McLaren can't carry Ricciardo in 2023: if he doesn't find his form, he's out – MPH

F1

If Daniel Ricciardo's lack of form continues, it's sure to bring him and McLaren to the negotiating table – can he turn it round with the pressure mounting?

2022 Austrian GP Daniel Ricciardo McLaren F1 driver

Ricciardo still has a McLaren contract for 2023

McLaren

Mark Hughes

“There have been a lot of rumours around my future in Formula 1, but I want you to hear it from me,” began Daniel Ricciardo’s statement on social media earlier in the week.

“I am committed to McLaren until the end of next year and am not walking away from the sport. Appreciate it hasn’t always been easy, but who wants easy!

“I’m working my ass off with the team to make improvements and get the car right and back to the front where it belongs. I still want this more than ever. See you in Le Castellet.”

Sounds pretty unambiguous, doesn’t it? And probably it’s said in all sincerity too. Obviously, his preference would be that he finds a way to return to full competitiveness and so the question marks about his future fade away. That would be the preference for his many fans and probably even for most neutrals – because he brings so much to F1 and because when he was accessing all his ability he was a phenomenal racing driver.

Alex Palou IndyCar driver in 2022

Alex Palou has been signed by McLaren, apparently with his eyes set on F1

IndyCar

But – yes, obviously there’s a but – what if the mysterious neurons just cannot remap themselves in the available time, just as they’ve been unable to in the last season-and-a-half? In which case no matter how much he and everyone wishes it, no matter how hard he works, his current level of performance cannot be carried by the team for another year. It just can’t. So although the option for his third year with the team is on his side, that will likely just be the starting point for negotiations between him and the team. Putting that statement out would also help establish a baseline for those negotiations.

Contractually it’s a similar situation – albeit for different reasons – to that faced by Ferrari and Kimi Räikkönen in 2009. He still had another rock-solid year to run on his contract at the end of that season and had no wish to leave. Yet he left. Contracts are only ever jump-off points for negotiation if push comes to shove.

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What has been remarkable through all this has been Ricciardo’s demeanour. This struggle has got to be killing him inside and while going through the pain of that he is having to face questions every two weeks, the same questions, is having to hear about the speculation about who might be lined up to replace him etc. Yet he’s not carrying any outward resentment about it, remains polite and sunny. But don’t ever mistake that not for not caring. He just has a unique way of dealing with it.

It’s easy to imagine that this outwardly cheerful front will be evident if McLaren finally decides that the time has come to negotiate. There will be a core of steel there, just as there is in his competitive make-up, sitting just beneath that sunny exterior. If they want him to go, he probably won’t be going cheaply.

Which would still leave the team with the headache of who to replace him with. Yes IndyCar’s Colton Herta has just tested for the team at Portimao in last year’s car, but that would likely have happened anyway, as part of the team’s TPC programme, just as Pato O’Ward tried out at the Abu Dhabi tests at the end of last year. The recent announcement that current IndyCar champion Alex Palou has signed for McLaren (ostensibly for its Indycar team) for ’23 adds an intriguing side story.

But there’s also Oscar Piastri, Alpine’s hugely-rated reserve driver who has been wasted on the sidelines since winning the F2 championship in his rookie season. Alpine may be tempted to loan him out for a couple of years, taking him back as a fully experienced F1 driver when they have a slot. But it doesn’t yet know if it may need him for next year – as Fernando Alonso has still not agreed terms to extend beyond this year. So McLaren can’t even know if Piastri is on their list of options until Alonso puts pen to paper at Alpine.

The whole situation is a complex Rubik’s Cube, but that complication would fall away if magically we suddenly got the real Daniel Ricciardo back.