‘No business’: Daniel Ricciardo told to quit Formula 1 for new venture

After months of fending off speculation and harsh criticism, Daniel Ricciardo has been given a brutal reality check he cannot ignore.

Former Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo has been told to hang up his gloves and transition to a new role, with his a lacklustre start to the 2024 season being put under the spotlight in preparation for the sport’s contract silly season.

There are buckets of young drivers waiting in the wings to secure one of the few seats remaining for 2025. After the monolithic success of Max Verstappen, who has won three championships after being fast-tracked to F1 at 17, team bosses have clearly been trying to recreate their own version of the Dutchman for the next era.

At 35, some say Ricciardo has simply done his dash.

The brutal critique came from Dutch analyst Tom Coronel, who bluntly declared that Ricciardo needs to “be honest” with himself and accept that his time in a Red Bull junior team is over.

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After losing his McLaren seat at the end of the 2022 season, Ricciardo found his way back to the grid with VCARB (then AlphaTauri) in July 2023, following a brief stint as Red Bull’s reserve driver.

But his return has been anything but triumphant, with just four points finishes in 22 races, and only three in the last six races before F1’s summer break.

There is almost zero chance Ricciardo could challenge the front of the grid in a feeder team and he will be clutching at straws to lock down a long-term contract with another team purely on his popularity.

It is a brutal assessment of an eight-time Grand Prix winner and all-around nice bloke.

That’s not to say Ricciardo has nothing to offer. He can still pull out pockets of brilliance and is still one of the gutsiest overtakers on the grid.

But the competition is beyond fierce with young guns Liam Lawson, Kimi Antonelli and Ollie Bearman all fighting to be the next decade’s big man.

Speculation about Ricciardo’s future ramped up during June’s Austrian Grand Prix when Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko hinted that the company’s shareholders were eager to see VCARB revert to its Toro Rosso roots with a particular focus on nurturing young talent.

Former Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo has been told to hang up his gloves.

Liam Lawson has been waiting for years now.

Ricciardo was considered a contender to replace Sergio Perez at Red Bull Racing after the summer break, but team principal Christian Horner has since confirmed that both Perez and Ricciardo will retain their positions as the season continues.

As the 2024 F1 season comes to its pointy end, the spotlight on Ricciardo’s future is burning hotter than ever.

Coronel, however, has already cast his judgment, awarding Ricciardo a paltry 4.6 out of 10 for his performances this season after being out-qualified by teammate Yuki Tsunoda in nine of the 14 rounds.

“A few years ago, when Daniel Ricciardo left Red Bull and went for the money at Renault, I already knew it,” Coronel said via Planet F1.

“He chose the dough and not his racing heart.

“It’s a nice story, the Ricciardo 2.0 who has learnt from his mistakes – blah, blah, blah – but he just doesn’t get it anymore.

“He didn’t succeed at McLaren, he didn’t succeed at AlphaTauri and he’s never going to succeed again. Be honest with yourself.

“He is an ideal motorsport co-commentator or analyst. He is funny, has flair and can handle anything well.

“Go and enjoy that, but stop doing Formula 1. And at a training team, he has no business at all anyway.

“Formula 1 is the class for the world’s top-20 drivers and he hasn’t been part of that for a long time.”

There’s always Le Mans.

It came after Former Formula 1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve took a flamethrower to Ricciardo over a string of particularly bad qualifying sessions.

Villeneuve, 53, didn’t bite his tongue as he unleashed a brutal reality check for the eight-time grand prix winner.

“Why’s he still in F1? Why?” Villeneuve told Sky Sports.

“We are hearing the same thing now for the last four or five years. ‘We have to make the car better for him’. Sorry, it’s been five years of that. No, you are in F1.

“Maybe you make that effort for Lewis Hamilton whose won multiple championships. You don’t make that effort for a driver who can’t cut it.

“If you can’t cut it, go home, there’s someone else to take your place. That’s how it’s always been in racing, it’s the pinnacle of the sport.

“There’s no reason to keep going and to keep finding excuses, and you all talk about that first season or first two seasons, he was beating a Vettel that was burnt out, that was trying to invent things with the car to go win and just making a mess of his weekends.

“Then he was beating for half a season Verstappen when Verstappen was 18-years-old, just starting, that was it, he stopped beating anyone after that.

“I think his image has kept him in F1 more than his actual results.”