Daniel Ricciardo has stated he “wouldn’t feel comfortable” at the Faenza-based RB Formula outfit if he still felt like they were a Red Bull junior team.
The Australian, 35, rejoined RB part-way through the 2023 season when it remained under the guise of AlphaTauri, replacing Dutchman Nyck de Vries.
In 2024, the team rebranded itself, transforming from AlphaTauri to become known as Visa Cash App RB (or RB for short).
Ricciardo first linked up with the team in 2012, when it was running as Toro Rosso under the watchful eye of Franz Tost, who regularly received drivers from Red Bull’s Junior programme in order to mould them into drivers capable of progressing to the Milton Keynes-based squad.
The RB era of the team has been billed as an altogether different prospect, a team fighting for its own goals, rather than serving the needs of another and Motorsport Week asked Ricciardo if he noticed differences between past and present.
“Yeah, it does feel different, you know, and I think it’s easy to kind of rebrand it and say we’ve got a new look and with this and that, but your actions have to follow,” Ricciardo explained during the driver press conference ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.
“And I think, you know, Laurent [Mekies], Peter [Bayer], Alan [Permane], a lot of guys that have come in have done that, you know.
“It’s not that what was happening in the past with Franz, in that example, wasn’t the right thing, but a change sometimes is good. You bring in new ideas.
“They’ve all spent time in other teams, organisations. And yeah, it’s just a new way of looking at things. And I think that in itself and their intentions and the way they go about it has made people kind of stand up and say, alright, this isn’t a junior team anymore.”
RB’s goal, with the backing of two commercial giants as title partners, is to steadily improve its standing in F1’s midfield.
As a result, Ricciardo said “We’re making, kind of, big boy decisions and we’re taking risks and we’re setting targets and high targets and ones that we realistically think that we can attain.
“So, it’s cool. It’s cool to see it. I’m probably too, in a way, like honest in myself that if it felt like a junior team still, I wouldn’t feel comfortable here.
“I’m 35 now. So, I think I would feel a bit out of place. And I certainly don’t. So I think that’s also a good way to probably comprehend it.”
Still, even if RB is no longer a junior team, Red Bull still has a controlling influence over its driver lineup to a large degree.
This was evident in the fact that Ricciardo was allegedly being lined up for a mid-season swap with an out-of-form Sergio Perez at Red Bull until Christian Horner and Helmut Marko elected to hand the Mexican another chance to prove himself.
That means Ricciardo is staying put at RB, but pressure still follows the Aussie if he wants to challenge Perez’s position in the near future, all the while conscious that the highly-regarded Reserve Driver Liam Lawson is waiting in the wings.
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