The Formula 1 2023 season came around as Red Bull dominated yet another season with no worries about having good drivers in both Red Bull and AlphaTauri, nonetheless, Christian Horner could not see a broken Daniel Ricciardo with no seat for the season and decided to take him in.
Ricciardo joined Red Bull after his leave from McLaren after the team released a statement about signing a rookie, Oscar Piastri for the 2023 season. While Ricciardo is one of the known personalities in F1, it did not really fix any seat for him as he navigated in the sport by shifting from one team to another.
However, after a while the Australian had completely lost himself from driving at Renault and McLaren who had a comparatively slower car at that time.
Nonetheless, the generous Christian Horner took in the Australian for the season although he stayed as a reserve and test drive sticking with Redbull with no seat for six months and working in the simulator. After time passed, he finally got his big break in AlphaTauri although, after his wrist injury, he was just set aside for a few races.
Daniel, reviewing his 23 season: “it was an interesting season. But with all the ups and downs, globally it was very positive because I got my answer I was looking for 12 months ago. This is still my passion. It’s what I wanna do.” pic.twitter.com/5mqs4RcYof
— meredith (@mereeedithh) November 26, 2023
After his return, the driver won his team a P7 position, being the first-best result of the season and single-handedly bringing the entire team two positions ahead in the championship. And it seemed like Ricardo found himself in that. He said,
“It was an interesting season. But with all the ups and downs, globally it was very positive because I got the answer I was looking for 12 months ago. This is still my passion. It’s what I want to do.”
Working hard every single day in 2023 he finally found himself and also confirmed becoming a Redbull driver in or after 2024.
Daniel Ricardo comes for Carlos Sainz after the free practice debacle
Although the season end was an exciting one for the drivers many were not impressed with Sainz. While the Ferrari driver has been considered one of the geniuses after what he pulled at the Singapore GP and won the race being the only driver except for Red Bull to win, many were not impressed with his move during the practice in Abu Dhabi.
A lot of teams introduced their rookie drivers or F2 champions for practice and testing the car, a few drivers were on the tracks for the teams and saw the worst of Carlos Sainz.
While Ricciardo, George Russell, and Oscar Piasatri were out in the running, Sainz’s Ferrari was seen slowing down and almost sitting in the middle of the track which got a lot of reactions from Oscar Piastri and Daniel Ricardo who took his time to talk about the situation after the practice.
destroyed him, ended him, rendered him speechless
Daniel Ricciardo just said what we were literally all thinking pic.twitter.com/fxUGU9DXPm— nat 🏎 (@nats__04) November 25, 2023
He said, “I don’t know why he does it, but he’s always the culprit I don’t know why – he has been upset me this weekend – but I don’t know if he is just messing with us, but he definitely seems to be the one that everyone likes to talk about in terms of impeding and whatever.”
Although what he did wasn’t considered a penalizing moment, since it was just practice and a blind eye was turned to it many drivers weren’t happy with the situation. They also talked about how Sainz has gotten away with this behavior over and over again as he has been caught impeding or slowing down in the middle of the tracks multiple times.