Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner believes that Daniel Ricciardo‘s comeback to Formula 1 failed as he was unable to adapt to worse machinery as he got older.
Ricciardo’s F1 career appears poised to have come to a premature end amid the news last week that Liam Lawson will replace him at RB over the remaining six races.
The Australian returned to the grid with Red Bull’s sister squad last term, but he was unable to deliver the results to merit a desired promotion back to the senior team.
Ricciardo emerged as a standout name when he thrashed four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel in his debut Red Bull campaign in 2014, taking three race victories.
But while he had the upper hand over Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Ocon at Renault, Ricciardo’s career began to decline when Lando Norris trounced him at McLaren.
Meanwhile, Ricciardo was then unable to overcome the less-established Yuki Tsunoda during his time at RB, trailing 10 points behind upon his departure in Singapore.
Horner has agreed with Ricciardo’s assessment that age might have had a role in the struggle to replicate the level that saw him win seven races in his Red Bull pomp.
“When you get to Formula 1, you’re getting a huge amount of information because you’ve got everybody analysing how hard you hit the brake, where you brake, when you brake, your style, your positioning, the energy that you’re putting through the tyre – all of those elements,” Horner told the F1 Nation podcast.
“So you’re getting all of those cues. What you tend to find with a young guy, and Daniel was exactly the same that, when he jumped in our car alongside Sebastian Vettel, the young guys, they just seem to have the ability to adapt very quickly.
“Maybe because they’re not spoiled by other preconceptions of how a car should be, they just adapt and drive the thing quickly, which was exactly what Daniel did back in 2014 – we’d gone from obviously the V8s to the V6s and the car that year had a different characteristic. All the exhaust blowing had gone and so on, which made the car a little more nervous on entry.
“He, very quickly, got the upper hand on Sebastian that year in 2014 and was able to cope with that way better than Seb did and, indeed, went on to win three races that year at Spa and Hungary, and, of course, his first race win in Montreal.
“I think it’s perhaps as they get longer into their career, they’re less accommodating of driving not-so-great cars, or cars that have vices, because they’re always benchmarking it against some of the better cars that they’ve had.”
Rookies prepared to hit the ground running in F1
Horner has pointed to Franco Colapinto’s exploits with Williams and Oliver Bearman’s impressive deputy outings as evidence that rookies are well-prepped to enter F1.
“It’s difficult to say, but the young guys, they get in, they’re hungry, and they just drive the wheels off it,” he continued.
“And that’s what we’re seeing with all these juniors that are coming in at the moment.
“They’re well prepared, they race well, they understand how to conserve the tyres, and so on. Bearman and Colapinto have done a super job.”
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