RB: Whole team at fault over failing to get Ricciardo to click

RB Formula 1 team principal Laurent Mekies has said the team has collectively taken responsibility for failing to make Daniel Ricciardo’s final stint at the squad a success.

Last summer Ricciardo was given a second chance by Red Bull as an experienced back-up option to potentially replace Sergio Perez at the main team.

His initial RB cameo in 2023, in place of underperforming Nyck de Vries, was derailed by a hand injury sustained in a practice crash at the Dutch Grand Prix.

But despite having benefited from a full off-season to prepare for 2024, the veteran Australian still found it hard to find consistent performance in the VCARB 01. Ricciardo showed flashes of his old self at times, including with a stellar sprint race in Miami with fourth place, but was generally outperformed by Yuki Tsunoda at the team.

With Ricciardo no longer fitting the criteria to warrant a potential Red Bull return, the team eventually decided to drop him after the Singapore Grand Prix for reserve driver Liam Lawson, who has since done enough to convince Red Bull that he is a better pick than Tsunoda to become Max Verstappen’s new team-mate from 2025.

Reflecting on why things didn’t work out with Ricciardo, RB team boss Mekies has said the team is collectively taking responsibility for not being able to give the 35-year-old a car he could build momentum in.

Speaking exclusively to Motorsport.com, Mekies said: “The question we have been asked the most was: ‘Can Daniel still produce the ultimate speed we have seen?’ I think he has on a few occasions, in Miami, in Canada [fifth place in qualifying] and in quite a few other races. So, he did produce that ultimate speed that took him to race wins in the past.

“But for the team, as for the drivers, the biggest difficulty is not to be fast one day. It’s to be fast in every race. Did we manage to keep Daniel in that sweet spot often enough? No, that’s the reality. I raised my hand and we raised our hands as a team, because we have a big part to play in it. And this led to what happened.”

Indirectly, Ricciardo’s difficulties ended up benefitting his replacement Lawson, as well as Tsunoda, as the team poured over every data point to find a solution for him, which widened the scope of set-up options the Anglo-Italian team explored with its drivers.

“We have explored a large part of the car’s envelope with Daniel,” Mekies explained. “It’s a never-ending process. You do that every time you have a new update, or every time you have a new characteristic. But certainly, Daniel pushed us to explore that envelope, and it gave the engineering team a very good background of what the car would and could not do.”

Mekies also hailed Ricciardo’s contribution to the team’s development work, as his experience helped RB as it embarked on a technical reorganisation throughout the year.

“There was a huge benefit for the team and for Yuki in terms of Daniel’s technical feedback, direction of development, race-winning approach,” Mekies added. “Having somebody that knows how it is in a team that wins races, that fights for championships, is setting the benchmark and that counts a lot in a time where you are trying to build the team and target better results.

“That benefit has been huge, also in terms of car understanding and car development. And I think Yuki has been developing a good relationship with Daniel to the extent that he has been able to absorb quite a lot of that and to keep progressing himself in that area.”