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5最新开奖结果:Nyck de Vries.
The Australian will return to an F1 c🌃ockpit officially for the first tim🥂e 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5最新开奖结果: Sergio Perez.
With Ricciardo eyeing up a return to Red Bull alongside 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Max Verstappen, Horner made it cleܫar that it would only be a possꦓibility for 2025, not 2024.
.“So there’s no th🐟oughts or expectations beyond that. We’ve loaned him to AlphaTauri to the end of the year.🤪 Obviously our drivers are going to be Max and Checo again next year. But it’s always good to have talent in reserve.
“I think Daniel is viewing AlphaTauri, he firmly wants to be pitching for that 2025 R෴ed Bull seat. That’s his golden objective. And by going to AlphaTauri, I ൲think he sees that as his best route of stating his case for 2025.”
The key moment in Rꦉicciardo’s return🐻 was his driving appearance in the Pirelli tyre test for Red Bull.
Horneꩵr admitted he was very “impressed” with how Ricciardo hand🦂led it given his seven 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 s🍌even 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 first proper run, as it were, on tyres 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 ﷺrow 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 on 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 very impressive and the work that he did for Pirelli was aꦅbsolutely on the money.”
With a sharp eye for F1’s controversies and storylines, Connor is the he🅷artbeat of our unbiased reporting.
