There have been rumours about a Daniel Ricciardo comeback for a while now, but nothing has ever been confirmed. Recently, news broke out that the ex-McLaren driver is going to replace Alpha Tauri’s underperforming new boy, Nyck de Veirs, who is still in his maiden year, effective immediately.
Nyck is an F2 champion and showed a lot of potential in the chance given to him by Willams, where he secured crucial points for the team as a substitute driver. Based on this performance record, Red Bull chose him to drive for their sister team in 2023; unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to shine and show as much as the team would have wanted, resulting in his getting replaced by the Australian.
Christian Horner gives reason behind Daniel Ricciardo’s F1 return
Dropping a driver mid-season is not a new thing for Red Bull; it has been done multiple times, like with Kyvat, Max, Gasly, and Albon. Red Bull has been known to be a very ruthless and unforgiving team. It looks like this time it was Nyck’s chance to face the music.
Christian Horner in a recent interview stated that he and the team had very strong reasons supporting the change. He further went on to say that Red Bull had great expectations from Nyck, who is a fairly experienced driver, but let them down.
BREAKING: Daniel Ricciardo to replace Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri for the rest of the 2023 season
#F1 pic.twitter.com/eD3J4TrjjI
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 11, 2023
He also expressed that the most interesting option for him was replacing Dani with Nyck. Ricciardo’s Silverstone test impressed him and the team, as Ricardo only needed a couple of laps to get up to pace with the current drivers, reminding him of the first time Ricciardo tested for the team 10 years ago. Lastly, Christian added that Ricciardo is aiming for a shot at the Red Bull seat in 2025.
Daniel Ricciardo’s new AlphaTauri F1 team deletes Aussie star’s picture after stupid blunder
It seems like the news of the Australian replacing Nyck wasn’t just sudden to the fans but also to the team itself; the team posted an official photo Of Daniel On social media on Monday. Soon after, fans quickly pointed out that the image was a cropped version of his face from his McLaren shoot, edited onto Nick De Vries’s body, resulting in an embarrassing moment for the team.
Alpha Tauri reacted to this by deleting the photo just hours after they put it up and replacing it with a non-edited version of Ricciardo spotting the Alpha Tauri overalls.
The whole fiasco was followed by really hilarious memes made by fans on the topic of recent mishaps and jokes on the online side of Formula 1, notably the smooth operator meme, which picked up traction even among the drivers too.
What do you think of this hilarious fumble? Make sure to let us know in the comments section.
