David Coulthard is surprised to see Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula 1 career come to an end. The former RB F1 driver was replaced by Liam Lawson for the last six races of the year, and the Scot hails Ricciardo’s career, even if he recognizes that his last few seasons have been difficult.
“Daniel Ricciardo’s career seems to end there in Formula 1” Coulthard said on the Formula for Success podcast. “But it’s amazing how quickly his career seemed to go by. He’s still a young man.”
“He came in with a bang, really established himself as one of the best overtaking drivers in the second part of his career, won a bunch of Grands Prix, he leaves the sport with eight Grand Prix victories.”
“It’s always difficult to talk about people you know, but if you put aside personal feelings and look at the data, you see that it hasn’t really worked in recent times years.”
Ricciardo hasn’t seemed to tame the ground-effect cars, and Coulthard wonders if that reflects a lack of adaptability: “It’s an interesting question, because we often talk about certain cars not being suitable for certain drivers.”
“If I look at my own career without getting lost in the emotion of all the distractions, regardless of the settings, the circuits, the grooved tires, the engines, I was always where I needed to be – there or thereabouts on my best days, a little less on average days.”
“Therefore, if I see life through my eyes, when I hear a driver say ‘this car doesn’t suit me’, is a car really suitable for a driver? The best drivers get the most out of it regulations, whatever they may be, throughout their careers.”
“And I would extend that to Michael [Schumacher] when he returned. He was still a very good driver, he took pole position with the Mercedes in Monaco, but he didn’t look as good. I would have preferred to race against Michael when he returned to Mercedes than against Michael when he was at Ferrari.”
“I wonder if it’s not just because you have a certain amount of energy a certain amount of time in which your total commitment is there, and in the moment where anything that is not total commitment, no amount experience is not going to overcome this.”
