Departing Daniel Ricciardo Sticking to His Guns Despite Growing Reserve Role Pressure: “I Don’t Want to Just to Jump…”

With each day that passes by, the prospect of losing Daniel Ricciardo becomes more imminent for Formula 1. The Honey Badger isn’t the one to say no to anything. But as things stand, even Ricciardo isn’t too optimistic about the chances of salvaging his F1 career.

Daniel Ricciardo isn’t going to be on the grid for 2023, that’s for certain. However, inklings of the Australian coming on as a reserve driver for either Mercedes or Red Bull were strong. That being said, as far as a 2024 race seat is concerned, Ricciardo may have shut the doors on that prospect already.

While talking to racer.com, he said, “I think the risk is jumping into a seat next year, and it’s shown here in my time at McLaren that nothing’s guaranteed in terms of performance. So if it was, for whatever reason, to be a relatively unsuccessful campaign, I think personally I would probably be done with the sport.”

“So that risk seems way bigger than the risk of sitting out a year.”

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The Honey Badger may have sounded a bit pessimistic in his approach. That being said, becoming older and having a backpack full of F1 lessons, Ricciardo is adamant on taking the correct measures before jumping into anything.

Daniel Ricciardo does not want to jump straight into another F1 seat after McLaren failures

We would love to see Ricciardo return to Formula 1 as soon as possible. But the time the Australian is taking to assess the situation and figure things out is not a bout of mere complacency or overconfidence. The Honey Badger has a good reason behind his approach to F1 now.

While talking to the Race, he said, “I don’t want to just to jump into something. I want to take this opportunity to make sure I get enough time for myself to feel the way I need to feel about the sport again.”

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With an aging Ricciardo not ready to commit yet, is this the end of the Honey Badger’s road in F1?