Under-fire F1 driver adamant 34-y/o is ‘helping’ team despite poor start to 2024

Follow us on Google Discover

Daniel Ricciardo is adamant that he is ‘helping’ Visa Cash App RB to improve, despite coming under fire before the Australian GP after his poor start to the 2024 F1 season.

The 34-year-old returns home this weekend but has kicked off his season behind teammate, Yuki Tsunoda. Only team orders edged Ricciardo ahead of his 23-year-old stablemate at the Bahrain GP. He was then the second RB in qualifying and in the race at the Saudi Arabian GP.

RB moved Ricciardo ahead of Tsunoda in Sakhir as their strategy put the Perth native on the better tyres at the end of the race. Yet he could not use the superior rubber to overtake any further drivers. A late spin in Jeddah also saw Ricciardo finish the race behind his teammate.

Yuki Tsunoda has led Daniel Ricciardo at RB to start 2024

Ricciardo would only manage P14 in qualifying for the Bahrain GP and the Saudi Arabian GP. Tsunoda, on the other hand, took P11 in Sakhir and P9 in Jeddah after posting a Q2 lap time 0.461 seconds faster than his Visa Cash App RB mate to reach Q3 for the first time in 2024.

Difficulties overtaking the tactically-slow Haas driver Kevin Magnussen in Jeddah hampered Tsunoda’s race. He also dropped from a P14 finish to P15, one place ahead of Ricciardo, due to his five-second time penalty. The stewards penalised Tsunoda owing to an unsafe release.

Now, Ricciardo returns home for the Australian GP this weekend still looking to get his term started. It marks his first time racing in Melbourne since finishing sixth in 2022 for McLaren. His home race has not always been great for Ricciardo, either, with five finishes in nine visits.

Daniel Ricciardo is adamant he is ‘helping’ the F1 team

But, despite Tsunoda starting 2024 as the lead RB driver, Ricciardo believes he is helping the Faenza team to improve. The eight-time Grand Prix winner feels he arrived in their garage in 2023 to replace Nyck de Vries at a time they were ‘struggling’ but has seen a lot of progress.

“I’ve been in F1 a long time, driven a lot of cars [and] seen a lot of things,” Ricciardo has told The Age. “The team was struggling a bit at the time, and I could see that my experience was helping. The way the team responded to what I had to say [and] the questions they asked.”

Ricciardo’s claims come amid 1980 F1 champion Alan Jones suggesting his compatriot ‘can’t be blaming the car all the time’. The former Williams driver also feels Ricciardo must ‘lift his game’. While Frederic Ferret has even suggested Ricciardo could retire if he cannot improve.