{"id":358245,"date":"2024-01-08T01:29:43","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T02:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=358245"},"modified":"2024-01-08T05:01:57","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T05:01:57","slug":"stays-that-way-boss-shock-ricciardo-comeback-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=358245","title":{"rendered":"'Stays that way': Boss' shock Ricciardo comeback claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chief executive of Daniel Ricciardo<\/a>'s AlphaTauri<\/a> team has revealed the Aussie's F1<\/a> comeback was initially blocked by Red Bull<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ricciardo made his return to the grid for July's Hungarian Grand Prix<\/a>, after rookie Nyck De Vries was sacked just 10 races into the season.<\/p>\n

Alongside Yuki Tsunoda<\/a>, Ricciardo helped lift the team from the bottom of the constructors standings to an eventual seventh-place finish.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> How Smith bombshell changed post-Warner battle<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> 'Will take the game by storm': Rookies to explode in 2024<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

READ MORE: \ufeff<\/strong>Nadal's love-hate relationship with Australia<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The Aussie also recorded the team's best finish of the year, a seventh place at the Mexican Grand Prix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After leaving McLaren<\/a>, Ricciardo was re-signed by the team he left \ufeffat the end of 2018 in a reserve driver role.<\/p>\n

\"Daniel<\/p>\n

De Vries early season struggles fuelled heavy speculation Ricciardo could replace the Dutchman, with confirmation finally coming after the British Grand Prix<\/a> in July.<\/p>\n

But AlphaTauri chief executive Peter Bayer has revealed the comeback nearly didn't happen, as Red Bull initially wanted to keep the Aussie exclusively as their reserve driver.<\/p>\n

Bayer suggested Red Bull team principal Christian Horner<\/a> was only lukewarm on the idea, while the team's enigmatic senior advisor Helmut Marko<\/a> was keen.<\/p>\n

"Originally it was said: 'No, Daniel is a reserve driver at Red Bull and it stays that way'," Bayer told German publication Motorsport Magazin.<\/p>\n

"And then over the course of a month we actually kept asking how things were going.<\/p>\n

"At some point Christian Horner came to us and said 'we're doing the test at Silverstone, maybe we'll take a look at it'.<\/p>\n

"Then Helmut said: 'Yes, why not?'"<\/p>\n

Ricciardo took part in a tyre test with Red Bull at the Silverstone circuit the Tuesday after the grand prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his first drive of F1 machinery since his last race with McLaren at the end of 2022, Ricciardo was on the pace almost immediately and set a time which would have put him on the front row of the grid for the grand prix only days earlier.<\/p>\n

The story goes it was after that lap Marko's mind was made up, and immediately had De Vries sacked.<\/p>\n

\"Daniel<\/p>\n

Bayer said Ricciardo's arrival at Faenza brought with it a massive boost to the entire team.<\/p>\n

"Daniel has experience, so he helps us with the setup on all the routes," Bayer said.<\/p>\n

"Daniel is a real reference for Yuki (and) he brought an incredible amount of new energy into the team within a week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

"Our mechanics were happy: 'Hey, wow, something is happening!' The transition wasn't easy, but at the end of the day it had such a positive impact."<\/p>\n

Ricciardo will once again line up alongside Tsunoda when the new F1 season begins at the Bahrain Grand Prix on March 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The chief executive of Daniel Ricciardo's AlphaTauri team has revealed the Aussie's F1 comeback was initially blocked by Red Bull. Ricciardo made his return to […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":320262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=358245"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358248,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358245\/revisions\/358248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/320262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=358245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=358245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=358245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}