Australia is a country known for its sunshine. Its hot weather. Its glorious beaches. Honey badgers.
However, for one honey badger it is not exactly beaming sunshine.
Daniel Ricciardo has not had the best of times at McLaren. In fact, it has been a rather torrid time for the Australian driver.
There have been some real highs for the honey badger. Leading his teammate to McLarens first 1-2 for a decade in Monza, and some good spirited drives. But sadly, there have been so many inferior or disappointing days in the MCL36.
Today at Monaco is a good way of explaining how his time at the Woking outfit has gone. Whilst his teammate put the car a brilliant P5 in qualifying, Daniel could only muster a lowly P14. This is the latest in several subpar qualifying and race finishes, and can only continue for a finite amount of time.
McLaren head honcho Zak Brown is well aware of the lacklustre performances by Ricciardo. Whilst DR3 has a contract until the end of 2023, Brown is well aware of the eyes on the seat and the other options available.
When talking to The Race, Brown was quoted as saying:
“I don’t want to get into the contract [details],”
“But there are mechanisms in which we are committed to each other and then there are mechanisms in which we are not.
“I’ve spoken with Daniel about it. We are not getting the results we both hoped for, but we will both continue to push.
“I think he showed at Monza he can win races. We also need to continue to develop our race car – it’s not capable of winning races, but we’d like to see him further up the grid.
“We’ll just play it…I don’t want to say ‘one race at a time’ because we are not going to one race at a time, but we’ll just see how things develop, what he wants to do.”
Could this be the beginning of the end for Daniel Ricciardo in F1? Are his days numbered? Who is going to take his seat for 2023, or will it come before the end of 2023?