Singapore Grand Prix conclusions: Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull return theory and more

Conclusions from the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix

Prediction: Daniel Ricciardo will race for Red Bull before F1 2024 is out

Can a driver deemed not good enough for Red Bull’s junior team still find his way into the senior team?

In the case of Daniel Ricciardo, we may be about to find out.

It became increasingly obvious as the Singapore GP weekend developed that this was Ricciardo’s last race with VCARB and that he will be replaced by Liam Lawson in time for next month’s United States Grand Prix.

Yet is this really The End, as so many have assumed? Or just a new beginning?

Read between the lines – Christian Horner’s hint that there is “a much bigger picture” at play here, the suggestion that Ricciardo is to remain in Red Bull’s ‘driver pool’ even after being dropped – and all may not be as it seems.

When the decision was made to retain Sergio Perez over the summer break, PlanetF1.com revealed (below) that a significant factor behind Red Bull’s safe choice was the uncertainty over whether Ricciardo or Lawson would ultimately prove much of an upgrade as Max Verstappen’s team-mate.

Go deeper: Where did it all go wrong for Daniel Ricciardo?

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With the end of the current season in sight, and final decisions still to be taken for F1 2025, now is the ideal time to get the answers to those lingering questions.

Why else would Red Bull be so eager for Lawson to race in F1 2024 when Helmut Marko has been saying for months now (“he will definitely be in one of our cars next year,” he declared as recently as Zandvoort) that he is guaranteed a seat for next season?

The only plausible explanation is that although Red Bull have committed to promoting Lawson for F1 2025, they are not yet certain where exactly to place him and are keen to treat the rest of this year as an audition period for a Red Bull Racing seat.

If he can replicate the performances of his five-race cameo of mid-2023, proving the VCARB is a considerably quicker car than Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda have made it look all season, opportunity knocks for Lawson to emerge as the prime candidate to permanently replace Perez for F1 2025.

And Ricciardo?

Do not underestimate the strength of the affection the team – particularly Horner – has for him after all they achieved together the first time around and all the time and effort spent getting him back into shape following his departure from McLaren two years ago.

He has disappointed since his return last year, yet his strongest – and most relevant – performance since 2022 came not in a qualifying session or race for AlphaTauri/VCARB, but in the Pirelli tyre test he spent behind the wheel of the Red Bull RB19 at Silverstone last July.

That his fastest lap would have been good enough for second on the grid for the British Grand Prix two days earlier only supported the theory, stretching all the way back to when he emerged out of nowhere to run Sebastian Vettel out of town in 2014, that Ricciardo only excels in good, well-balanced cars with lots of downforce.

Enough to unlock the Daniel of old, all smiles ‘n’ shoeys on the top step of the podium? Perhaps not. Not at this advanced stage of his career.

But certainly enough for him to act as a very competent wingman to Verstappen – and without the wild fluctuations of Perez, back to his anonymous worst in Singapore after showing signs of life in Baku.

The way the final section of the season is structured makes this situation all the more compelling, the four and three-week gaps after Singapore and Brazil respectively providing two clear opportunities for Red Bull to ring the changes.

So how’s this for a season-ending scenario?

Ricciardo sits out the next three races, getting all the VCARB out of his system with some work away from the spotlight in the Red Bull simulator, and maybe even a TPC test or two, before stepping into Perez’s car for the final three races when the Mexican GP is over and done with.

With the Constructors’ Championship likely to have all but gone to McLaren by then, both team and driver will have nothing left to lose.

If it works out, Red Bull have a ready-made replacement for Perez for F1 2025.

And if it doesn’t? Daniel can finally walk away from F1 safe in the knowledge that he was given the opportunity he always craved back in a Red Bull and failed to make the most of it.

With a guard of honour waiting for him in the paddock after the race, Singapore may have looked for all the world like the end of the road for Ricciardo.

Yet what if this isn’t about him, but about Red Bull’s post-Perez planning instead?

This isn’t over yet.

Does Lando Norris need a dominant McLaren to mask his shortcomings in a title fight?

This was not how the Singapore Grand Prix is normally won, not in the modern era of race management and winning at the slowest possible speed.

The textbook way to win it is how Carlos Sainz did it last year, backing up the pack and keeping the field compact, smothering undercut opportunities and protecting those Pirellis as much as possible to lock down a one-stop strategy, all the while keeping a watchful eye on any Safety Cars.

Lando Norris?

He had pace to burn and a race to win, so he just went out and won it.

No need to complicate things with the McLaren so dazzling, so irresistible here, his margin of victory falling just 1.9 seconds short of his Dutch Grand Prix win, the most dominant performance by any driver all season.

Having waited so long to claim his maiden win, it is noticeable that all three of Norris’s victories in F1 2024 have been marked by a certain effortlessness, the pace positively oozing out of him.

Aside from a couple of wall scrapes along the way, once again in Singapore it was all so simple, all so easy, Norris looking for all the world like F1’s next World Champion in waiting.

Yet does that itself not tell us something about Lando’s own shortcomings?

That he is a fair-weather winner, only winning so far when he has a clear car advantage, and struggling that much more when he has to fight for it or tough it out?

Put another way, would Norris have been capable of winning in the style of Oscar Piastri in Baku, absorbing pressure with cars breathing down his neck for lap after lap without the faintest hint of a mistake?

In that context, there is an argument to be made that the way his race in Singapore unfolded helped protect Norris from himself.

And certainly, the ease with which he has won in Miami, Zandvoort and Singapore is in stark contrast to how hard Norris has made it look at times this season with his collection of poor starts and moments like Monza, where he allowed his own team-mate to overtake him around the outside – on the opening lap of a race he couldn’t afford to lose – without so much as a scuff of a sidewall.

It is obvious by now that temperament is not Norris’s strong point, Lando more emotional and susceptible to pressure than the likes of Verstappen, F1’s ultimate mentality monster.

Tough competitors tend to be born, not made, and if he is to sustain a serious title challenge both this year and next, it is essential that he has a dominant car at his disposal to help mask his weaknesses in this area as he becomes exposed to the unique pressures of competing for the title.

There is a parallel to be made here with Sebastian Vettel, the driver whose finger celebration Norris has recently adopted, whose similar limitations did not stop him collecting four consecutive titles with Red Bull and cementing his place alongside the most celebrated drivers in history.

When the dominant car was taken out of the equation post-2013, though, it was revealing how quickly Vettel regressed to the mean, making mistakes few would associate with a driver so decorated and crumbling in the heat of tense title battles with Lewis Hamilton in a fashion unbecoming of a multiple World Champion.

The moral of the story?

A fragile temperament is not a barrier to success per se; more that success for F1’s more sensitive souls only tends to come in very specific and controlled circumstances.

Ultimately, it cuts to the heart of one of the great truisims of motor racing: it’s amazing how much easier life is when you have the quickest car.

Max Verstappen will do just enough to secure a fourth title in F1 2024

Might Max Verstappen be performing to an even higher level now than when he was dominating?

It is often the case in these situations that when a team’s period of dominance comes to an end, the star driver somehow finds it deep within himself to almost single-handedly bridge some of the gap.

It was only this time last year, remember, that Verstappen was still shining in the afterglow of a record-breaking 10th consecutive victory.

Twelve months on, his barren run since his last win in Barcelona on June 23 has extended to eight races and counting, yet Norris has taken only 17 points out of Verstappen’s lead over the last three months.

Right there is likely where the F1 2024 title will likely be won and lost.

As F1 returned to a conventional street circuit for the first time since Monaco, where Verstappen recorded his joint-lowest classified finish of the season in sixth place, this had the potential to be a very uncomfortable weekend for Red Bull given the RB20’s frailties over the bumps and kerbs.

With the expected Ferrari threat failing to materialise, however, and Mercedes still distant from the lead fight, Singapore had the feel of a significant milestone in Verstappen’s efforts to close out this World Championship.

With drivers limited to just a single run in Q3 following Sainz’s crash, it was no surprise that the drivers who came closest to Norris’s time for pole position were Verstappen and Hamilton, the two with the most accessible techniques (call it natural talent) and the poise to deliver one make-or-break lap.

It was a potentially pivotal moment in the World Championship, one that ensured any damage done to his lead at this race would be limited.

And that he ended up equalling his best Singapore GP result of second in this car, in its current state, was a minor miracle.

There has been a noticeable change in Verstappen – mistaken by some in Baku for dejection – since Hungary, when his frustrated response to Red Bull’s struggles only made a bad situation worse.

Too many more races like that would have been a sure-fire way to lose in a flash the points lead he had established at the start of the season.

Now, it seems, he has learned to keep the emotion out of it on track, toughing it out and extracting the maximum from whatever he is given, leaving it to his father to act as the enforcer – and to communicate what Max really thinks – via the media.

Norris may have made it his mission to win by the biggest possible margin in Singapore, yet when he hopped out of the McLaren after some of the best laps of his life there he saw Verstappen’s car parked against the number-two board in parc ferme.

It served as a reminder that no matter what Norris and McLaren throw at him over the last six races, Verstappen will make sure that he will do just enough – and whatever it takes – to get this over the line.

Franco Colapinto is exposing Alex Albon at Williams

“Franco just divebombed! What is he doing?”

Did you detect the worry in Alex Albon’s voice too?

That’s the sound of a man who knows he now has a battle on his hands, having had it easy at Williams for the last couple of years.

True, sending divebombs down the inside at the first corner of a grand prix isn’t the done thing in Formula 1 – torpedoing his competitors didn’t end too well for Daniil Kvyat a few years ago, you’ll recall – yet Colapinto’s opportunistic move at the start in Singapore seemed to sum up his entire approach to his unexpected F1 2024 cameo.

He’s been given the chance of a lifetime by Williams and he’s determined to seize it, attacking every lap as if it could be his last behind the wheel of an F1 car.

And everyone else? They’re just going to have to get out of the way.

From being a mere speck on F1’s radar just a few short weeks ago, suddenly everyone knows the name of Franco Colapinto – including Albon, whose performances at Williams since 2022 are being put into some sort of context by his temporary team-mate.

There is a tendency in F1 to overexaggerate the abilities of drivers who bring success to unfancied teams, yet despite links of a return to Red Bull – and even a move to Ferrari – at various points over the last 12 months, there has always been some suspicion over Albon’s true potential.

It did not reflect well on him, for instance, when Nyck de Vries jumped in the Williams at short notice and scored points at Monza 2022, delivering the sort of result Albon himself would have achieved with that car, only then to crumble when handed a full-time seat with AlphaTauri the following season.

And on the one of the few occasions Williams had a Q3-worthy car for both drivers in 2023, even Logan Sargeant managed to qualify right beside Albon in Las Vegas.

Having dominated Sargeant and Nicholas Latifi since 2022, for the first time Albon has been paired with a racing driver of serious substance at Williams and is being exposed.

Which does not exactly bode well for F1 2025.

Following the signing of Sainz over the summer, team principal James Vowles proudly declared that Williams have the best driver lineup on the F1 2025 grid, boldly overlooking the talent on offer at McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull (where, yes, Verstappen naturally does all the heavy lifting).

If Sainz is as good as he has looked in his best moments with Ferrari, however, Carlos should have Albon covered quite comfortably next season.

Red Bull should have signed Nico Hulkenberg years ago

Red Bull’s driver dilemma?

They could have solved it for good a long time ago by signing Nico Hulkenberg. It would’ve saved them an awful lot of hassle.

There was a chance for it to happen, too, around five years ago when Hulkenberg was nearing the end of his final season with Renault in 2019.

That, you’ll recall, was the year Red Bull started the season with Pierre Gasly in the second car and finished it with Albon in those uncertain early days after the Verstappen/Ricciardo partnership was needlessly broken up.

It was blindingly obvious by the end of 2019 that the average pace deficit of 0.6 seconds would not close sufficiently over the winter for Albon to be the wingman Verstappen required.

Yet still Red Bull stuck with him for 2020, citing their longstanding commitment to unearthing young talent.

Only then to throw their principles – and Albon – in the bin 12 months later when Perez, Hulkenberg’s former Force India team-mate, became the first external driver signing by Red Bull since Mark Webber in 2007.

Hulkenberg? He was out of sight, out of mind by then, nearing the end of the first season of his three-year absence as F1’s forgotten man.

It is on these decisions, these moments, that entire careers can turn.

Appearing on a podcast around the time he was dropped by Williams at the end of his debut season in 2010, a time before podcasts were even a thing, the great F1 reporter Nigel Roebuck suggested that Hulkenberg was never likely to be considered by Red Bull for as long as he raced.

The reason? His height, which just wouldn’t be compatible with Adrian Newey’s exacting standards and uncompromising demands over such details as centre of gravity and car weight.

Yet on a weekend Red Bull were preparing to shuffle their pack of drivers once more in Singapore, it was noticeable that Hulkenberg – and not for the first time in F1 2024 – was ahead of the current Red Bull support cast, having once again shone in qualifying sixth.

Ahead of Ricciardo. Ahead of Tsunoda. And ahead of Perez, whom he frustrated all the way to the chequered flag in his little Haas.

Martin Brundle was on to something in Singapore when he put it to Horner that Verstappen is the only driver Red Bull “really, truly believe in” these days.

Hulkenberg – experienced, cool and never caught performing below the level of his car – is in so many ways the best team-mate Verstappen has never had.

He was one worth believing in. He’d have been able to handle it where so many others have failed.

Red Bull’s loss in 2019 will be Audi/Sauber’s gain in F1 2025 and beyond.