At the end of August, McLaren announced that Daniel Ricciardo would not continue driving for the Woking team beyond 2022, despite having a contract in force until the end of 2023.
In turn, the British structure confirmed, after winning a trial against Alpine, that Óscar Piastri would change colors to form his pair of pilots with Lando Norris starting next year.
Since Daniel Ricciardo arrived at McLaren, back in 2021, he has not had an easy life, in fact, what he has had the most has been problems for, since despite scoring points in his first papaya orange races, Norris beat him with quite a difference.
Experts expected the dynamic to change as the Australian became more and more adapted to both the team and the car, but with the exception of the victory that broke one of the worst losing streaks in the history of the Woking team in the Grand Prix of Italy in 2021, his partner has passed him over in every way.
McLaren chief executive Zak Brown spoke about what happened, lamenting the fact that their partnership could not have been more fruitful, but told Fox Sports that he was very fond of the Australian, both as a driver and as a person.
“We all put in a lot of effort. We love Daniel, we really like him and he’s amazing to work with, he’ll be great to work with for the rest of the races (four grands prix to go by the end of the year).”
“But you have to remember that in an F1 team we work to get results and they didn’t come , that’s how it is. We think we’ve given the best of ourselves. Really, no one knows why it didn’t work, I think it’s no one’s fault said the American.
” On our part, we did everything we could and he also did his best,” Zak Brown said to end his statements to Fox Sports .
After a rumor related to a possible role as test and reserve driver of the Mercedes team from 2023, as a result of being released from all the still vacant seats, Daniel Ricciardo recently acknowledged that he will not be on the Formula 1 grid in 2023 and admitted that he will surely focus on a gap year with the goal of returning in 2024.
