How Ricciardo’s F1 experience played a part in his downfall

Racing Bulls racing director Alan Permane believes Daniel Ricciardo using his Formula 1 experience to ‘overthink things’ played a part in his downfall last season.

Ricciardo returned to the team [then known as AlphaTauri] midway through the 2023 campaign as a replacement for Nyck de Vries, though a broken metacarpal sustained in practice for the Dutch Grand Prix kept him out for five races.

The Australian retained his seat with the newly named RB team alongside Yuki Tsunoda for last season with the goal of becoming Sergio Perez’s successor at Red Bull, returning to the seat he once held alongside Max Verstappen which he deserted at the end of 2018.

But after a spate of poor performances – split only by a stunning fourth in the Miami Grand Prix sprint race – Ricciardo was eventually shuffled out for Liam Lawson, who has since become Verstappen’s Red Bull team-mate.

Asked if he knew why Ricciardo struggled with the VCARB-01 car, Permane told Autosport: “Honestly no.

“I don’t know and he doesn’t either. We sat down and talked, tried to figure it out. I was certainly worried that he was overthinking things – he was concerned about the tyres, that they couldn’t cope with the speed he would be asking of them.  

“It felt like he was using his huge experience to second-guess things that potentially weren’t correct, because Yuki wasn’t and he was driving as quick as he could and it was working.  

“That was a tough time and then of course we went to Miami and Daniel put it fourth on the grid [for the sprint race]. And you think, ‘Ah, it’s all clicked.’ That was the Daniel I knew at Renault.  

“You do that in the sprint on Saturday morning, then you go for [grand prix] qualifying in the afternoon and he’s 18th. It was a bit of a mystery, honestly.”

Ricciardo had been on the sidelines before rejoining the Faenza-based outfit having been let go by McLaren at the end of 2022, the first year of the current regulatory era.

Lewis Hamilton has also found it difficult to continue his driving style with the ground-effect cars, especially in qualifying, while up-and-coming drivers have seemingly thrived. Whether it is a case of the championship’s veterans failing to come to grips with the car’s specifics, Permane replied: “I don’t know, is the honest answer. I really don’t think so.  

“Look at Fernando [Alonso] in Spa last year. He was immense, incredible. I know it’s a convenient thing to say with people like [Franco] Colapinto coming in, [Oliver] Bearman… and certainly Franco looked amazing in his first few races.

Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team, and Franco Colapinto, Williams Racing

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“But it’s very difficult – one of the things we said at the time was that it’s great when a driver comes in and does that, but doing it every week, that’s the hard thing.  

“If you look at his [Colapinto’s] last couple of weekends, he hasn’t quite been so… in Mexico he was outstanding although he didn’t qualify so well, then Brazil of course wasn’t particularly good, Las Vegas not good either.  

“I think to sustain that level week in, week out, for those young guys, that’s where it gets tough. There’s a massive amount they have to do away from the track as well, so they’re not just left to sit with engineers and focus on that.

“There’s all sorts of PR stuff which comes with Formula 1 now, and I’m pretty sure these young guys aren’t used to, so there’s distractions everywhere. But there’s no doubt that they’re impressive, that’s for sure.”