Red Bull have confirmed Daniel Ricciardo will not see out the season at their second F1 team, RB.
Just 14 months after handing Ricciardo his return to F1, Red Bull have chosen to replace him with Liam Lawson for the final six rounds, beginning with the United States Grand Prix in Austin.The widely-expected move follows a weekend of intense speculation over Ricciardo’s future during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend. The veteran of over 250 grand prix starts and eight-times grand prix winner was visibly emotional after finishing Sunday’s race, admitting he knew that “could be it” for his F1 career.
Neither RB or owners Red Bull gave any official indication that they were set to drop Ricciardo from the team following the weekend. However, the team has now confirmed that Ricciardo has competed in his final race for RB.
Team principal Laurent Mekies thanked Ricciardo for his contribution to the team since joining them in the middle of last season. “He has brought a lot of experience and talent to the team with a fantastic attitude, which has helped everyone to develop and foster a tight team spirit,” he said.
“Daniel has been a true gentleman both on and off the track and never without that smile. He will be missed, but will always hold a special place within the Red Bull family.”
Lawson will replace Ricciardo for the second time in as many years. The 22-year-old raced in five grands prix for RB in 2023 after Ricciardo broke his left wrist in a practice crash at Zandvoort.
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His spell as a substitute was widely regarded as a success. Lawson acquitted himself well on his short-notice debut in the Dutch Grand Prix, then scored the team’s best result of the season up to that point with ninth place in Singapore.
“It’s great to see young talent from within the Red Bull family make the next step,” he added. “We’re looking forward to getting our heads down and focusing on the rest of the season together.”
For Ricciardo, losing his race seat at RB is likely to mean the end of his F1 career. He appeared to acknowledge as much in a social media post following the announcement of his sacking.
“I’ve loved this sport my whole life,” he said. “It’s wild and wonderful and been a journey.
“To the teams and individuals that have played their part, thank you. To the fans who love the sport sometimes more than me haha thank you. It’ll always have its highs and lows but it’s been fun and truth be told I wouldn’t change it. Until the next adventure.”
The 35-year-old made his world championship debut with HRT in 2011 as a Red Bull junior, before racing for two seasons with Toro Rosso, the team now known as RB.
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Ricciardo was promoted to Red Bull’s senior team in 2014 alongside Sebastian Vettel. He proved to have the ability to fight at the front of the field, taking his maiden grand prix victory in Canada alongside two further wins in Hungary and Belgium and five other podium appearances.
Ricciardo raced with Red Bull for five seasons until deciding to leave the team at the end of 2018 due to his concerns over his standing compared to younger team mate Max Verstappen. He moved to Renault where he raced for two seasons before joining McLaren in 2021.
Despite taking a memorable, and likely final, grand prix victory in Monza that year, Ricciardo’s first season with McLaren proved disappointing as he struggled to adapt to the unfamiliar car and was regularly beaten by younger team mate Lando Norris. When his struggles continued in 2022, McLaren took the remarkable step of breaking his contract with more than a year remaining on his deal in favour of signing rookie Oscar Piastri.
Without a drive for 2023, Ricciardo was signed by Red Bull as a reserve driver, testing for the team under the Testing with Previous Cars programme and carrying out demonstration runs for the world champions. Soon afterwards Red Bull chose to drop its underperforming new driver Nyck de Vries from its second F1 team, by now called AlphaTauri, and chose Ricciardo as his replacement.
This season, Ricciardo has been out-performed by team mate Yuki Tsunoda, scoring 12 points through three top ten finishes and a fourth place finish in the Miami sprint race compared to Tsunoda’s 22 points from seven top tens. Ricciardo has also only reached Q3 on three occasions in 2024, compared to nine times for Tsunoda, and lost the head-to-head qualifying battle 6-12 to his team mate.
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Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
26th September 2024, 17:00
I get the feeling that Red Bull is feeling the urgency of proving Lawson’s worth quickly so he can replace Perez starting next season, because I cannot see Checo staying any longer and promoting Lawson right away makes no sense either. They just need this stop-gap at RB so they can properly decide.
Jere (@jerejj)
26th September 2024, 17:14
Although 11 GPs by the next season-opener would still be risky for a main team promotion.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
26th September 2024, 17:45
Better than no race at all, or replacing him with Ricciardo as it was suggested before the summer break! It’s ironic this whole situation with Red Bull and their B team was triggered by Ricciardo himself back in 2018 when he left and there were not many people in the line to fill the empty seats. They’ve been playing catch up since then and not that brilliantly…
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th September 2024, 19:17
Well, they didn’t really try hard: they could’ve offered russell a seat after his impressive debut in 2020, and marko said something about it catching his eye, but they didn’t, so they never got a really decent number 2 driver, perez 2021 is the closest it got.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th September 2024, 19:17
To be fair, perez was doing great too in 2020, both deserved a seat in a top team.
José Lopes da Silva
27th September 2024, 11:50
This situation was triggered in 2018 because Verstappen is an All-Time Great and the number of those drivers is scarce.
Nick T.
26th September 2024, 17:24
Maybe. They only didn’t sign Carlos cause they wanted to signal to Max the team would remain 100% focused on him. And he wouldn’t be a challenge to Max. So, it seems like they’re not even willing to sign someone who can be anywhere close to Max.
I think part of the reason they’ve rushed him forward is so, if he didn’t doesn’t do well, they’ll promote Hadjar to RB next season instead. My prediction is that they’ll be very disappointed with Lawson. I could be a 1,000% wrong though. It’s annoying we have to wait a month to begin seeing.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
26th September 2024, 17:46
Yeah but what if Lawson doesn’t do well, and they promote Hadjar to RB? do they still keep Perez? I think it’s too risky, if this path continues there’s no chance to win either championship next season, no matter how well Max does.
Biggsy
26th September 2024, 17:53
@fer-no65 @Nick T.
My feeling is that their need for urgency comes from the fact that suddenly Max’s future doesn’t seem too certain either.
Just 6 months earlier, they basically snubbed all of the drivers who could have replaced Max (some better some worse), just to signal to Max that he will be an undisputed #1, with no competition from the other garage.
So it’s quite an irony that they are finding themselves without a #1 in near the future, because the they’ve made the moves which were supposed to pamper their current #1 and make him happier, thus more probable to stay.
But if they were afraid their #1 would run away if faced with a challenge, they were right, but they were wrong regarding the kind of challenge. Now that Red Bull is starting to look like it’s facing an exodus, not only is Max going to jump ship (avoid the challenge of not driving a top car), but they are much less likely to attract another top driver.
Just 6 months ago, they would’ve been queuing to drive for Red Bull.
Now, I can’t imagine Alonso ditching Newey’s Aston Martin and Honda, for going to Red Bull which is bleeding the top personnel left and right, and is facing a possibility of producing a complete dud of an engine for 2026.
Also, Hamilton. Before going with Ferrari, I can’t imagine Lewis refusing a call from Red Bull. Now, you’d be hard pressed to convince him to leave Mercedes for Red Bull. Next year’s Red Bull will probably be even less competitive, and 2026 is a big ask for Red Bull and Ford.
kuvemar
26th September 2024, 17:55
Why would RBR want to have two utterly unlikable characters in the same team? They’re still trying to sell a product and none of these are marketable.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
26th September 2024, 19:38
What’s more marketable than a world champion, mate?
And in any case, who cares about that if the main goal is to win?
Dex
26th September 2024, 20:39
Unlikable? Speak for yourself, mate. The world doesn’t revolve around your feelings.
Nick T.
27th September 2024, 2:09
I 100% agree with you. At that time, they thought they’d stay great. And, in that case, they wouldn’t have to worry much about keeping Max or attracting another great driver. It’s funny you mention Alonso because I said somewhere else that Alonso had “finally dodged a bullet” when Max put the kibosh on him coming there. Can you imagine his fury if he had signed, they looked like this AND had just announced Newey coming to them?
Nick T.
27th September 2024, 2:11
Which two people are you talking about? Max and Carlos? Max is quite marketable.
kuvemar
27th September 2024, 6:44
Sorry, I slightly misread your comment. I was talking about Max and Liam.
Nick T.
28th September 2024, 16:09
Sorry, I was replying to Biggsy. All of us are all over the place.
Billys (@bilarxos)
26th September 2024, 17:01
Sad news unfortunately, but no surpises here.
Mayrton
27th September 2024, 8:45
Let’s hope other teams take some gutsy decisions as well. Nearly half the field is ready to leave imho.
Edvaldo
26th September 2024, 17:04
Can’t say they didn’t do exactly what they said they would about this.
They gave him some races to access if he still had “it”. And looks like he doesn’t. He’s 35 years old, 13 years into his career, he should not be in the junior team for any other reason, so, it’s about time Lawson can finally claim the seat.
Ricciardo had a nice career and was a very exciting driver. Whatever happened for him to fall this hard and this fast is what is weighing more on his forced retirement as the driver he was 4 years ago was easily worthy of a seat on this grid.
Konstantinos
26th September 2024, 17:15
It’s interesting how a driver can go from such promise to where he ended up.
Was it that he was especially suited to the RedBull car at the time and nothing else? Or did all the team changes knock his confidence down so hard that he couldn’t recover? I do think that psychology is a very under-discussed topic in this sport but I guess we will never really know for him.
BlasterMaster
26th September 2024, 17:22
I still think Grosjean’s crash messed him up, mentally.
Bruno
26th September 2024, 18:45
How so?
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th September 2024, 19:25
Mmm, that’s not a bad idea, grosjean’s crash was terrible, and look at the case ricciardo was terrible since coming back the season after the crash.
BlasterMaster
26th September 2024, 21:33
His reaction to the crash during his time watching the replays in the garage. Just watch how he reacted. And I’m not talking about D2S, either. There’s a lot of video of DRs reaction to that crash on YouTube. I truely believe 2020 was a pivotal time for DR. That’s where his easy, yet gung ho approach to racing changed. Yes, he was not achieving what he was in his RB days, but that day changed him. I thought that then, and I believe that now.
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
26th September 2024, 17:12
I know the argument will be ‘Why now & not just wait for 2025’ but I think the reason they want to put Lawson in the RB now is because they want to evaluate him as a possible replacement for Perez in 2025. If they weren’t thinking about doing that I think they would have just stuck with Ricciardo until the end of the season.
If they are giving even a small bit of consideration for him as a replacement for Perez in ’25 then it makes perfect sense to give him 5 races now because if he gets in the car & really impresses then you can move him straight up & if he comes in & just does fine then you can leave him there for 2025 & see how he progresses.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
27th September 2024, 1:38
I think you just hit the nail on the head.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
26th September 2024, 17:12
Come on then Liam. Let’s really see how good you are. He has one clear advantage…his age.
Jere (@jerejj)
26th September 2024, 17:15
Finally the open secret is official.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th September 2024, 19:40
Yes, was a really bad kept secret, with ricciardo being very emotional this weekend.
Adam (@rocketpanda)
26th September 2024, 17:16
Unpopular opinion maybe but I don’t get why he’s talked about so much, he’s been on a very clear downward spiral since he left Red Bull. Indifferent at Renault, either poor or outright bad at McLaren and he’s seemed as far away from Tsunoda as he was from Norris. There was a time he looked like the next big thing, and there’s no doubt he was a good driver but it’s been a little while since he’s been that.
There’s a lot of drivers that were treated poorly by teams or deserved a second chance and never got them – but he did, and good luck to him, but I find it perplexing it’s a sad thing at all. Especially so when F1/Sky talk about Ricciardo so fondly but barely acknowledge Bottas, despite him being statistically and consistently more successful and in a similar position career wise.
Greg
26th September 2024, 17:40
Because Ricciardo is very popular, even if his race results are not good. In part thanks to netflix.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
27th September 2024, 1:47
Ricciardo was very popular with F1 fans before the whole Netflix thing. He is a sportsmanlike dude. I have no doubt, personally, that Daniel Ricciardo will abide.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th September 2024, 19:42
I’m guessing ricciardo got more wins without a dominant car though, 6 out of 10 of bottas’ wins came with a dominant car, while ricciardo has 8 wins, if I recall, none with a dominant car, I can believe he’s talked about more: give him a car like bottas had and he’d have way more wins.
Sham (@sham)
26th September 2024, 17:37
We’ll see if the Red Bull young drivers program is worth anything, these days. Ricciardo was the last ‘good’ recruit and he has been mediocre at best for the vast majority of the time. People will argue Albon too, but he has yet to prove himself against a decent team mate, and his showing against Colapinto so far is none to promising.
Dex
26th September 2024, 20:41
Mediocre? When? For the last three years? His career lasted longer than that.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
27th September 2024, 2:03
@sham I think your analysis is slightly flawed concerning Albon. Colapinto brings sponsors, and has nothing to lose, while a maturing Albon has to be a steady pair of hands for Williams for the remainder of the year. Colapinto is a great driver, no doubt, but I think we will only see the Albon’s true fighting form when he and Sainz square off next year. Then Albon will have something to lose.
Also, my crystal ball is foggy tonight. Liam Lawson just might be the next Oscar Piastri!
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
26th September 2024, 17:42
Good news. It’s about time.
I like Danny both as a driver and as a person, but he lost it somewhere, years ago.
Now tell Cecho the smirk to either up his game or kiss off.
Nick T.
26th September 2024, 17:42
TR asserts he was the best driver in F1 in 2014 and 2016. Hard to argue. He was brilliant during those seasons. Two P3s in the WDC during the Mercedes dominance era is very impressive. Had he been lucky enough to come to RBR a little earlier or a little later, he could have easily been a WDC.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
26th September 2024, 17:50
When it was him and Max at Red Bull, I couldn’t decide between the two of them.
Max was obviously good, but Danny Rics “Dive Bomb” overtakes were a joy to behold.
He made Max look foolish more than once …. perhaps that was a problem?
Edvaldo
26th September 2024, 17:58
2014 was very impressive. That race in Spa, then, it looked like they had their new Vettel right there. It was not a lucky win, the only thing that prevented Rosberg from having a straightforward race was a longer pit stop to change the front wing he damaged on lap 2.
After he lost the lead he could not make the ground he was expecting to because Ricciardo drove those laps perfectly on a car with the tiniest of the rear wings.
2016 was good too, but even if he did beat Max from Spain onwards, Max was already looking like he would be the stronger driver in a matter of time.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
26th September 2024, 18:00
It’s quite an odd phenomena really. Not many drivers start off pretty good, get slightly better and score multiple wins and then drop off very steeply in performance. I really do wonder what happened to Daniel at McLaren? It’s very, very odd. He went from looking quite decent at Renault, in an average car to quite quickly looking quite mediocre.
I am not sure this will ever really be explained to most people’s satisfaction.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
26th September 2024, 18:25
I don’t know the specifics, but he got paid very well when he went to Renault and bought a home Los Angeles. Whether he lived there during the McLaren / RB period I’m not sure. But as Max pointed out yesterday, the US west coast is a trip from F1 generally, despite it being a global sport.
rpiian (@rpiian)
26th September 2024, 18:03
Unsurprising. Good luck with the driver rankings later this year :D
joe jopling (@jop452)
26th September 2024, 18:17
I wonder if the story ends there. Max and Danny are very good friends, and would be surprised if Max does not sway what happens next
Constantijn Blondel
26th September 2024, 18:29
Bye, Danny. I’m sure your mojo will find you somewhere better for you than F1 – and I’m looking forward to you kicking some bee-hind again :)
t1redmonkey (@t1redmonkey)
26th September 2024, 19:12
I think he’s lucky to have had as many opportunities as he did quite honestly, one of the most over-rated drivers we’ve had in F1 in the 21st century. RB should’ve just kept Lawson in the car after he showed he was performing at a high standard (I thought at the time they should’ve just replaced De Vries with Lawson in the first place but oh well). Only thing I’d say in Danny Ric’s defence, is that it’s a bit of a joke he was let go from the RBR stable before Perez.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th September 2024, 19:47
Agree on both counts, I was disappointed for example that lawson didn’t get a full time drive for 2024, his performances deserved it, and also perez is now performing worse than ricciardo over the season, yet it’s the latter being dropped.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
27th September 2024, 2:05
Just think how hungry for it Lawson is right now.
dot_com (@dot_com)
26th September 2024, 19:30
It’s long overdue, really. Not many drivers get as many chances as him with such woeful results.
There are rumors that Checo will be announcing his retirement soon, so I wonder where this will leave RBR/VCARB. I assume that if Lawson does really well, they may promote him to Red Bull alongside Max, which could very well end his career very quickly. Or they are keeping Danny in the wings in case they need a quick reliable replacement.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th September 2024, 19:48
I’m guessing if lawson gets promoted to red bull, they will get hadjar at TR.
notagrumpyfan
26th September 2024, 19:49
Thus from next race the three least experienced drivers will be from the Southern Hemisphere.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
26th September 2024, 20:59
I’m glad Liam has been given this opportunity to drive in F1. It is a bit unfortunate it comes at Daniel’s expense, but generally Daniel hasn’t lived up to expectations. He was supposed to be better than Nyck de Vries, but it seems to me Daniel hasn’t done that. I really don’t know if it was worth replacing Nyck with Daniel. For example, there were reports Daniel had been given special coaching by Red Bull before Nyck was replaced, which raises the question of whether or not Nyck was given the same sort of coaching.
MichaelN
26th September 2024, 21:55
It doesn’t seem anyone at Red Bull was invested in De Vries’ success. It was more of a nod to Verstappen to give him a go when they had nobody ready to go in their line-up.
MacLeod (@macleod)
27th September 2024, 7:44
Nyck is a good building driver the engineers were very happy with de Vries and even Yuki said he learned so much from him in so short time.
Ofcourse i knew de Vries was a fillup but they could let him finish the season atleast let him drive the improved car at Zandvoort.
MichaelN
26th September 2024, 22:09
Makes sense. Red Bull gets away with their four car team in part because of the unspoken agreement that it’s giving young talent a chance to prove themselves.
But a 35-year-old has no business being in such a setup. He had to absolutely dominate Tsunoda, do it quickly, and get promoted. Instead, he failed.
Time to go back to the regularly scheduled programming.
Next up: Pérez and Honda’s appointee.
EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
27th September 2024, 0:54
As much as it is hard to argue against kicking Danny out of the seat, I still do not believe that Checo is a better driver.
If they are going to try things out they should have put Danny in Checo’s seat. It is debatable whether such a move would cost them a championship that they appear on couse to lose anyway. And if he doesn’t perform there they have not lost any options that they had before. If he did okay in the top team then the options are increased.
notagrumpyfan
27th September 2024, 8:33
Interestingly, by getting FLAP in his last race Ricciardo has done more to help Verstappen’s chances to become WDC again than Perez the whole season. Even his crash in Baku was negative for Verstappen relatively to Norris.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
27th September 2024, 0:59
I’m a bit sad for Dan, had Renault actually put some effort into their PU at the start of the hybrid era, I’m certain he would have had at least 1 WDC given how he performed when he first joined RBR, but history is filled with great drivers who didn’t have the machinery when they were at their peak.
For some reason, he just couldn’t get his head around the requirements for driving the ground effect cars fast. I suspect a few other of that era’s drivers are also struggling a bit but not as much as he has. I remember his engineer instructing him to brake mid corner at one point to get more speed, something that just simply didn’t compute in my head, and I’m sure it wouldn’t have in his either as it seems so foreign to the things we learn when driving race cars.
I’ll be forever grateful to that young kid that spent some time with me explaining how to get better times out of the formula ford car I was learning to drive and helped me knock a full 4 seconds off my lap times. Thanks mate for all you’ve done, as a person and as an Aussie F1 driver. Have a fantastic future and keep being you.
MCG (@malrg)
30th September 2024, 6:10
I really like Dan, and have watched him right through his career, great guy and was a great driver at his peak, but that tiny difference that made him one of the best is gone, RB really had no choice, they gave Dan the time to find it if it was still there.