Daniel Ricciardo is back!

Alpha Tauri confirmed a few hours ago that ex Mclaren Driver and the 8-time race winner will race for them at the Hungarian Grand Prix and for the remainder of the season. This sudden turn of events does come packing with certain bombshells but is also something that was half-expected to take place at some time during the season probably after the summer break to happen before the break is somewhat surprising to me.

The news was first speculated hours before by a Dutch magazine, that put out a statement that Alpha Tauri has fired their Dutch Driver with immediate effect, and Nyck won’t be representing Alpha Tauri at the upcoming Grand, which later on was confirmed by the team itself via a press statement released online. which confirmed that an 8x Grand Prix winner Daniel Ricciardo will take his seat at Alpha Tauri on loan from RedBull Racing for the remainder of the season. Bringing an end to the fairy tale that took inception during last year’s Monza Grand Prix, where Nick drove valiantly to bag two points on his debut in f1, deputing for appendicitis-stricken Alex Albon.

In the aftermath of that race Nyck De Vries’s stock took a rise and became an in-demand proposition for any lower midfield team that was on the hunt for a dependable quantity, although Nyck up until then raced only in one Grand Prix but he was a Formula E champion and a formula 2 champion who had an abundance of f1 experience albeit in a testing scenario but for multiple teams.

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With teams like Haas, Williams, and Alpha Tauri looking to either offload their current driver or replace an already outbound driver as is the case with Alpha Tauri, they were looking for an experienced driver to replace their star Talisman Pierre Gasly who at the time had already signed his services to another team, they needed a team leader that could guide the car development and can nicely compliment, Highly temperamental but talented Yuki Tsunoda.

Upon some insistence from Helmut Marko and Max Verstappen who rallied for his fellow countryman to be on the grid, Redbull decision-makers took a plunge and signed Nyck a No-Brainer at the time being a very experienced and established racer in various fields of motorsports and the dutch flag on his race suit were pointing towards great potential upside for the team and the whole RedBull brand in general.

The hype around Nyck based on one Great result with one possible event, fizzled out quite quickly as the 2023 season began, Nyck’s performance wasn’t as expected, and failed to demonstrate the same level of results as in Monza 2022, but the blame can’t be entirely put on Nick’s shoulder as the AT-04 came out as a car plagued with issues and the top most is the lack of speed in comparison to its direct competitors.

But as they say in formula one your biggest rival is your teammate. Nyck’s Teammate surely turned out to be the biggest antagonist in his fairy tale f1 debut as Yuki convincingly outperformed Nyck in every race so far and also managed to score some points.

Surely you can’t be that impatient with a rookie in high octane environment such as f1, and sacking a driver in his first season that too before even the season touches its halfway mark is cruel and harsh even by Redbull’s standards, an organization that is synonymous with such barbaric decisions in the past.

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But replacing with Daniel Ricciardo does bring out a lot of questions, regarding Alpha Tauri’s immediate future and its sporting program going forward, For a long while Alpha Tauri/Torro Rosso was a training and testing ground for Redbull’s junior drivers as a litmus test whether they are worthy of a promotion to a bigger team. But in recent times, their young driver’s pool has dried up and albeit they have a few very talented youngsters waiting in the pipeline none of them are prepared to take an F1 seat.

So, to have Daniel Ricciardo in a race seat soon after he tested at Silverstone as a test driver and Christian Horner (Redbull Team Principal, CEO) Claiming the times set by Ricciardo during the test were very competitive could potentially signal towards him potentially taking over Redbull’s seat replacing Checo Perez who had a few lacklustre results in recent races after starting the season with banging performance.

Daniel did say in a recent interview that he is willing to take a seat at Alpha Tauri if that could result in him having a chance at the senior team down the line. But Daniel despite being a known quantity his recent track record during his stint with Mclaren does put an asterisk ahead of his name and this move if not gone right could potentially end his career completely but could tarnish his legacy in F1, if he gets beaten by a youngster.

What do you think could Daniel Perform better than Nyck and are we about to see the Daniel Ricciardo of yesteryear back?