Oscar Piastri as intended successor
It may be a summer break in Formula 1, but the driver market is rumbling a lot. Today the news comes from various quarters that Daniel Ricciardo has to leave McLaren and his compatriot Oscar Piastri is succeeding him.
Daniel Ricciardo may be highly regarded as a driver, but it doesn’t come out so well at McLaren. The Australian is now in his second season and his performance is still clearly lagging behind teammate Lando Norris. Enough for McLaren to say goodbye to him early, it seems. Ricciardo still has a contract for next year, but according to the usually well-informed Motorsport.com Both parties have now come to the table because McLaren wants to dissolve the contract. No doubt McLaren can come up with a hefty bag of money to show Ricciardo the door.
Should McLaren succeed in canceling Ricciardo’s contract, both Motorsport.com if Racingnews365 also known who will succeed him. That will be Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri, also an Australian. Piastri was already in the news this week, because the Alpine reserve driver, according to Alpine’s F1 team, will be the successor to the outgoing Fernando Alonso. Piastri then denied this via social media. That already indicated that Piastri is almost certainly already working on an F1 deal outside of Alpine behind the scenes. Why else would an aspiring Formula 1 driver so resolutely deny getting a spot on an F1 team?
In any case, Daniel Ricciardo’s future in Formula 1 has become extremely uncertain. If Piastri indeed does not go to Alpine but to McLaren, Ricciardo may in turn hope for a seat at Alpine. He would then return to his old employer, as Ricciardo already drove for the then Renault team in 2019 and 2020. His departure from Renault did not go down well with management, so the 33-year-old has to hope that the French will be forgiving. to be.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl