Daniel Ricciardo eying 2024 return to the F1 grid

Red Bull Racing shared a video this week highlighting Daniel Ricciardo’s return to the team. Ricciardo, after losing his seat at McLaren, joined his former team as Red Bull’s third driver for the 2023 season.

The video highlights Ricciardo’s return to the team’s factory at Milton Keynes, as well as Ricciardo’s thoughts on his role with the organization and how he can help Red Bull in their quest for a second-straight Constructors’ Championship.

However, the driver also admitted to his thinking about his future within Formula 1.

“I’m certainly comfortable with where I am currently at,” Ricciardo told Red Bull’s YouTube channel. “Of course racing is my passion. I would love to go through what Max [Verstappen] and Checo [Sergio Perez] are feeling – that excitement, that adrenaline and all those emotions, but I’m in a place where I feel like it’s all happening at the right time for the right reason.”

“Being at the track in Melbourne [for the Australian Grand Prix] and even during qualifying I noticed my leg was tapping. I was certainly starting to feel it, so the hunger is still there.”

“I know it’s there [the desire to return to the grid] but I want to make sure it’s exploding out of my skin,” he added. “It’s getting more and more, that time will probably come, but right now it’s in a very good place where I’m not regretting taking this year off.”

Ricciardo was also in Miami for the Miami Grand Prix, and spoke before that race to The Red Bulletin, Red Bull’s own magazine:

“This honestly has been the perfect scenario for me, because it has allowed me to throttle back for a while, but it also puts me back in an environment where I had most of my early success and many good memories. The last couple years definitely knocked my confidence a bit. Now I see how important it was to come back into this environment and get back into the sim, driving a car that I’m comfortable in and can perform well in. So it’s the perfect place for me to build myself back up. Maybe it’s just age and growth and maturity, but I really appreciate just the family itself—and that’s what Red Bull is. I’m very grateful to be back here, where it all started.”

However, as he said in the team’s YouTube video, the desire to return to the grid is there, and growing.

“Do I miss being out on the track? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I watched the first couple of races on the couch and that was . . . interesting! Even so, I was comfortable with it. But then I went to the grand prix in Melbourne, my home race, and everything was a bit more heightened—being around it, smelling it, hearing it.

It certainly confirmed that I don’t feel done. Of course, I don’t have a crystal ball, and I can’t guarantee that I’ll be racing next year. Last year, a part of me thought, “Oh, maybe this is it,” but now I feel that’s not how it’s going to end. So it’s all good feelings at the moment. It feels like I’m figuring it all out—it’s all starting to make sense—and I’m really looking forward to what comes next.”

Ricciardo’s name surfaced recently as a potential replacement for Nyck de Vries, given the rookie’s struggles at AlphaTauri, Red Bull’s sister team. De Vries was reportedly given a warning by advisor Helmut Marko to improve his performance, leading to speculation that Ricciardo could be in line to replace De Vries midseason.

Marko has since poured some cold water on the notion, admitting that De Vries does need to improve, but that a potential replacement would come from Red Bull’s stable of young drivers. “In the worst-case scenario, we can fall back on our pool of young talent,” Marko stated. “We are talking about Liam Lawson and Ayumu Iwasa, not Ricciardo.”

While Ricciardo may want to be back on the grid for 2024, finding him a potential seat proves to be a difficult exercise. Pérez is under contract with Red Bull until 2025, and absent a shock move to a different team, it is hard to imagine Red Bull parting with Pérez given his performance to start the year. While the brewing title fight between Pérez and Verstappen has led to thoughts of friction between the two drivers, Team Principal Christian Horner has tamped down any such notion in recent weeks.

And given that Ricciardo has stated that he desires to return to a top team, and not a midfield outfit, options are lacking. He was linked with both Haas and Alpine at the end of last season, but both teams went in a different direction. Perhaps if Ricciardo could be convinced that a midfield team could make an Aston Martin-like surge next year that could be a landing spot.

Still, as he told Red Bull in the above video, he is eying that return, and he says he will be ready.

“I’m happy, but by the end of the year I think I’ll be ready to go.”