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Much has been said about Daniel Ricciardo getting the AlphaTauri seat in place of Nyck de Vries and getting the nod ahead of Liam Lawson.
In all fairness, if we take a look at how the entire situation has unraveled, it does not paint Red Bull in bright lights in any which way.
Replacing a rookie 10 races into a season and replacing him with a driver that is not even from your junior racing academy is not a good look.
While there is certainly an argument to be made about the PR around how Red Bull handled everything, in terms of the team's long-term plans, this makes complete sense.
Hiring Nyck de Vries was a mistake.
Nyck de Vries should not have been an AlphaTauri driver in any possible situation. The Dutch driver is good and potentially a strong midfield driver if he gets the opportunity, but the criteria to be a team of Yuki Tsunoda just didn't fit.
At the Faenza-based squad, the aim is to pick drivers that could be a potential race winner or a championship contender.
That is why the drivers that survive Red Bull's meatgrinder tend to be the likes of Max Verstappen, Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, and others. Nyck de Vries' junior career didn't fit the criteria. He was an F2 world champion, but he did that on his third attempt and beat Nicholas Latifi to the title (remember GOATIFI? We do too).
The first 2 F2 seasons saw De Vries get outperformed considerably by the likes of Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Lando Norris, and Alex Albon.
Even the Formula-E title triumph had the caveat that De Vries could only finish 10th in the year he defended the title. The De Vries resume came with a lot of caveats that Helmut Marko probably did not look into and hence had to go back on his decision.
To add to this, the first 10 races don't paint a glowing picture of how De Vries performed, but ideally, it's not realistic to expect a rookie to get the ball rolling in F1 from the very first race. I
n the end, the Dutch driver should never have been in that AlphaTauri seat, and his getting fired this early is Helmut Marko making amends for his decision.
Liam Lawson is impressive, but he hasn't taken the junior category by storm
Liam Lawson is a very impressive driver. If you keep the records to one side and just follow him over race weekends, you can identify how impressive a driver talent he is. He's got a handful of impressive race wins in Formula 2 and a few more in Formula 3 as well.
His Super Formula debut has surprised quite a few as well, especially if we keep in mind what a disaster former Red Bull junior Dan Tictum was in the same series.
Having said that, we have to be honest about one thing. Liam Lawson is not a generational talent that has to be put into an F1 seat, or he could end up getting poached.
This is just not the case. Lawson hasn't stood out compared to his peers. He's not shown an ability to be an Oscar Piastri or a George Russell or a Charles Leclerc, for that matter. Finishing 116 points behind Felipe Drugovich in the championship last season(even though Liam was quite unlucky last season) does not look good.
Liam Lawson is a talent who deserves a spot in F1, but is he a talent that needs to be on the F1 grid ASAP? No, that's just not the case.
Daniel Ricciardo is looked at as a replacement for Sergio Perez
Amidst all of the cries about injustice, we're missing one crucial point, the main objective of putting Daniel Ricciardo in an AlphaTauri is to assess his immediate potential. The last one-and-a-half seasons have not painted Sergio Perez in the best of lights. It all started with the supposed crash in qualifying in Monaco.
The enmity between Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez in Brazil, or the fact that the Mexican could not finish P2 in the championship, did not go down well with Red Bull. This did arguably have a role in why Daniel Ricciardo was picked up as a reserve driver at the end of the 2022 F1 season.
However, what seems to have finally pulled the trigger is the overall feistiness of Sergio Perez against Max Verstappen. The calls of fighting for the title after Baku, flatly blaming the car for his crash in Australia, or even pushing Max off the track in the sprint in Austria certainly did not work to Checo's advantage.
The affable Mexican in Sergio Perez has been missing for a while. And what's worse is that his on-track performances have not been up to the mark. This is where Daniel Ricciardo comes into the picture. What Red Bull is essentially doing here is trying to find out how good the Australian can still be in an F1 car. Can he compete against a Yuki Tsunoda?
Can Daniel Ricciardo beat Yuki Tsunoda? Most importantly, what is the level at which he's operating? Is he still the elite driver that left Red Bull? Or is he the one that was outclassed by Lando Norris at McLaren? The Austrian team is specifically for answers in this category.
If Daniel Ricciardo can outperform Yuki Tsunoda this season, either he gets the seat at Red Bull in 2024, or he will get another year at AlphaTauri. Either way, it gives him his final opportunity to get a seat at a top team.
What we also need to keep in mind is that Daniel Ricciardo is one of the biggest needle movers in F1 at the moment. He is one of the most famous drivers in the sport, and with that comes the added Marketing perks of having someone like him.
Daniel Ricciardo, if he's able to portray the form of the pre-McLaren days, then Red Bull will be confident that he can replace Sergio Perez, and in the end, it comes down to that only. The biggest motivation for the Austrian team is finding a readymade replacement for Mexican.
A young driver in Liam Lawson cannot achieve that because he will take time to get used to the rigors of F1. Daniel Ricciardo, on the other hand, could possibly get that done. This is arguably why Red Bull has not wasted any time in giving the Australian a seat at AlphaTauri.
Yes, it looks almost unfair to Liam Lawson or Nyck de Vries, but for Red Bull, the choice of Daniel Ricciardo makes perfect sense.
