If it was up to Red Bull, Ricciardo wouldn't be driving for AlphaTauri

Nyck de Vries was unceremoniously sacked from AlphaTauri after half the season last year. In his place came the ever-smiling Daniel Ricciardo, who thus returned to the Red Bull network. But if it had been up to the Austrian team, it would not have happened that way.

In an interview with Motorsport-Magazin, AlphaTauri CEO Peter Bayer says he saw Ricciardo as a replacement for Nyck de Vries pretty quickly: "When I started I looked around and thought: If Nyck doesn't bring it in terms of performance, then Daniel would be a great solution for us," the CEO said. The decision to fire Nyck is then no surprise: :"The decisions that were made were discussed intensively with us. Franz Tost was obviously in charge, but Christian Horner was also at the table at one point. In the end, the decision was made by Helmut Marko.''

Red Bull did not agree

Actually, Red Bull did not agree that Ricciardo would come ahead of Nyck de Vries: "Initially we were told: 'No, Daniel is a reserve driver at Red Bull and it will stay that way' And we kept asking how things were going. Then Christian Horner came to us and said: 'We'll do the test at Silverstone. Maybe we can look at it then,'" Bayer said.