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Daniel Ricciardo will become the new AlphaTauri driver. Everything happened quickly in a few days. Daniel confirmed that he cannot wait for a new challenge in his career. Fans of this driver wonder if the Australian-Italian driver will be part of Red Bull in 2024.
Christian Horner, Team Principal of the Red Bull, speaking in a podcast, revealed that they have no plans for Ricciardo to be part of the team next season. However, from the 2025 season, there is a good chance that this popular F1 driver will get a seat at Red Bull.
“At the moment there’s only something in place until the end of the season,” Horner said. “So there’s no thoughts or expectations beyond that. We’ve loaned him to AlphaTauri to the end of the year.
Obviously our drivers are going to be Max and Checo again next year. But it’s always good to have talent in reserve. I think Daniel is viewing AlphaTauri, he firmly wants to be pitching for that 2025 Red Bull seat. That’s his golden objective.
And by going to AlphaTauri, I think he sees that as his best route of stating his case for 2025”.
Pirelli tire test
The Pirelli tire test for Red Bull was what impressed Horner. Christian has always known how good a driver Ricciardo is, but this time he once again confirmed that he has not forgotten to drive.
Horner is delighted with Ricciardo's efficiency. Having such a driver on the team is really a big deal. Daniel hopes that his future in AlphaTauri will be bright. "What impressed me the most when I went up to have a look at the test was, bearing in mind he hasn’t driven this car, hadn’t been in a car for seven months, within his third or fourth lap he was down to a time that was within a second of what our drivers were achieving.
Then in his first proper run, as it were, on tyres that were comparable, you could see his confidence was growing and growing and that first lap on probably what was his seventh lap of the day would have put him on the front row of the grid.
So it was hugely impressive. I was just pleased to see that he was still able to operate at that level. You could see, I mentioned to him ‘that would have put you on the front row of the grid’ and you could see almost the relief in his eyes and almost like the pressure release off his shoulders that he could still do it, that he wasn’t going mad and the old Daniel was still there.
And then his long runs were very impressive and the work that he did for Pirelli was absolutely on the money”. Source: CRASH