Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool
Daniel Ricciardo made a sensational return to Formula 1 in July for the Hungarian Grand Prix replacing the outgoing Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri, a team that the Australian knew well from his early career when he raced for them under the guise of Toro Rosso. Things started well for Ricciardo with a good level of competitiveness, outqualifying his teammate Yuki Tsunoda and decent run to P13 in Budapest.
While the car itself is not at a competitive level to fight for regular points, Ricciardo would have been hoping to showcase his skills to the Red Bull family over the remainder of the season, pick up points when on offer and to secure a drive for next year and with the long-term hope of getting back with the main team, Red Bull Racing.
This desire was dealt a major blow last month in Zandvoort at the Dutch Grand Prix weekend where Ricciardo broke his wrist in practice and has been in recovery ever since. In a sting to the tail for Ricciardo, his temporary replacement and rookie Liam Lawson has excelled and scored his first ever points last week around the streets of Singapore.
With Ricciardo’s timeframe for a return to the cockpit is still unknown, the Aussie will be feeling like he needs to get back driving to show what he can do. However, the 8-time Grand Prix winner will take refuge from the recent comments by AlphaTauri’s head of trackside engineering Jonathan Eddolls.
The Brit praised Ricciardo’s feedback to the race team from the minute he got into the car and feels his experience of different car performances is key for them.
“Yeah, I mean, pretty much straight away, you could feel the quality of the feedback, not only the feedback on the handling of the car. Obviously, he’s got a wealth of experience and he’s driven many different cars and experienced many different ends of the performance spectrum. So having that feedback on our car was extremely valuable for us,” said Eddolls.
Ricciardo has entered 234 Grand Prix weekends and his experience shows here when understanding of a race and his feedback throughout was also praised.
“I think the other things that were impressive, and reminders of what experience can bring, were: how he could understand the race; the feedback that he could give live; how he thought the tyres were behaving – was it a one-stop or a two-stop; or if there was a Safety car, could he reheat these tyres? Or would we need to fit a fresh set?”
Finally Eddolls concluded with the fact that Ricciardo can influence the pit wall with decisions which can make their life easier and suggested that the team will sway towards renewing his services for next year based on this invaluable experience.
“So a lot of the time, we’re making those decisions from the pit wall based on data, but to have somebody… When it’s not clear cut, having someone with that experience can really, really make a difference.”
