24 February 2023 , 11:39
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McLaren offered struggling driver Daniel Ricciardo to midfield rivals Alpine as a bargaining chip in the midst of the Oscar Piastri silly season saga.
The Formula 2 champion's future emerged as the big story during the summer break last season. Alpine had tried to promote the young Aussie to a race seat when Fernando Alonso decided he would be leaving, but were in for a nasty shock when Piastri very publicly turned down the seat.
It later emerged he had already signed a deal with McLaren, who were planning for the future with Ricciardo struggling for form. In the end, the 33-year-old was released a year earlier than planned with Piastri given his first Formula 1 race seat.
But that last detail was only decided fully after a drawn out and ugly legal fight between the two teams over Piastri's future. But, in the shadows, McLaren chief executive Zak Brown extended an olive branch to his Alpine counterpart Laurent Rossi through Ricciardo.
The plan was revealed in an episode of the new series of Formula 1: Drive to Survive, released on Friday. It shows Brown speaking to Rossi about the situation and proposing a compromise where Alpine would take Ricciardo back – he had previously raced for the Enstone team when it was still using Renault branding.
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"I feel like I can help. Let's close this thing out," the McLaren chief told Rossi. "Daniel – I'd love to see him here [at Alpine]... but that's only because I'd love to see him stay in the sport."
McLaren chief Zak Brown proposed the move to Alpine (PA)In the end, though, that move never happened. Alpine decided instead to plump for an all-French driver line-up by signing Pierre Gasly from AlphaTauri, while Ricciardo dropped off the grid as he returned to Red Bull as a reserve and promotional driver.
But the Netflix series also shows that Alpine were not the only team that could have signed the Aussie. The cameras also caught Haas discussing the prospect of bringing Ricciardo on board, but it seems that idea was scuppered by the finances.
"He wants 10 f***ing million [dollars]," team boss Guenther Steiner is seen telling driver Kevin Magnussen in reference to Ricciardo. Haas are much better off financially these days thanks to their huge MoneyGram sponsorship deal, but clearly there was no desire to spend that much on a racer's salary.