Christian Horner rules out Daniel Ricciardo at Red Bull next year: 2025 his 'golden objective'
Ricciardo’s sensational return to AlphaTauri - Red Bull’s sister team - was confirmed last week as he replaced the underperforming 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Nyck de Vries.
The Australian will 🥃return to an F1 cockpit officially for the first time since the end of ﷽2022 when he was dropped by McLaren.
Ricciardo’s surprise return has inevitably put more pressure on current Red Bull driver168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: Sergio Perez.
With Ricciardo eyeing up a return to Red Bull alongside 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Max Verstappen, 🧔Horner made it clear that it would only be a possibility for 2025, not 2024.
.💯“So there’s no thoughts or expectations beyond that. We’ve loaned him to AlphaTauri to the end of the year. Obviously our drivers are going to be Maﷺx and Checo again next year. But it’s always good to have talent in reserve.
“I think Daniel is viewing AlphaTauri, heꦇ firmly wants to be pitching for that 2025 Red Bull seat. That’s his golden objective. And by going to AlphaTauri, I think he sees that as hi✱s best route of stating his case for 2025.”
The key moment✱ in Ricciardo’s return was his driving appearance in the Pirelli tyre test for Red Bull.
Horner admitted he was very “impressed” with how Ricciardo handled it given his ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚseven months away from an F1 car.
“What impressed me the most when I went up to have a look ♑at the test was, bearing in mind he hasn’t driven this car, hadn’t been in a car for seven months, within his third or fourth lap he was down to a time that was within a second of what our drivers were achieving,” he added.
“Then in his fi🐠rst proper run, as it were, on ty🏅res that were comparable, you could see his confidence was growing and growing and that first lap on probably what was his seventh lap of the day would have put him on the front row of the grid. So it was hugely impressive.
“I was just pleased to see that he was still able to operate at that level. You could see, I mentioned to him ‘that would have put you oꦚn the front row of the grid’ and you could see almost the relief in his eyes and almost like the pressure release off his shoulders that he could still do it, that he wasn’t going mad and the old Daniel was still there.
“And then his long runs were veryꦐ impressive and the work that he did for Pirelli was absolutely o🧔n the money.”
With a sharp eye for F1’s controversies and storylines, Connor is the heartbeat of our unbia🦹sed reporting.
