Ricciardo heaping pressure on Perez's Red Bull F1 seat thanks to one moment
Daniel Ricciardo has explained how one single lap time has put him back in with a chance of winning back his old Red Bull seat.
The Aussie started the 2023 season on the sidelines after he was axed by McLaren. But re-joining Red Bull as a reserve put him in pole position for an AlphaTauri race seat as pressure built on the struggling Nyck de Vries.
After 10 races, the team pulled the trigger and replaced the Dutchman with Ricciardo. That was after a private test at Silverstone in which the 34-year-old performed well enough to convince Christian Horner and Helmut Marko that he still has what it takes.
Recalling that test, Ricciardo picked out the moment he knew he had saved his Formula 1 career. "I'm not going to sugar coat it - the first timed lap was on the money," he told the Beyond the Grid podcast.
"It was a few hundredths off Max [Verstappen]. Coming into that lap, I was so excited. I was treating it like a qualifying lap. I just had that feeling in the car and that confidence. There was elements of the car that felt so familiar... I kind of just knew what it could do and what it was capable of.
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"I'm not going to say it was easy or effortless, but I had a lot of confidence the car could do what it could do. Crossing the line, when I looked at the time, I was like, 'I don't know if I was expecting to go that quick'. I knew the day had potential to be a really good day, but I'd be lying if I said I was going to do that first lap with new tyres. That was kind of wild. It gave me a big smile."
Ricciardo only managed seven races for AlphaTauri this year after missing five with a hand injury. But he did secure the team's best result of the year in Mexico and has the full 2024 season ahead to audition for the seat that Sergio Perez is in danger of losing.
Red Bull legend David Coulthard thinks Perez has plenty to prove next term if he is to have any chance of keeping his place. Checo wasn't as far away from this team-mate as some but, unfortunately for him of course, when Max was winning and he's not finishing second, it really puts a very difficult spotlight on him," the Scot said on his Formula For Success podcast.
"He's survived it, but he's definitely going to, in my opinion, have to do some serious work over the winter to fully understand or accept the differences between him and Max. At the beginning of the year, he was talking about the world championship battles and he was kind of getting his shoulders and his chest out
"I suspect part of that was his management team who are not only there to see him try and win Grand Prix but to sell him commercially. So, if the message is this guy's a world champion in waiting, then that helps the negotiations. I think now they probably need to take a slightly different view which is he is the best partner to a Max, a phenomenon and then you can knuckle down."
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