Daniel Ricciardo could keep his AlphaTauri seat for 2024 says the new CEO of AlphaTauri, Peter Bayer, who has explained why Daniel Ricciardo has every chance of retaining his seat at AlphaTauri next season, despite questions about his performance and age.
Although the primary mission of AlphaTauri – Red Bull’s sister team – is to develop young talent so that they can take their first steps in Formula 1 before eventually being catapulted to Red Bull, the highly experienced Daniel Ricciardo currently remains one of the main candidates for a seat in the Italian team in 2024.
Ricciardo back in F1
Daniel Ricciardo – who has raced for HRT, Toro Rosso, Red Bull, Renault and McLaren – made his return to the grid as a regular at AlphaTauri this season, starting at the Hungarian Grand Prix as a direct replacement for Dutchman Nyck de Vries, who failed to convince his employers after ten races.
Ricciardo contested the Hungarian and Belgian Grands Prix, but the Australian then injured his left hand in an accident during the second free practice session of the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.
The AlphaTauri driver was therefore replaced by the team’s young reserve driver, Liam Lawson, who will be back at the wheel of the car in Singapore and most likely in Japan a week later.
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CEO hints Ricciardo stays
With the end of the season fast approaching, AlphaTauri has yet to reveal the identity of its two drivers for the 2024 Formula 1 season, but if CEO Peter Bayer is to be believed, Daniel Ricciardo has a good chance of being retained for next season, not least because of his experience.
“I think that …. obviously we can’t just develop young drivers – we also have to be competitive,” admitted Peter Bayer in an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com.
“I think that to be competitive these days, you need to have an experienced driver and a young driver in both cars. That’s really what we’re trying to achieve, you know, having an experienced driver and a young driver.”
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“In this context, the young driver will learn more from the experienced driver. The experienced will help us, for example, Daniel has helped us enormously with the set-up of the car.”
“So while we’re giving feedback to a young driver, the experienced driver is giving us feedback, and I’m convinced we need both of those things.”
Ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix, the AlphaTauri team occupies last place in the Constructors’ World Championship with just three points scored since the start of the year.
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Lawson has done well in SF & also decently in F1 so far, so he’s definitely shown he’s worthy of a full-time driver, meaning if he doesn’t replace Ricciardo for next season, he’d have to replace Tsunoda instead, or he’d be faced without a full-time drive chance again.
The fact he got an unexpected substitution chance means that not getting a full-time drive wouldn’t be as bad as if he didn’t have a single F1 race driven beforehand.