Daniel Ricciardo’s final Formula 1 race weekend could have been handled in a better way, his former RB team has admitted.
The Australian was dropped by RB after the Singapore Grand Prix in favour of Liam Lawson, as the squad wants to evaluate the New Zealander’s potential to see if he could be a candidate for Red Bull in 2025 or 2026.
But although the decision to make the driver switch was made well in advance of Singapore, the development was kept quite secret – with there being no confirmation from the team nor Ricciardo over the Marina Bay weekend that he was definitely leaving F1.
So when it became clear post-race that Ricciardo’s career was over, there was a backlash from fans who suggested that Red Bull had given the eight-time winner a disservice by not allowing him a proper send-off.
However, as Autosport revealed, the reality was that Red Bull representatives had spoken to the Ricciardo camp ahead of the Singapore weekend to see if there was interest in him announcing the news before track action got underway – but it was decided not to go ahead with this plan.
Reflecting now on the events of the Singapore weekend, RB team boss Laurent Mekies says that in hindsight, it may well have been better to have done things differently.
“Yes it was frustrating, and yes it was not ideal to go through the weekend in that way,” said Mekies. “That is first of all for him, on a professional and on a personal matter, and for the whole team around him.”
Mekies confirmed that talks took place before Singapore about how things should play out in public, but once it was decided to keep things secret then both team and driver had to play along with it.
“Daniel was aware,” he added. “We did have discussions before the weekend. For many different reasons, we chose together to go into that weekend without announcing. And from that point onwards, we had to deal with it.
“It's a decision that, in hindsight, we may or may not do differently. But it's something that we were, both the team and the drivers, on board to go through that now.”
But although the way the weekend was handled was far from perfect, Mekies still thinks that the message got through to Ricciardo about just how much he was loved and respected by fans and those in F1.
“I think in one way or another, we all found a way to express how much love there is from the sport to Daniel, from the fans to Daniel,” he added.
“I don't know if it would have been better or worse [to announce it], certainly different, more traditional, but I can hopefully say that the amount of love and empathy we felt through that weekend was something outstanding and something that shows that he's bigger than an F1 driver, he's bigger than F1.”
