In the final moments of the Singapore Grand Prix, Daniel Ricciardo ducked into the pit lane for a fresh set of soft tires. When he returned to the track, he barreled through the Marina Bay course to come home with honors for fastest lap—a point that, critically, he denied Lando Norris, the driver closest to challenging Max Verstappen in the drivers’ championship. It may be Ricciardo’s last act as a Formula 1 driver.
If you’re not avidly following every twist and turn of the F1 media cycle, you may have missed it: Coming into the Singapore weekend, Daniel Ricciardo dominated the headlines with rumors that it may be his final race with VCARB, which is effectively the junior counterpart to Red Bull Racing.
To understand how Ricciardo’s job came under threat, we need to turn the clocks back to early summer. Max Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez saw a shocking fall-off in performance, and as McLaren began to carve away at Red Bull’s lead in the World Constructors’ Championship, the team scrambled. It had just signed Perez for 2025, with an option to continue into 2026.
But there was allegedly a performance clause buried in Perez’s contract: If the Mexican racer entered the series’ mandatory summer shutdown with a 100-point deficit to Verstappen, then Red Bull could fire Perez during that summer break and refresh its team line-up. Media speculation saw Ricciardo move into Perez’s vacated seat, with Liam Lawson brought in to partner Yuki Tsunoda in VCARB.
Perez adamantly denied the rumors, but the Red Bull organization is notorious for promoting, demoting, or firing drivers mid-season (see: Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly, Daniil Kvyat, Nyck de Vries, and Brendon Hartley, among others). Fans and media were certain Perez would be shown the door.
Then, not even two full days into summer break, Red Bull announced that it would be retaining Perez.
Why? Unfounded rumors suggested Liberty Media had stepped in to prevent a Perez departure lest it wreak havoc on the Mexican Grand Prix, but the more likely reason is simply that Perez brings ample sponsor dollars courtesy of business magnate Carlos Slim—and that Red Bull finally recognized Perez had been correct in suggesting that fatal flaws plagued its car and that perhaps it feels obligated to right that wrong.
“We traced the development history back and it turned out that the first mistake we made was with an underbody upgrade in 2023 in Barcelona,” Christian Horner admitted this year as the team’s RB20 fails to perform.
“That was also the Grand Prix from which Checo started having problems with the car. We just didn’t take it so seriously because Max kept winning.”
Red Bull thus committed to Perez… but the organization still demanded a shake-up.
Dr. Helmut Marko, Red Bull F1 director and head of Red Bull’s driver development program, stated in the immediate aftermath of Perez’s re-signing that “[VCARB’s] shareholders have made it known that it is a junior team and we have to act accordingly. The goal was that he [Ricciardo] would be considered for Red Bull with exceptional performances. That seat now belongs to Perez, so that plan is no longer valid.
“We will have to put a young driver in there soon. That would be Liam Lawson.”
All eyes turned back to Ricciardo.
In 18 races, Ricciardo has only outperformed teammate Tsunoda seven times, and only three of those performances have been good enough to score points. Tsunoda has 22 points to Ricciardo’s 12—not the “exceptional performances” that Marko was looking for.
In 2023, Lawson substituted for Daniel Ricciardo during a five-race stretch where the driver—who himself was brought in to replace Nyck de Vries partway through the season—recovered from a wrist injury. The young driver from New Zealand was considered a strong option for VCARB’s 2024 lineup, but the team opted instead to stick with Ricciardo.
That brings us to the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix. Driver contracts in Formula 1 are notoriously inaccessible, but multiple sources began to report in the buildup to the event that Lawson’s contract featured a critical clause: If Red Bull failed to offer Lawson a seat by a certain date, then Lawson would be free to leave the organization in pursuit of a different role at a different team.
Suddenly, Ricciardo became persona non grata.
Daniel Ricciardo needed a miracle in Singapore, and he didn’t get one. He failed to make it out of Q1 and started the event in 16th place, while his teammate Tsunoda made it all the way to Q3 for an eighth-place start. And while Tsunoda did slip out of the points during the race, Ricciardo didn’t make progress.
In the final moments of the 62-lap race, VCARB called Ricciardo into the pits, fitting him with soft tires, and sent him out to snatch the fastest lap from Lando Norris, who needs every point he can get to challenge Max Verstappen for a championship. Ricciardo—the driver who once left Red Bull because he didn’t want to simply aid Verstappen in securing wins—did as he was asked.
(Laurent Mekies, head of VCARB, denied that Ricciardo took the fastest lap in order to prevent Norris from having it. Rather, he argued, “Given this may have been Daniel’s last race, we wanted to give him the chance to savor it and go out with the fastest lap.”)
Daniel Ricciardo deserved more than that as his swan song in Formula 1.
While Ricciardo’s performances since his return have not been enough to warrant him a seat for 2025, and while he may not bring the same level of sponsorship funding as Perez, the Australian driver has nevertheless deeply impacted the sport of Formula 1.
Ricciardo’s fun-loving personality and natural penchant for cracking jokes made him one of the breakout stars of Netflix’s docuseries Drive to Survive. Folks who tuned into the show during the COVID-19 pandemic were swept up by the glitz and glamor of this multimillion-dollar sport—but personalities like Ricciardo’s were critical in grounding fans. The view from a driver’s Monaco apartment might be enticing, but Daniel Ricciardo singing to himself in his car or cracking jokes to the producers provided a critical humanizing element that gave new fans something to latch onto. These drivers are just like me.
That in and of itself should have warranted a more dignified exit. If Singapore truly was Ricciardo’s final race, that should have at least been clear, allowing the driver a chance to say goodbye.
Instead, after Ricciardo exited the car, he was left to field difficult questions about a future that could suddenly become very bleak.
“Look, obviously, there’s a realistic chance that it’s not going to happen,” he said when asked if he’d be in the car in Austin for the United States Grand Prix.
But rather than keep quiet about what could happen, Ricciardo took his chance in front of media to summarize his career and come face to face with what he’s been fighting for.
“Obviously, there was a lot of emphasis on this weekend, and I would have loved a better weekend, and who knows if that would have changed anything, or if the decision’s been made already, even prior to the weekend, you know what I mean?
“You know, sometimes you’ve got to see the big picture, and I always said I don’t just want to be a guy that’s here on the grid and fighting for a point every now and then, which has kind of been how this year’s gone.
“But obviously this year, the purpose was to try and then do good enough to get back into Red Bull, and obviously fight for wins again and see if I’ve still got it. I feel like obviously I came up short with that. So, I think then it’s, ‘okay, what else am I fighting for here? What else is going to give me fulfillment?’
“I’ve been a young driver as well, and at some point, I don’t just want to take up space also, but obviously you have to be selfish.
“But I think for me, if I’m not able to then fight at the front with Red Bull, then, as I said, I have to ask myself, ‘what am I staying on the grid for?’ So that’s something I’ve also come to peace with.
“Obviously, I tried to become World Champion. I tried to become the best at something in the world. I think it is a tall task that we ask from ourselves, and obviously, some achieve it, some don’t.
“In the end, if I came up a little short, I also can’t be too hard on myself. I’m happy with the effort I put in, and I think for that, there’s no sadness or feeling of regret or what could have been. I think I put my best foot forward.”
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