As 2024 began, the Australian looked like he had a good chance of soon replacing Sergio Perez at Red Bull, but things aren’t looking quite so rosy now
ALEX KALINAUCKAS
There’s a big challenge across the rest of the Formula 1 season facing RB, Haas, Williams, Sauber – and maybe one day Alpine too. They are fighting for whatever Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll might leave available in terms of points, if none of the other frontrunners hit trouble.
There is a sense pervading the paddock that the gap between the frontrunners and the midfield has increased since 2023. The season’s stats don’t actually back up that opinion, albeit they come from a very small sample size of the opening two races. Using the supertimes method based on raw pace, the gap after two races between the 2023 frontrunners (Red Bull, Ferrari, Aston and Mercedes) and the other teams was 0.493%. So far in 2024, that has contracted to 0.445%. But the critical difference is that McLaren’s major gains during last season meant that the frontrunning pack swelled; it has stayed the same size from the off this time. At the same time, Alpine has fallen. The outcome is a severe squeeze on the points chances left for the rest in this era of impressive reliability.
Those lower midfield teams simply require perfection and, even if they get it, 11th might be the best result on offer. But, so far, RB isn’t even getting that from its driver line-up. And for one of them, that significantly alters the narrative of what had long been set to be a key theme of 2024.
Daniel Ricciardo is openly targeting a return to his old job alongside Max Verstappen, the Australian hoping to replace Sergio Perez at Red Bull in the context of the Mexican’s consistent relatively poor showings against this era’s dominant driver. That was the plan, anyway. But 2024 has started not only badly for Ricciardo, but also relatively well – again – for Perez.
Ricciardo has so far failed to outqualify team-mate Yuki Tsunoda in either of the season’s opening rounds. In Bahrain, Ricciardo put this down to “I didn’t put it together” – a moment at the tricky Turns 9/10 complex proved costly. Then, in failing to make Q3 in Jeddah when Tsunoda did with a 0.461s edge over his team-mate, Ricciardo blamed “some things [discovered] afterwards” in terms of car set-up that “even if we didn’t have parc ferme, it’s probably nothing we can fix in 24 hours”.
Analysis of the GPS traces between the two at the end of Q2 in Jeddah shows
