MOTORSPORT: Ferrari speculation swirls around Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo’s future, as much as his form, is going to be the Formula 1 story of this year. And the combination of the two guarantees many and magnified headlines for months.

Overnight the carsales.com.au global ambassador has denied speculation that he already has a ‘pre-agreement’ with Ferrari for next year.

His underlying message is that most important to him is having the machinery to win a world title, not the number of dollars on his next contract. That said, whichever way it goes, there will be plenty of the latter -- somewhere between $25-50m per year.

In the immediate future though Ricciardo’s priority is repeating his Chinese Grand Prix victory of two weeks ago and backing up his success 10 months ago in Baku.

Both those triumphs were characterised by Ricciardo’s phenomenal ability to overtake, something so rare in modern F1 racing.

F1 has returned to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea, for the fourth round of this year’s championship.

Ricciardo is fourth in the driver standings with 37 points, behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel on 54 and Mercedes pair Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas with 45 and 40 respectively.

Realistically, the world title is unlikely for the Aussie this year -- which is what makes the decision on his future so important.

The Renault-powered Red Bull RB14 may yet win more races this year, especially with Ricciardo at the wheel, but the longer the season goes the more likely that Ferrari’s pace and improvement by Mercedes, the superior team for the first four years of the 1.6-litre V6 hybrids but without a win yet this year, will prevail.

Ricciardo was always going to wait until the start of the European GPs next month to assess Red Bull Racing’s competitiveness and decide whether to re-sign with it or move to greener pastures with a team more likely to fulfil his world title dream.

That timeframe suited Red Bull too, but the Shanghai success has changed things.

Ricciardo is now an even more desirable recruit, and RBR team principal Christian Horner has indicated that he is prepared to wait until at least the August break in the season for a decision from him.

Horner doesn’t have much option on that, although he has no shortage of alternative talent to fill the seat for next year, with Carlos Sainz Junior and Pierre Gasly on his books.

Ricciardo though is now very much in the driver’s seat in all contract negotiations.

Not only is the 28-year-old from Perth the ‘pass master’ in F1, but he doesn’t make the mistakes that his 20-year-old teammate Max Verstappen does.

The best scenario for RBR is to keep the pair together beyond this season, but Ricciardo needs to know that it will have a car that can win the world title (as it did four years in a row in the days of V8 engines (and Vettel) before the hybrids) and that he (not Verstappen) would be given every opportunity to do that.

Ricciardo’s not afraid of equal opportunity, but he’s not going to cop favouritism towards a teammate.

Ferrari can pension off Kimi Raikkonen at the end of this season, while Bottas is serviceable but has not set the world on fire and could be replaced at Mercedes, although his career is managed by the Merc team’s principal, Toto Wolff.

There is even a chance that Hamilton, the most recent four-time world champion, could be shaken loose from Mercedes by Ferrari.

Unlikely that may be, but there are openings for Ricciardo at either of the teams consistently ahead of Red Bull (Mercedes has 85 constructors’ championship points this season despite not having won a race, Ferrari 84 and Red Bull 55).

It’s now a matter of what suits Ricciardo best.

Mercedes may have little more to gain marketing-wise after its successes of recent years. Its commitment to F1 could wane.

Ferrari has been the great constant in the sport, but it already has Vettel as its main man. He’s another four-time world champion, but he was comprehensively outgunned by Ricciardo in the one season they had together as Red Bull teammates in 2014.

Vettel won’t want Ferrari to bring in Ricciardo and traditionally the #1 driver at the Italian stable has had enormous clout -- although Ferrari showed with its handling of Fernando Alonso four years ago that it is not prepared to allow the team to revolve wholly around one man.

If Vettel can’t accept Ricciardo as a teammate again, Sergio Marchionne won’t be beyond showing the German the exit.

Ferrari has threatened to depart F1 if it doesn’t like the engine rules soon to be decided beyond 2020. It has made similar threats in the past without following through, usually getting its way, but there may be more substance to its talk this time.

In all probability, Ferrari will stay – and it is the natural home for Ricciardo, who is of Italian heritage and would be a perfect fit. Not only for his driving ability, but his personality.

As much as he may just want to concentrate on driving the RB14 for now, talk of him going to Ferrari will persist (and dominate F1 conversations) until his future is settled.

Ricciardo insisted in Baku last night that he has only talked about his future with Red Bull at this stage.

“I’m aware of other reports, but there hasn't been anything else, so they’re not true,” Ricciardo said.

Asked specifically about reports of a ‘pre-agreement’ with Ferrari for an exclusive negotiating period, he replied: “That’s not true.”

What Ricciardo made clear is that he won’t accept a subservient role at any team – as Rubens Barrichello had at Ferrari with Michael Schumacher, Aussie Mark Webber with Vettel at Red Bull, Raikkonen now with Vettel and Bottas with Hamilton.

Ricciardo said he expected clarity and fairness in his next contract.

“I wouldn’t want to go somewhere where I didn’t feel I had a chance,” he said.

“At the moment what I’m chasing is to try and be world champion. That’s my goal, my dream, something I really believe I’m capable of. So if someone said ‘we’ll let you come here, but you can’t do this’, that’s not an attractive option to me.

“At Red Bull there’s always been really good clarity and I would say fairness, since 2014, since I’ve been there.”

Ricciardo repeated that he would be happy to be in a team with Hamilton and that it would be “a good challenge”.

But whatever he decides, it will be based on facts and the best opportunity to become world champion.

“I wouldn’t go somewhere else just for a change,” he said, recognising loyalty to Red Bull, with which he has been associated for more than a decade. Initially it was in junior open-wheeler categories in Europe, then at backmarker and now-defunct Hispania Racing Team in F1, then Scuderia Toro Rosso, the energy drink company’s secondary GP team, and ultimately its main outfit.

“I guess I don’t really fear not having a seat next year, so I don’t feel that I need to sign something tomorrow or I will have nothing,” Ricciardo said.

“So I guess for that reason I feel like I can see until the [northern] summer what’s happening.

“If nothing has happened since then... If it’s only then Red Bull, then that’s where I am.”

So many other racing drivers would love to be in that position.

The reality is though that Daniel Ricciardo will have better options to weigh up and to give him the best chance to become world champion.