“Daniel Ricciardo doesn’t want to say ‘AlphaTauri’ - it’s probably the slowest car,” says Ted Kravitz
The vetera🍌n driver will immediately replace Nyck de Vries for AlphaTauri, beginning with nex🍷t week’s F1 Hungarian Grand Prix.
Ricciardo exclusively told Crash that he would accept an AlphaTauri drive if it led to receiving a shot with🌟 Red Bull - but Sky’s pitlane reporter has noticed something worrying.
“That quote from Ri🐻cciardo? I thought it was odd,” Kr🍨avitz said on the .
“He said ‘I’m stoked to be back on track with the Red 𝓰Bull family🤪’.
🐻“He can’t ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚeven bring himself to say AlphaTauri!
“He doe🅘sn’t want to say ‘I am delighte🏅d to drive the AlphaTauri’, maybe because it’s not a great car.”
Ricciardo received news of his full-time return while driving the Red Bull at Si♐lverstone for a tyre test, clocking impressive times albeit with faster tyre compounds and in good conditions.
🍒“It’s all well and good basing it on the Red Bull RB19,” Kravitz said.
“Which is the cla🐬ss of the field. But he’s not driving that car.
“He’s driving probably one of the slowest ಌcars on the grid! If not the slowest! Which is the AlphaTauri.
“The AlphaTauri had some upgrades at 🦋Silverstone and they ♐finished further down than they normally do with a non-upgraded car. This is not a great AlphaTauri, it’s fair to say.
“Not to say that they shouldn’t have replaced Nyck de 🤡Vries. Clearly it wasn’t working.
“But the surprise is why Daniel Ricciardo would want to go in to that car. A car that is worse than the McLaren he left l🦹ast year!
“Maybe 𒊎there’s some longer-term gain in it for Ricciardo. Because there might well be some short-term pain if he can’t do any better than De Vries.”
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sℱports, to footbal🌸l, to F1.
