by VALERIO BARRETTA
Villeneuve, what a disgrace to Ricciardo
When the decision was made in the Red Bull world to reject Nyck de Vries in mid-2023, Chris Horner and Helmut Marko thought they already had the ideal solution at home, because the then reserve Daniel Ricciardo had impressed in the Silverstone tests by achieving a flying lap of the times”extremely competitive“. However, history has shown how Ricciardo suffered from living with Yuki Tsunoda in the current RB: in the first 16 weekends as teammates he was beaten 12 times in qualifying and 11 times in the race, excelling on only four occasions on Saturday and the same number on Sunday. Numbers from a second guidewithout compromise.
L’Honey Badger he knows he has to find a way out of these difficulties, otherwise not only the Red Bull dream (now already gone, with the confirmation of Sergio Perez) but also his stay in Formula 1 will be difficult, also considering how he is almost 35 years old. Permanence which is now being questioned by several paddock experts, such as Jacques Villeneuve.
Villeneuve’s words
“Why is he still in F1? We’ve been hearing the same thing for four or five years, ‘We have to improve the car for him’. I’m sorry, it’s been five years like this. It can’t be, you’re in F1. You can do this effort with Lewis Hamilton, not for a driver who isn’t up to par. If you can’t do it, go home, there’s someone else to take your place. It’s always been that way in racing, it’s the pinnacle of the sport“, the Canadian attacked the microphones of Sky Sports UKfor which he comments on the Montreal weekend.
“There is no reason to continue and make excuses: everyone talks about the beginning, in which he beat a Sebastian Vettel who was now exhausted, who was trying to invent things with the car to win. Then he beat Verstappen for half a season, but when Max was 18 and had just started: from then on he stopped beating anyone. I think his image has kept him in F1 more than his actual results”.
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