Daniel Ricciardo might not return to F1 grid if he takes 1-year sabbatical in 2023, says 2-time world champion
Daniel Ricciardo might not return to F1 if he takes a sabbatical in 2023, reckons former two-time world champion Mika Hakkinen.
The former McLaren superstar told Edd Straw on The Race F1 Podcast that Ricciardo has been regressing. So a year off and a lack of clarity over his future plans puts the driver's future in the sport in doubt.
“His performance has been dropping, he’s not going flat-out there. So people are not sure with him if he’s quick enough. That could make it difficult having a year off and coming back because if you’re not quick enough, there’s always some kind of explanation, some reason. And I feel he’s not giving this information very clearly to media, to fans, to the team. That’s a bit scary. You have to know why I’m not able to maximise my performance to the same level as my team-mate.”
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Talking about his own career, Hakkinen said that he opted for a sabbatical after the 2001 F1 season and never returned to racing after that. He said:
“I thought ‘OK, if you feel like it, I’d appreciate it, I will see what happens. But I did recognise after three-four months, when the season (2002) started and I was in Monaco or wherever I was, I was definitely feeling like ‘no way I wanted to go back there’. It requires so much energy, so much power from your body and physiologically, a lot of energy. I knew that way it doesn’t matter if I have one year off, I cannot come back. I already knew that halfway through the season that I’m not coming back."
Ricciardo, who is competing at the Mexican GP this weekend, is leaving McLaren at the end of the season.
Daniel Ricciardo's situation worsened with a lack of testing
Mika Hakkinen touched on another aspect where Daniel Ricciardo was up against it. He said that in the current era, testing is not an important part of the season.
In Hakkinen's era, he had unlimited testing to improve the car. Ricciardo does not have that privilege and is suffering for that. The Finn said:
“It’s definitely not easy. When I was racing we had a lot of testing, we were testing those cars constantly. The car was tailor-made for you, and now the cars are not really tailor-made for you because you are not allowed to do testing. So the engineers have to do a lot of calculations, back in the factory to build the car for the coming season."
He continued:
"If the driver complains during the weekend of some driving balance problem with the car, they can change the springs, the aerodynamic, the differential, the braking balance, tyre pressures, but they are also quite limited these days what you’re allowed to change."
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He added:
“The things you can do are very little. And if you do have a driving style which is aggressive in the entry, then you need to build the set-up in a way the car still handles nicely in mid-corner and exit. But if you cannot change the geometries of the front suspension or rear suspension, it makes your life really complicated, that means you have to adapt for this issue. Adapting your driving style if the car doesn’t work, it’s awful. It’s not fun at all but if your teammate can do it, then you can do it too.”
It remains to be seen how significant Hakkinen's comments are, but it appears to be an uphill task for Ricciardo to make a comeback to the grid after a year's absence.