That is the revelation of AlphaTauri CEO P🔴eter Bayer, who claims Red Bull wanted to keep Ricciardo in his reserve role, before later having a change♊ of heart. 

Ricciardo was parachuted in to replace the underperforming Nyck de Vries after just 10 races in 2023, completing a shock comeback to the F1 grid jusꦜt months after losing his McLaren drive. 

“Originally it was said: “No, Daniel is a reserve driver at Red Bull and it stays that way’”, Bayer is quoted as telling Ger🐼man publication Motorsport Magazin.

“And then over 🎉the course of a month we actually kept asking how thing🧸s were going.

“At some point Christian Horner [Red Bull t꧑eam principal] came to us and said: ‘We’re doing the test at Silverstone, maybe we’ll take a look at it’.

“Then Helmut [Marko, head of Red Bull’s driver development programme] said: ‘Yes, why not?’” 𒐪;

The 34-year-old Australian scored AlphaTauri’s best resul🌠t of the year in Mexico and helped the team secure eighth place in the constructors’ championsh♛ip. 

“Daniel has experience, so he he♛lps us with the setup on all the routes,” Bayer adde꧂d. 

“Dani𒊎el is a real reference for 🤡Yuki [Tsunoda]. He brought an incredible amount of new energy into the team within a week.

“Our mechanics were happy: ‘Hey, wow, something ๊is happening!’. The transition wasn’t easy, but at the end of the day it had suchꦬ a positive impact."