The power within Red Bull’s driver line-up appeared to shift towards Max Verstappen over the course of 2017, but the man without a contract beyond 2018 – Daniel Ricciardo – believes he can get the better of the Dutch superstar again.
This should have been a big year for Daniel Ricciardo. He outshone his young, highly-rated team-mate Max Verstappen in 2016 and described it as his best campaign yet as he pushed himself to perform at a higher level than ever before.
On top of that, the changes to the 2017 technical regulations presented an opportunity for Red Bull to haul itself back into contention for the title. But it didn’t work out like that.
It became clear as early as pre-season testing that the chassis and Renault power unit were under par. The team got on top of things on the car side, emerging with what many believe was the strongest chassis on the grid in the second half of the year. But by then hopes of a title push were over.
For Ricciardo, he has endured an inconsistent year. There were high points, such as his brilliant victory in Baku that came in the middle of a run of five podiums. But there were big lows, such as qualifying in Mexico, where he had no idea why he was so slow.
While Verstappen had most of the reliability woe at the start of the year, Ricciardo got his share at the end, failing to finish three of the last four races. The result was fifth in the drivers’ standings, two places, and 56 points down on last year.
He finished 32 clear of Verstappen, but as he well knows from 2015 when Daniil Kvyat outshone him, the final points tally doesn’t always reflect performance across a season. Verstappen ended up with more victories – two to one – and made the bigger gains in terms of personal development.
He turned his qualifying form around, to end the year 13-7 up, while Ricciardo struggled on one-lap pace, which was particularly concerning given it has been an area considered to be one of his strengths. People have short memories. The momentum is with Verstappen.
Verstappen signing a new long-term deal with the team, committing himself until the end of 2020, was also a crucial moment. Ricciardo hasn’t done the same yet and now finds himself in a team that could potentially start building itself around Verstappen in the coming years.
What does he do now? Can he realistically win the title by staying at Red Bull beyond the end of his deal, which expires next year? Will he have a chance to fight for the title next season and beyond if Red Bull has a car capable of doing so?
Ricciardo believes so, on both counts. So how does he plan on beating Verstappen to become F1’s next – and 34th – world champion?
The first challenge is to find his qualifying form again, which in turn requires him to get on top of the 2017 spec F1 cars.
“I used to be called a Saturday driver, now I feel I’m probably called a Sunday driver – who would have thought?” jokes Ricciardo, who is speaking to Autosport in a hospitality unit in Baku overlooking the track on which he claimed his one and only victory this year, as part of a post-Abu Dhabi Grand Prix visit to help promote next year’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
“I’ll put it down to a couple of things this year. I wouldn’t say I’ve struggled with the car, but it’s been a bit trickier to maximise. I crashed twice in qualifying, which is very uncharacteristic, and that was within the first eight races.
“For whatever reason, Max didn’t find it as complicated to start the year. Naturally, I was probably too sensitive to it as well. A lot of the time, it was probably better to just say fuck it and just drive it and deal with the grip I had as opposed to try and fine-tune it too much. Then we got to a point, where we thought, ‘You know what? It is what it is, it won’t be the perfect car, just deal with it’.
“So I put together some good ones. Then we got perhaps stuck in our old ways, there were quite a few practices this year, especially on Friday FP2, where I was on top. I topped Singapore, Budapest, Mexico.
“In the past, if we were quick in practice, don’t touch the car, leave it. We have a good thing, why change it? Then come qualifying, the track would evolve and we would be worse off. So we’d be caught off guard with maybe what we used to do and what used to work.
“It was a pretty big learning process this year. We didn’t catch it as quick as we could have. That was it.
“For those reasons, I’m confident next year will be better. It’s a combination of me being with Simon [Rennie, his race engineer] for quite a while, we have good chemistry, and we know what we’ve done in the past. If we got stuck, we’d go back to what we knew. But what we knew didn’t always work with this year’s car.”
While Ricciardo’s opening stint of the year was strong, both in terms of performance and his car’s reliability, the situation flipped in the second half of the year, and Verstappen emerged as the stronger of the two. His qualifying all year had been an improvement, but with a more reliable car underneath him, he excelled.
In the last six races, he scored 100 points, equalling the highest tally with Lewis Hamilton. Ricciardo scored just 38. Verstappen seems to have the edge now, but Ricciardo feels it is pretty even.
“I’d say last year I had a clear edge if you were generalizing our races together,” he says. “Sure he had some amazing races but I was better in qualifying and most Sundays.
“This year, his qualifying improved so he was better in qualifying. In the races, I don’t know. If we were to split the races, we both had an even number of good ones. The difference was his bad ones weren’t as bad as my ones. His good days probably looked better because they weren’t good days for me.
“I definitely think he got better this year. His improvement was good. For that, it made it look like it was a better season for him than it was for me. I wouldn’t argue that he had a really good year.”
Ricciardo hasn’t been afraid to admit when he has been lost this year, regarding getting the car into the sweet spot. So if he says he feels he has got on top of his problems with the 2017 generation of cars and found solutions to cure his qualifying performance, his comments are worth listening to. With that in mind, he feels like he can get back on top again
“In some races and some qualifying sessions, I couldn’t always see [what was missing],” he says. “We were scratching our head and I was like, ‘I don’t have an answer right now’. We’re a few tenths off and I couldn’t get it out of the car.
“I never lost faith in myself or my ability. But I was aware of the need to find a solution for it, otherwise we’ll keep going round in circles. I’m confident, now the season is done, we’ve understood it all.”
If Red Bull delivers a car capable of winning the title next year, it will create the possibility of Ricciardo and Verstappen battling wheel-to-wheel more often. A flashpoint when they fought over the same piece of the track came in Hungary this year. Ricciardo described his team-mate’s driving as “amateur” after they collided on the first lap, and Verstappen later apologized.
“I feel we’ve got respect for each other, especially after the hot water in Budapest – that was a bit of a test,” he says. “Fortunately he handled it well afterward and apologized and did what he had to. If it happens again, we’ll race it out.”
Verstappen’s new contract puts Ricciardo in an awkward position. Horner said that Verstappen has the chance to build the team around him. A few years ago, Ricciardo will have felt that when he last committed himself to the team. He knows that the next contract he signs is important because it will cover the peak years of his career.
One wrong step could rob him of a chance to fight for the world championship – just ask Fernando Alonso, who seems to have made a specialty of that. So it’s understandable Ricciardo is taking his time. First, there is next year to consider, given the fact Red Bull ended the year with a very strong chassis.
If it can develop well over the winter and start next season on a strong footing, Ricciardo and Verstappen could find themselves in the title fight. Does Ricciardo feel he will have everything at his disposal and equal opportunity to fight for the title if that happens?
“I do,” he says. “That’s 100% honest. [Horner’s comments] are not want you want to hear. I didn’t see it in the press but afterwards, I found out about Christian’s comment and it was because he actually came up to me and cleared it up. He said: ‘Look, if you’ve seen the comments, it’s not out of context but I didn’t want it to come across that way. I don’t want you to think anything like that. We’re fighting for both of you’.
“Max got the updated engine in the last few races, that was the only thing that has ever been different. But I don’t have any concern with it. If I did, I would have spoken up about it already.”
Ricciardo feels Red Bull still backs him and he was happy with the explanation given to him by Horner that there was no favouritism. “Even if the engine is a tenth quicker, the person says ‘I’ve just got to drive two tenths better. If I’m good enough, I’ll beat him anyway!’ I’m confident.
“I acknowledge that Max’s level means I have to be perfect more often than not if I want to stay in front. But I know I can do that. My Sundays this year were as good as they’ve ever been for the most part.
“The racer in me is very confident and determined.”
DANIEL RICCIARDO & MAX VERSTAPPEN RED BULL F1 SIGNED PHOTO PRINT
Credit: Motorsport.com