Does Ricciardo still have F1 desire? Back-of-grid drive is only way to prove it — MPH

Daniel Ricciardo was explaining yesterday in Singapore that he doesn’t want to race outside of F1 next year if he cannot pick up a suitable race seat. That he feels it would be bad for his image.

Given his two lacklustre McLaren seasons, and the fact that he’s suffering the somewhat humiliating but very financially rewarding situation of being heavily paid by McLaren not to race for them in ‘23, his image is already damaged.

There are potentially seats available at Williams and Haas. They are low-status seats by Ricciardo’s career standards but realistically that’s where his standing is now. Perception is everything and the perception is that he is damaged goods, that the scintillating pace and racecraft of his Red Bull days are gone.

Now, we know that driver performance can be wildly swayed by car traits and there’s a belief that all Ricciardo really needs is a car with a good front end and he’d be back to his best, limited only by how fast the car is rather than how he is struggling to adapt to its traits. There’s definitely something in that in the case of Ricciardo. Just like last year, he’s been in excess of a quarter-second slower in qualifying than Lando Norris. For a driver who was only a whisker slower than Max Verstappen over their three seasons together (and notably quicker than both Nico Hülkenberg and Esteban Ocon at Renault), it suggests he’s either not at his best – or than Lando is a quarter-second faster than Max… (which obviously, for the benefit of the pedants, he isn’t).

But Ricciardo’s performance decline could just as easily be explained by a lessening of desire. Or maybe the difficulty in adapting to the car has damaged that desire. Or perhaps the huge salary he has enjoyed for the last four years of his career has somehow dulled his ambition. Or some combination of all the above.