperforming him. With 3 race weekends gone, 3 pre-Q3 exits, and no points scored, Ricciardo has a mountain of pressure like his predecessor Nyck de Vries faced in 2023. According to F1 Analyst, Peter Windsor, there might be no way left that propels him to the heights he reached with Red Bull.

Ricciardo is often called the ‘last of the late brakers’. His signature late braking into a corner, like the triple overtake at Baku 2017, made him an 8-time Grand Prix Winner. All was going great for him under Christian Horner’s leadership and Max Verstappen alongside him. Despite all the success, he left one of the best teams on the grid in his prime to join rivals Renault. Still, Horner welcomed him back heartily in 2023. But according to Peter Windsor, leaving Red Bull was his biggest mistake and there might be no recovering from that.

“I did chat to Daniel and he was his normal self,” Windsor said on his YouTube Live. “His mom and dad are there and they are great guys and it’s the whole Daniel Ricciardo thing again which we love in Formula 1. I love seeing him. Great guy. But the problem was leaving Red Bull and I am not sure there’s a solution for that.“

He further elaborated on the 2018 situation, saying, “When you have got key Red Bull people saying ‘Don’t leave, Daniel, don’t leave. You are never going to win a race again. If you do, it’ll be one or two. Don’t leave. If you stay here, you can win a lot here with us.’ And he still leaves. Difficult to come back from that.”

The Australian driver’s chances at a Red Bull seat keep getting slimmer with each race weekend. However, VCARB Team Principal Laurent Mekies believes that the Australian GP failure was not his mistake.

Visa Cash RB Boss Laurent Mekies defends Daniel Ricciardo

The Australian Grand Prix was Daniel Ricciardo’s home race. It could’ve been the weekend when he established his comeback. Alas, he got knocked out in Q3 while teammate Yuki Tsunoda made it to Q1 and converted it into 6 valuable points for Visa Cash App RB. Team Boss Laurent Mekies believes that it was the set-up change in Ricciardo’s VCARB o1 that cost him.

“The truth is that we need to give him a car that he’s more comfortable with,” Mekies told Autosport. “Yuki had a car that he was very comfortable with from FP1 here. We probably reached that stage only in qualifying with Daniel, and from there you need to build. And we feel that he has certainly done that in the race. He was as fast as the guys getting the points today.”

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The Japanese Grand Prix is up next–Yuki Tsunoda’s home race. This might be Ricciardo’s best chance at making a statement–outclassing Tsunoda at his home race, as the Japanese did in Australia.