Australian racing driver Daniel Ricciardo has scotched any notion that he could replace Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari in 2020, in the unlikely event that his former Red Bull teammate will decide to end his Formula One career after the 2019 season. Given the fact that F1’s silly season is now starting to get into full swing, suggestions that Sebastian Vettel is considering his F1 future were followed by claims that Scuderia Ferrari had begun searching for replacements, with Daniel Ricciardo and Valtteri Bottas top of the Maranello team’s wish-list.
Having left Red Bull to throw his lot in with Renault this year, Daniel Ricciardo says his two-year deal with the French squad would preclude him from replacing his former team-mate at Maranello, even if there was an interest.
“To be honest, I’ve been seeing articles like for the last three or four years consecutively,” Ricciardo told Auto Week of reported Ferrari interest. So it’s not new to me now. I have my contract, it’s a hard contract until the end of 2020, it was a two-year deal. So if Seb did walk away this year, then that’s his decision, but I wouldn’t be involved in that.”
Daniel Ricciardo is 10th in the drivers’ championship after nine races, with Renault having struggled to live up to their pre-season targets of closing the gap on F1’s top three teams. The Australian and team-mate Nico Hulkenberg finished outside of the points last time out in Austria, but Ricciardo says the team is not ready to give up on the 2019 campaign.
“There’s a lot a lot of stuff to take care of this year still,” he said. “I think Austria took a little bit of wind out of our sails, because we had quite good momentum through Monaco, Canada and France. Then we obviously didn’t feel like we performed as well as we should have in Austria. I’ve been on the phone a little bit to the engineers this week and trying to figure it out. So Silverstone should be better. I think we’ve understood a little bit.” – he concluded.
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