Nov.15 (GMM) Daniel Ricciardo by no means gave up on his System 1 race seat till the final second, based on RB CEO Peter Bayer.
Lots of the fashionable Australian driver’s followers had been livid that staff proprietor Pink Bull saved secret the information that Ricciardo, 35, would get replaced by Liam Lawson after the Singapore GP – when it was apparent to nearly everybody.
Bayer, although, mentioned it was Ricciardo himself who requested the staff to carry again the official affirmation of his ousting.
“We had agreed with Daniel that we’d not talk it,” he informed Auto Motor und Sport.
“We knew that it will look a bit odd, however we additionally did it to guard our driver. It was his want,” Bayer added.
In keeping with Bayer, Ricciardo clung to the concept that he would possibly be capable of carry out so properly in Singapore that Pink Bull may need a change of coronary heart. Different rumours recommend a race win or podium in Singapore might have triggered contract clauses that assured that he would be capable of race on.
“He believed till the very finish that he would end on the entrance in qualifying and present everybody what he might do,” mentioned Bayer.
“I’ve by no means seen such psychological energy in an athlete as this individual has. And I’ve been in lots of sports activities.”
Sadly, Singapore – Ricciardo’s final race in F1 – was not a great weekend for the motive force.
“It was a horrible second when he was eradicated in Q1,” mentioned Bayer. “You can already hear on the radio that his world had collapsed.
“We then sat collectively in our workplace at two within the morning and requested him what we should always do now. He informed us we should always simply let him drive the race. He simply didn’t need any fuss.”
Ultimately, Ricciardo was tearful after the Singapore GP evening race on Sunday – but it surely was nonetheless a number of days earlier than Pink Bull lastly confirmed that Lawson could be in his cockpit for the rest of the season.
A lot of his followers had been livid with Pink Bull.
“As a staff, we stood up for him,” Bayer insists. “If Daniel had stayed till Abu Dhabi, after all we’d have celebrated his farewell with fireworks and images on the grid, like what occurred with (Kimi) Raikkonen. That’s what everybody would have wished.”
He additionally factors out that it was Pink Bull who truly gave Ricciardo a second probability to shine in System 1 after being axed by McLaren, additionally for poor efficiency, on the finish of 2022.
“We gave him one other probability that no one thought potential,” mentioned Bayer. “It was vital for us that on the finish of the day we might look within the mirror and say that we did the precise factor for him – even when the entire world and his 9 million Instagram followers had been bashing us.”
