Right before the start of the ongoing world championship, it was pretty clear that Daniel Ricciardo was to compete in a season that was, to put it simply, a make or break for him.
What has, fundamentally speaking, changed at his current team is its name; the Alpha Tauri name being out and new branding saying it loud and clear: Visa Cash App RB team. What didn’t was the current challenge for the redoubtable racing talent.
Ricciardo sat in his car with the clear intent to race its wheels off to amass a position of strength this season with renewed vigor and hopefully, renewed intent.
Though what was also clear and not without any doubt, was that Yuki Tsunoda is clearly the future leader of the team; Daniel Ricciardo not so much.
As a matter of fact, despite gathering what seemed a modest sum of 17 career points in 2023, Yuki had clearly outperformed Ricciardo last year. The Australian was able to bag only 6 points in comparison.
Moreover, at 34, the famous Perth-born Formula 1 driver is clearly not getting any younger; Tsunoda, on the other hand, is just 23 and still growing in his racing craft and prospering in his overall career.
However, what is evident at present is that Daniel Ricciardo is in a bit of a similar spot where he found himself as of the last year.
It’s a position that the former Red Bull driver wasn’t too familiar with: down the back of the grid.
Even though dust has settled in what have only been just two race weekends thus far, Ricciardo’s race results have been far from satisfactory.
At the season opener in Bahrain, he even failed to make it to Q3, however, eventually managing to outperform his teammate in gathering a thirteenth; Yuki Tsunoda finished just behind in fourteenth.
Though, it wasn’t that the experienced Australian was able to get the measure of his much inexperienced Japanese teammate in the next contest.
At the most recent F1 Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia, it was rather disappointing to see Daniel Ricciardo register a lowly sixteenth.
Tsunoda, despite not gathering any points whatsoever, finished on fourteenth and in so doing, was able to lunge ahead of Williams’s Logan Sargeant.
It’s not hard to imagine the plight of a multiple Formula 1 Grand Prix winner. He’s clearly not the driver who’s here to merely participate; Ricciardo is made of steel and is here to win. But neither does he have the car and one reckons, with persistent drivability issues concerned with his Visa Cash App RB team, he may just be lacking the confidence required to compete at motor-sport’s highest echelons.
While it is uncertain as to when might his team bring about any updates with only two races being held so far, it’s certain that Ricciardo is struggling for form and with pure race pace.
In a sport that is anything but smooth, somewhere it helps to be fidgety and a tad bit unsettled in a race like Yuki to keep pushing, to constantly search for that extra bit of something.
And who knows, it might just be the thing that Ricciardo, whose race craft has earned him dollops of fans all around the world, is lacking.
That said, the Aussie must not lose hope and find the small positives that he urgently needs to build something special this year. As they say, the night is still very young and we’ve got a long way to go in 2024.