- Red Bull Racing RB feeder team sacks Daniel Ricciardo
- Liam Lawson will run with RB for the remainder of the season
- Lawson could be promoted to Red Bull if he can surpass current RB driver Yuki Tsunoda
Daniel Ricciardo has been released by the RB Formula 1 team, potentially marking the end of his F1 career.
Red Bull Racing’s feeder team announced on Thursday that Liam Lawson will replace Ricciardo for the remainder of the 2024 season.
The news isn’t a huge surprise, as Ricciardo suggested last weekend Singapore Grand Prix that the race can be allast time he gets into an F1 car in a competitive environment.
Lawson has been part of Red Bull’s driver development program since 2019 and has served as a reserve driver since 2022. He has already participated in five F1 races, all of them in 2023, when he replaced the injured Ricciardo at AlphaTauri, a team that was renamed RB in 2024.
Liam Lawson – Photo via RB
Lawson drove impressively in those five races, even managing to finish in the points at that season’s Singapore Grand Prix when running ninth. Should he manage to outshine fellow RB driver Yuki Tsunoda this season, there is a chance he could eventually be promoted to the Red Bull team as a replacement for Sérgio Pérezwhich has been bogged down for most of the current season.
Ricciardo has achieved eight victories in his F1 career, most of them achieved with Red Bull. He made his debut midway through the 2011 season, for former team Hispania Racing, as a replacement for Narain Karthikeyan. He joined Toro Rosso the following season, the team that would later become AlphaTauri and today RB. In the following years, he would impress enough to earn a seat at Red Bull in 2013, as Mark Webber’s replacement and Sebastian Vettel’s teammate.
Ricciardo would eventually join Renault in 2019 and then McLaren in 2021. He would be removed from McLaren in mid-2022, after which he returned to Red Bull as a test pilot in late 2022 in an effort to regain a seat. He was then signed by RB midway through the 2023 season after the team dropped rookie Nyck de Vries. However, he would miss most of the remainder of the 2023 season due to a wrist injury sustained during a practice session for the Dutch Grand Prix.
Ricciardo is one of the strongest personalities in F1 and with any luck he will remain as presenter.