His concentration in activities outside the cockpit is what former F1 world champion Alan Jones believed to be his downfall.
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You can’t help but feel bad for Daniel Ricciardo. After a heart-breaking exit from Formula One in 2022, Ricciardo joined Red Bull Racing as their reserve driver with the hope of making it back on to the grid in the near future. However, when asked whether the Aussie could make it back to the pinnacle of motorsports, former F1 world champion Alan Jones answered in the negative as per GP Fans. Ricciardo finished the 2022 season with McLaren in P11 on the driver’s championship table, scoring only 37 points.
Despite being a race-winner with the papaya team, Zak Brown and his men had seen enough and decided to swap one Aussie for another as they gave the second seat to rookie Oscar Piastri. Now, McLaren have been quite woeful this season, which could mean that Ricciardo’s car last season had way too much reliability issues for him to handle. This would mean that the Aussie was not to blame for the large part. However, eyebrows were raised as his teammate Lando Norris finished P7 on the driver’s championship table with 122 points.
His concentration in activities outside the cockpit is what former F1 world champion Alan Jones believed to be his downfall, and he also said that it was not likely the Aussie would be back on the F1 grid anytime soon. “I don’t think he will get a drive at Red Bull unless something happens to the two current drivers, I can’t see him doing a Grand Prix,” Jones said.
“I doubt [he will be on the grid in 2024]. At the end of the day, there is probably no reason why Red Bull won’t re-sign Perez and obviously, Verstappen [is locked in] and I can’t see anybody at Ferrari resigning or going away, so I just can’t see where he can go. I just think he went off the boil. I think he concentrated and spent a bit too much time for his activities out of the cockpit rather than in it. I just can’t see him getting back into F1,” Jones added.
Formula One president Stefano Domenicali raised quite a few eyebrows when he said that he was in favour of scrapping the free practice sessions that might benefit the engineers but does not really interest the fans. This is a big statement coming from the president of the biggest motorsport event in the world, especially since free practice is such an important part of the race weekend.
While the casual fan might be okay with doing away with practice, hardcore fans will have a massive problem. Not to mention the difficulty which will be faced by the teams not having the time to strategize and fine tune the car as well as possible.
“I am a supporter of the cancellation of free practice sessions,” he reportedly told Portuguese broadcaster SportTV. “Which are of great use to the engineers but that the public doesn’t like.” Three practice sessions are typically held over the course of an F1 weekend, stretching from Friday morning to Saturday afternoon, but the introduction of sprint races in 2021 changed this schedule.
