This year’s ‘silly season’ is shaping up to be something of a non-event. Months of sabre-rattling and speculation about an impatient Verstappen, an exasperated Alonso and an underperforming Raikkonen look set to amount to nought in the almost inevitable case that all of the top teams retain their line-ups for 2018. Formula 1, it seems, got its fair share of driver market bombshells in the winter break.
And yet many would argue that 2017 is the quiet before the storm, that the stability achieved by carrying over drivers precedes a mad scramble in 2018 for the services of one driver in particular. That driver, the paddock say, is Max Verstappen; the term ‘bidding-war’ has even been intimated.
This makes a great deal of sense: the Dutch teenager is a landmark talent by any measure, be it his quite remarkable wet-weather heroics in Brazil or be it the fact that he is one of the most capable, complete racers in the world as a 19-year-old in just his fourth season racing cars. For some perspective, GP3 championship contender Jack Aitken is in his fifth season of car racing, and team-mate Ricciardo started his full-time car racing career some eleven seasons ago.
However, to the credit of the comparably aged Aussie, he has not been cowed by the arrival of the prodigious young Dutchman. Their very first qualifying session as a pairing in Barcelona last year serves as a microcosm of their partnership in the past fifteen months, with Verstappen brashly upping the pressure on Ricciardo throughout practice only to provoke a mega-lap from Daniel in the dying seconds of qualifying.
Ricciardo has consistently used the most formidable challenge he has faced from a team-mate to date (and that includes partnering Sebastian Vettel in 2014) as a springboard to improve his own level of performance.
For many onlookers – Read Motorsport included – Daniel Ricciardo was the performer of the year in 2016, a season which reached its peak with a truly exceptional performance to claim his first pole in Monaco, followed by an equally phenomenal performance in the wet on Sunday, a win scuppered only by pitlane pandemonium at Red Bull.
The scene of Daniel on opposite-lock, in the Monaco tunnel, on worn wet tyres under Lewis Hamilton’s rear-wing is a snapshot of the kind of driver the Aussie is: whenever there is a chaotic scenario, or the whiff of an opportunity, Ricciardo’s combustible blend of speed and bravery can always be relied upon to seize upon any occasion.
Ricciardo’s driving repertoire is arguably among the widest on the grid. He clearly revels in the challenge of a single, highly pressurised qualifying lap, is consistently outstanding on street circuits and is arguably the most dynamic wheel-to-wheel combatant on the grid. Indeed, you could be forgiven for thinking that ‘Dan-dare manoeuvres’ were an eponymous brand of out-braking heroics.
On-track, there is nothing about Daniel’s driving arsenal that would suggest he is not ultimately capable of becoming a world champion (indeed, Daniel doubtless would have thought that he would have been fighting for the championship this season), and off-track he is a perpetually grinning, affable ambassador for the sport.
Indeed, such is Ricciardo’s congeniality that even having been eliminated from the Hungarian Grand Prix by his team-mate on the first lap, but for the odd expletive, there was never any question that this would lead to a long-term deterioration in internecine relations.
So where is Ricciardo’s ‘bidding war’? Why aren’t Mercedes and Ferrari lining up to poach the deeply impressive Aussie? Come 2018, they very well might be. Yes, when the playing field has been even in 2017 Max has more often than not been the slightly faster Red Bull driver, and yes, the steepness of Max’s development curve is quite unprecedented and almost certainly points to championships in the future, but Ricciardo is arguably a better fit for the top teams in the immediate future.
Daniel is unquestionably less temperamental than his young team-mate, and with the Goliaths of Vettel and Hamilton set to be on the grid for several more championship run-ins to come, it would make little sense to destabilize the metronomic excellence of their performances by injecting Verstappen’s puppy-dog aggression into the team.
The hypothetical scenarios of a Verstappen move in 2018 make little sense: why make the highly impressive Bottas stand aside at Mercedes? Would Vettel spend more than moment considering whether to veto having the combative teenager as his team-mate at Ferrari? Ricciardo to Ferrari, however, would be a redemptive opportunity for the German who was broadsided by the smiling assassin in 2014 and would likely result in the same amiable atmosphere as shared by badminton rivals Raikkonen and Vettel.
Undoubtedly, Max Verstappen is the future, indeed, it is entirely plausible that without a broader array of contemporary rivals the Dutchman could one day command his own era of dominance, however that era is not here yet. This remains the era of Hamilton and Vettel (and what a shame it is that Alonso cannot lend his name to the current F1 epoch), and until their reign at the top of the sport is over, it is difficult to envisage a path to Mercedes or Ferrari for Verstappen. Of course, Max may seek to actively topple the pair of multiple champions, but uprooting the accepted benchmark drivers appears an unlikely task.
Ricciardo by contrast, has almost certainly missed the opportunity to collect this season’s championship honours, has no obvious path to championship glory, which is unfortunate given just how consistently impressive Daniel has been since joining the Milton Keynes-based squad.
If in 2018 Red Bull again fails to capitalize on the regulations they seek to implement, the 28-year-old will inevitably be eyeing up the exits, conscious that his window vying for glory at the head of the field is finite. If Ferrari have been paying close enough attention to the Aussie’s recent career, they will already be making offers for his services in 2019
