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Daniel Ricciardo has hinted at a tinge of regret when he looks back at the career decision to leave Red Bull for Renault in 2018. The Australian was an academy driver for the Austrian squad when he made his debut. He raced for Torro Rosso in 2012 and 2013 and was promoted in 2014.
From 2014 onwards, Daniel Ricciardo was considered one of the best drivers on the grid. During his first season with Red Bull, he beat Sebastian Vettel and also scored three career wins. After Vettel's departure, Ricciardo became the de facto number one driver within the team.
He was joined by Max Verstappen in the 2016 mid-season as a result of a direct swap with Daniil Kvyat. Max was a young teenage sensation who was perceived as a future star by Red Bull. Ricciardo and Verstappen got along well, but by 2018, the team started leaning more and more towards the young Dutch, which in turn led to the Australian deciding to leave the team.
Daniel went to Renault and McLaren, but in neither of those cases did he have a car that could fight like Red Bull.
In a conversation with Sky Sports after the Singapore GP, Daniel Ricciardo was asked if he felt he made a mistake by leaving Red Bull in 2018. The driver was quite pragmatic in his response while acknowledging that the decision was maybe not the best of his life. He said (via F1),
“I can certainly look back on it and say, ‘okay’… I think at the time obviously in my head everything made sense, but was it the best decision of my career? Of course you could argue, ‘no it wasn’t’,” Ricciardo said.
However, he further claimed there wasn't a guarantee that he would've won it all had he stayed with Red Bull.
“Look, I’m okay with that. It’s one of those ones. Also, there’s no guarantee that if I stayed I would have done amazing and won this and that, so you never know. But, of course, I’m not going to stand here and say that was the greatest decision of my life, but you live and you learn, and obviously it eventually brought me back into the family," he added.
Daniel Ricciardo doesn't want to look back and be sad about the past
Daniel Ricciardo did however say that he does not want to look back at the calls he made at the time and be sad about it. The driver reasoned on how his Red Bull career panned out, saying:
“I don’t want to look back and be kind of sad or bitter about anything – everything I guess happens for a reason, so it’s all good,” Ricciardo said.
Daniel Ricciardo's next move after Red Bull was Renault in 2019. The Australian stayed with the team for only two years, where he had a decent run, but the car was never anywhere close to the levels he'd enjoyed at Red Bull.
Ricciardo would then move to McLaren, where his performances nosedived and led to the team firing him prematurely a year before his contract ended. The Australian's career trajectory possibly changed for the worse after that decision in 2018, with many claiming that he could have continued to run at the front of the grid had he not moved away.
