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The most important chapter of Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula 1 career is upon him, but this wasn’t the way anyone expected such a momentous occasion would begin.
The Australian — formerly one of the sport’s most promising young talents who made himself an eight-time race winner and earnt a reputation as of the category’s most spectacular overtakers and fearsome competitors — will be enter this pivotal period having experienced the most barren run of his professional life.
He’s been comprehensively beaten by his teammate over two seasons and sacked by his team, which has decided it’ll be better off paying him not to drive one of its cars in 2023 than retaining his services.
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It’s all the more difficult to accept for Ricciardo fans given his McLaren move was already supposed to have been career defining.
The union of a historic team on the rise and the Australian at the peak of his powers and desperate to claim some prime territory on the grid seemed destined to bring both sides of the partnership the success they’d craved for so long. Instead it turned out the marriage was cursed, and while McLaren will go on without Ricciardo — though it has its own problems to face, having been unable to extract the best from its star driver and having delivered an uncompetitive car this year — Daniel is without a drive for 2023 and facing an uncertain future.
What he does next will define his career and colour his legacy.
CAREER AT A CROSSROADS
Daniel Ricciardo is 33 years old and a veteran of more than 220 grands prix spread over more than a decade operating in the cut-throat world of Formula 1.
Those kinds of statistics spin two ways.
The first is that Ricciardo is in his prime. It’s often thought a Formula 1 driver is at their peak in their early 30s — though Fernando Alonso is attempting to change the game on this front — and he’s equipped with race-winning experience as well as intimate working knowledge of several teams, including the leading Red Bull Racing outfit.
Everything about that CV screams ‘complete package’.
But alternatively you may well conclude that after 10 years in Formula 1 and having been thrashed by Lando Norris in a turbulent couple of years, Ricciardo might be out of motivation. Being sacked by McLaren could be an easy out for a driver burnt out.
But the West Australian denies he’s at the end of his rope, and while he says he hit a regrettable dead end with McLaren, he’s adamant it isn’t for a lack of drive.
Performance is still in his hands.
“That fire, that belief, is still in me,” Ricciardo said. “So it’s really just a choice. If I want to make that choice, I can.
“I think picking myself up is, I don’t want to say it’s easy, but it’s something I feel I’m very capable of doing.
“I still love the sport and I think through all of this — I guess call it adversity — I haven’t lost that confidence in myself.
“For sure we’ve had some tough weekends, and you can’t help but show emotion sometimes, but I still love it and I still want to do it competitively.”
And while this might be the preface to the most significant chapter of his F1 tenure, it’s not the first moment at which he’s been challenged.
“This is certainly a big moment in time for my career, but even if things aren’t maybe always highlighted, you’re always going through challenges, or you always have to pick yourself up.
“I mean, no-one has a perfect career. I think I’ve learned to deal with it over time.
“I remember actually here in 2008 when I was racing in the Formula Renault junior category, it was like a Saturday night before the race on Sunday, and I got like a real pep talk.
“It was just in one of those moments in my career at the time.
“I still hadn’t yet made it, but I knew that I really had to pull my head in and start making it happen. So you always go through these.
“For sure now this is another challenge, another hurdle, but I simply see it as: if I want to pick myself up, I will.”
WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME
So Ricciardo is determined for McLaren not to define his career. But the choice may not be in his hands.
His two years at Woking may not prove in themselves seminal, but his jump from Renault to McLaren to another midfield team almost certainly will.
For a parallel, you need only look at the man who played a significant role in the unravelling of the driver market: Fernando Alonso.
The Spaniard is regarded in equal measure as one of the best of a generation and as one of the poorest judges of timing.
First there was his problematic move to McLaren — announced a full and controversial year in advance — which blew up in his face and ended only one year into the three scheduled.
That then forced him back to the Renault team he’d forsaken — sound familiar? — before switching to Ferrari after two more seasons.
There he toiled for four campaigns before moving back to McLaren for the Honda era, which was such a disaster he left the sport for two years before returning for a third stint at Renault, now Alpine.
Insulted by the prospect of a one-year contract offer to stay at Enstone, he’ll depart next year for Aston Martin on a lucrative long-term deal that he supposes has an equal chance of success as Alpine.
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Success in Formula 1 stems from driver and team, but an underestimated equal part of the equation is timing.
It’s not enough to be at a good team; you must be at a good team at the right time, and you must have the right temperament to be a good judge of the right time to be at a good team.
Alonso’s career is defined by his inability to be in the right car at the right time.
Daniel Ricciardo has one roll left of the contract dice to avoid his career being known by the same terms.
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?
Ricciardo has the drive to continue racing and the desire to avoid becoming nothing more than a midfield specialist.
“Obviously I don’t have every option on the grid or anything and it’s not like I can race wherever I want, but in terms of just from a self-worth point of view, absolutely [I have that belief],” he said.
“I want to do it in the right place. I never said I want to just be a driver to make up the numbers.
“If I’m here, I want to be here for a purpose.
“I don’t know what that means yet for the future, but of course if it’s the right opportunity, then this is where I want to be.”
So what does the right opportunity look like?
It’s safe to assume any team with a free seat has sounded him out — he a known talent with massive star power — but few of those teams would be of any interest to the Australian.
Williams is the lowest placed team on the grid with arguably the fewest prospects. Haas doesn’t have the runs on the board to justify a gamble.
Alfa Romeo is poised to announce a sale to Audi, but it has Valtteri Bottas as its team leader and homegrown junior options to consider for the second seat if it weren’t to retain Zhou Guanyu.
Really there’s only one viable option: Alpine.
It sails dangerously close to the wind trailing Alonso ahead, but it’s a team with the structure and funding to move forward on the grid in the medium term. It’s also a manufacturer team, which brings with it certain prestige.
If he can recapture the form he demonstrated at Renault in 2020 in particular, he could re-establish himself as a team leader and banish memories of his ill-fated dalliance with Woking.
And those are boxes he needs to tick. Winning races, competing for the championship — they’re all secondary objectives in pursuit of a new contract. Re-establishing his reputation and settling his trajectory are first-order issues.
Because this will likely be the last big contract of Ricciardo’s career. Retirement might yet be many years and even many victories away, but only if the foundations of his next deal is right will he have the opportunity to define his career on his terms.
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