Eight-time F1 race winner Daniel Ricciardo leaves RB, replaced by Liam Lawson

(CNN) — Visa Cash App RB Formula One Team (RB) have announced that Daniel Ricciardo has left the team with immediate effect.

He will be replaced by Red Bull junior driver Liam Lawson in a move that brings weeks of speculation to an end.

After being left without a seat for the 2023 season following his departure from McLaren, Ricciardo joined RB (then named Alpha Tauri) in the middle of that year to replace Nyck De Vries, who was adjudged to be underperforming.

Ricciardo was out of contract with the team at the end of the current season and had been linked with a return to Red Bull, but RB – the sister team to Red Bull – took the decision to replace the Aussie early.

“I’ve loved this sport my whole life,” Ricciardo wrote in a post on Instagram. “It’s wild and wonderful and been a journey.

“To the teams and individuals that have played their part, thank you. To the fans who love the sport sometimes more than me … thank you. It’ll always have its highs and lows but it’s been fun and truth be told I wouldn’t change it.

“Until the next adventure.”

RB Team Principal Laurent Mekies thanked Ricciardo for his efforts across the last two seasons.

“He has brought a lot of experience and talent to the Team with a fantastic attitude, which has helped everyone to develop and foster a tight team spirit,” he said in a statement. “Daniel has been a true gentleman both on and off the track and never without that smile. He will be missed, but will always hold a special place within the Red Bull family.”

Ricciardo has put together quite the resumé over his 14 seasons in F1. He is an eight-time race winner who has finished on the podium 32 times – good enough for 35th on the all-time list – and has placed in the top three of the World Drivers’ Championship twice. He scored 1,329 points across 257 races.

He last raced at Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix, where he finished 18th.

Ricciardo joined the Red Bull Academy as a teenager, making his F1 debut for Spanish outfit HRT in 2011 before joining Red Bull’s sister team, then called Toro Rosso, the following year. He was called up to the main team in 2014 and spent five seasons with the Austrian manufacturer, taking eight wins.

“When I got into the sport and moved to Europe, I was – maybe some people would find it hard to believe – I was quite a shy, not the most confident individual,” he said, sitting down exclusively with CNN Sport recently. “And I think I was also … just quite young and immature. So getting signed up by the Red Bull program when I was 18 … having that responsibility, that pressure, all of that, it forced me to grow up.”

He moved to Renault for 2019 before jumping to McLaren in 2021. He struggled during his tenure with the British team, although he did take a memorable – and what is likely to be his final – victory at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.

“I’m proud. Like, don’t get me wrong, if (my F1 career) ended today, I would be proud of what I’ve done,” Ricciardo told CNN prior to Thursday’s announcement. “But on the same note, you’re never fully satisfied because the reason I got into Formula One was to try to become world champion.

“I can still be proud without it because I’ve put the effort in. But yeah, I still want to add that. That would give me 100% the full picture of happiness and satisfaction,” he added.

Only time will tell whether Ricciardo will make another spectacular return to the sport, but fans will have to get to grips with a grid without the Aussie as RB embraces the youth movement.

The team has served as a development ground for future Red Bull drivers in the past, but no driver has received the call-up since Alex Albon in 2019.

The 22-year-old Lawson has some F1 experience. He stepped in for Ricciardo for five races in 2023 when Ricciardo suffered a wrist injury and has served as the reserve driver for both Red Bull and RB.

The New Zealand native is set to make his debut as a full-time racer at the US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas next month.

The-CNN-Wire
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