Ricciardo accused of chasing ‘big paychecks’ amid Verstappen theory

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Daniel Ricciardo has been accused of prioritising ‘big paychecks’ over his dreams of winning the Drivers’ Championship title after returning to Red Bull on a reserve basis for the 2023 season. The popular Aussie driver endured a torrid time of things last year at McLaren, with his consistently poor results eventually seeing his contract with the team cut short a year early.

Ricciardo came through the junior ranks at Red Bull before leaving back in 2018 amid the emergence of Max Verstappen but failed to live up to expectations at Renault and McLaren after parting ways with the Austrian outfit. Former F1 executive Mark Gallagher has since insisted that Ricciardo ultimately chose money over success by walking away from Red Bull, who gave him the machinery to register all but one of his eight career Grand Prix victories.

Gallagher told formula1news: “Someone close to Daniel, close to Red Bull, said to me not long afterwards: ‘He has cashed in, he has taken the money, he’s gone for the big paycheck because he knows the world championship is not going to come to him’.

“It’s certainly not going to come to him at Red Bull because Max is the number one. Actually, he knows it’s not going to come to him at Renault but Cyril Abiteboul is going to pay him a massive amount of money.

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“Not only did he manage to get that big offer and then deliver the podium result that he and Cyril had talked about, he then got lured to McLaren with another big paycheck.”

Ricciardo has maintained that he has never had any regrets about leaving Red Bull since departing the team five years ago in spite of the comparatively limited success he went on to achieve at Renault and McLaren. He was quizzed on what might have been during a recent appearance on the Beyond the Grid podcast but reaffirmed his stance that leaving was the right decision at the time in order to rediscover himself as a driver.

“I don’t look at it like that, because nothing is sure,” said Ricciardo. “If I stayed there the last four years, could I say I would have had more podiums than I’ve had? What have I had, maybe three or something? Yeah, I’m confident to say I would have had more podiums than I’ve had.

“But you just don’t know. Obviously at the time I felt like it was right for me. I felt like I needed a change and I needed to kind of just remove myself a bit. If I continued [at Red Bull], would that urge have grown? Would I have become, let’s say, more curious or less happy, or whatever?

“It’s not a sure thing that it would have been great if I stayed. I don’t look back and say, ‘Man, I shouldn’t have [left]’. But, of course, I can be honest with myself and say, ‘Yeah, I took a little bit of a gamble on myself’.”

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