After two years with McLaren Racing, eight-time F1 race winner Daniel Ricciardo will be leaving the team following a buyout of his contract one year early. At the moment, it is unclear which team he will go to next, assuming he remains in Formula 1.
Despite his success in the sport as a whole, there’s no denying that Ricciardo’s had some growing pains in his time with McLaren. After two years’ time, he’s still struggling to come to grips with a car that seems better suited to teammate Lando Norris. The one notable exception to that was his victory at Monza last year – McLaren‘s first win in 9 years – which goes to show that he certainly still has skill left in him, and it could just be a matter of a mismatched car and driver pairing.
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— Daniel Ricciardo (@danielricciardo) August 24, 2022
McLaren says they will confirm Ricciardo’s replacement “in due time”, but the most likely scenario is that he returns to Alpine while F2’s Oscar Piastri makes his F1 debut with McLaren alongside Norris. However, in order for this to work, there’s still the matter of Piastri’s complicated contract negotiations.
To make a long story short, Alpine “confirmed” Piastri’s employment with them after Fernando Alonso announced he was leaving for Aston Martin, to which Piastri replied he had not signed with the team, and had instead been involved in talks with McLaren. Assuming all contractual obligations get squared away on his end, Piastri would likely go to McLaren, leaving Ricciardo with an opening at Alpine.
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That being said, Haas and Williams will also both have openings at the end of the season in the form of Mick Schumacher and Nicholas Latifi respectively. Should Schumacher not be renewed at Haas, Ricciardo could take his spot while he looks elsewhere, if options like Antonio Giovinazzi or Nico Hulkenberg aren’t chosen first.
Going back to Williams, there’s a good chance Latifi will be getting replaced regardless, it just depends whether his replacement ends up being Ricciardo or another driver in the Williams Academy like F2’s Logan Sargeant. However, given Williams’ subpar performances in recent years, we doubt a driver like Ricciardo, who has eight wins and 32 podiums to his name, would elect to go there unless he feels confident in a performance turnaround or simply wants to remain in the sport.
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On top of all that, according to Motorsport Magazine, Ricciardo was also supposedly offered a drive with McLaren’s IndyCar team, which he declined. However, given the fiasco involving Alex Palou and one of the seats at that team, which is not too dissimilar to the ongoing Piastri situation, it could be for the best that Ricciardo didn’t get entangled with all the IndyCar commotion.
Nevertheless, it seems we’ll find out what happens with everyone soon enough as F1 returns from its summer break for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.