'Curious': RB boss reveals car update that triggered Daniel Ricciardo's eventual downfall
The beginning of Daniel Ricciardo's F1 downfall has been traced back to the introduction of a new floor at the end of the 2023 season.
Having showed glimpses of his old self after being shoehorned into the then-AlphaTauri team midway through 2023, Ricciardo was dumped from his seat after the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix.
RB chief executive Peter Bayer said Ricciardo had been battling to adjust to the new ground-effects cars introduced for the 2022 season, but it was a radical new floor the team introduced for the 2023 season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that marked the beginning of the end.
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"Abu Dhabi, we brought, for the first time last year [2023], a new generation floor, which was really like going into the extreme of these ground-effect cars and we had the same floor on both cars," he told PlanetF1.
Daniel Ricciardo's RB team boss has revealed the source of his final downfall from the sport. Formula 1 via Getty Images
"Yuki [Tsunoda] loved it. Daniel was struggling with it.
"Franz (Tost, team principal) then actually said, 'I'm curious to see whether Daniel can recover with this, whether this new type of car will suit him'.
"I think now, in hindsight, probably he was struggling with this generation of cars. They are just a different way of driving.
"I think, whilst the driver can always adapt, this year [2024] was so close – sometimes we've seen 20 cars within a second."
Ricciardo finished 11th in that race, 13 seconds behind Tsunoda.
Despite being far from his best, RB racing director Alan Permane – who also worked with Ricciardo at Renault – said the Aussie remained professional despite his struggles, and at no stage took any frustrations out on the team.
Ricciardo during the Singapore Grand Prix - his final F1 race. Getty
"We spent a lot of time pouring over data, and, certainly with his race engineers, he handled it incredibly professionally, just looking at himself the whole time," he said.
"We would constantly, of course, make sure the car was performing as it should have been, but Daniel would spend time, with his engineers, just seeing how he could improve, and what he could do better.
"I know he was as frustrated as anyone to not be able to deliver."
Permane said the reason behind his struggles were never properly understood.
"I don't know what it was and, if I did, I'm sure we'd have worked on it together and fixed it, and he doesn't know what it was," he said.
"There's an inconsistency, or a struggling with the tyres, or whatever it is, I don't know.
"But for Yuki to be able to take the same car and deliver reasonably consistently, I know it was very frustrating for Daniel."
Ricciardo has maintained a low profile since his F1 exit, and hasn't conducted any public interviews. He has not revealed his 2025 plans, or if even has any.
Ricciardo's RB replacement, Liam Lawson, has been promoted to the senior Red Bull team alongside Max Verstappen.
The 2025 F1 season will begin in Melbourne on March 16.
