Daniel Ricciardo future update issued as RB boss reveals F1 2024 expectations

With Daniel Ricciardo aiming to hold onto his seat with RB for 2025, CEO Peter Bayer has offered an update on the Australian’s chances.

With Yuki Tsunoda already confirmed with the Faenza-based team for 2025, Daniel Ricciardo is going through a tense period as he aims to impress his bosses and retain his seat after making a dream comeback last year.

Peter Bayer: RB ‘expecting performance’ from Daniel Ricciardo

After being dropped by McLaren at the conclusion of the F1 2022 season, Ricciardo secured a comeback with the second Red Bull team last year as he got the call-up to join the then-Alpha Tauri squad to replace the struggling Nyck de Vries.

His comeback momentum suffered a setback as he broke a bone in his hand in a practice crash at Zandvoort, but he did enough to secure a full-time return and race seat with the team as it was rebranded by Red Bull to become Visa CashApp RB .

Over the first 10 races of 2024, Ricciardo has had a subdued season with flashes of the form he’s had in the past – particularly with a tremendous drive to fourth in the Miami Grand Prix Sprint race, as well as points finishes in Canada and, most recently, in Austria.

Tsunoda, already confirmed for 2025, earned his renewal after scoring constant points finishes in the other car between Australia and Monaco, with the young Japanese driver emerging as a star performer with a new-found maturity that’s underlined his driving.

Red Bull consultant Helmut Marko recently suggested Ricciardo’s seat is set to be taken by the team’s reserve and promising junior Liam Lawson – the Kiwi driver having impressed greatly during his time standing in for Ricciardo last season.

“The shareholders have made it clear that it is a junior team and we have to act accordingly,” Marko said.

“The goal was that [Ricciardo] would be considered for Red Bull Racing with exceptional performances. That seat now belongs to Sergio Perez, so that plan is no longer valid.”

Addressing the topic of Ricciardo’s prospects in an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com, RB CEO Peter Bayer said there’s no need for immediacy in terms of making a decision on Ricciardo.

“In our universe, we have talent, we have a proper pyramid, I don’t think any other team has a pyramid like Red Bull with a junior team, so there is constant pressure from the bottom,” Bayer exclusively told PlanetF1.com on Sunday morning in Austria.

“Young guys, they are racing and, after the race, they come back and they say ‘I won! Do we have a date?!’

“That’s something that we need to manage but, at the same time, we’re sort of the way in for the young talent because we do develop young drivers – at the same time, we have to be commercially successful and we need to be successful on track.

“That performance requirement hasn’t been as explicit in the past.

“It was basically Mr. [Dietrich] Mateschitz (late owner and founder of Red Bull GmbH) saying on juniors ‘If we want to change four times a season, we’ll change four times a season because that’s your job, you will get them those couple of runs in F1 and then we’ll see whether they can do it or not’.

“That has changed now. We still need to do that as part of our job, but we also need to be successful.”

Ricciardo’s seniority and experience, having made his debut in F1 in 2011 before joining Faenza in their Toro Rosso iteration before being promoted to Red Bull in 2014, puts him at odds with the RB team’s remit as being a development ground for Red Bull juniors.

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Having had the opportunity of impressing Red Bull to secure a seat alongside Max Verstappen, Ricciardo’s slow start to the year coincided with a bright one from Perez – meaning the way is shut for a completion of his redemption arc back to his former seat, at least for now.

Bayer acknowledged the increased expectation on Ricciardo as a result of that experience, saying: “We don’t need to develop Daniel. He came into the team to perform and to help us with Yuki.”

“Between Daniel and Yuki, Daniel has been part of that Yuki development project. At the same time, we obviously were also expecting from him as a very fast and experienced driver, we were expecting performance from him and we are expecting performance from him.”

Asked outright whether Ricciardo’s seat is in danger, Bayer said: “So without creating pressure or doing an evaluation of if his seat is in danger, I think he knows, we know that he needs to perform. If he’s not performing, it will be difficult to put him into the car next year.”

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