F1, Daniel Ricciardo tells the reason for his farewell to racing

Daniel Ricciardo’s long Formula 1 career came to an end after the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, driving a Racing Bulls. Returning to the track in 2023 after parting ways with McLaren, the Australian was convinced that he could relaunch himself in F1, but his comeback did not go as planned, in fact it led to the final “closure” of his adventure as a driver.

Complicating everything also came an injury that forced him to stop and undergo surgery: “Just in my third appearance, I injured my hand. It was a minor accident, but it kept me away from the circuits for about ten weeks,” the Australian driver himself explained in a video made for Ford.

The former driver of, among others, Red Bull and McLaren, pointed out that the many team changes in the last period certainly did not help him: “I was fired twice in a two-year period. That ends up affecting your thoughts.” At 36 years old, he now understood that he had reached the end of the line: “I knew I had reached the end because I was struggling to perform at the level I know I can achieve. If I had come to the end of last season, I think I would have continued to have a lot of these thoughts.”

A quip also about Fernando Alonso, someone who still has the fire in him: “You see guys like Alonso competing at a very high level at 44 years old. I, for some reason, have lost some of my form and it’s okay to admit that. There are people who love you and will tell you you’re great, but you have to be honest with yourself,” his closing remark.