Under pressure in AlphaTauri

The question now is whether the popular Ricciardo will retain his place in Red Bull's 'B Team', RB.

• While Yuki Tsunoda has taken World Championship points in two out of four races so far, Ricciardo remains without points.
• Tsunoda beat Ricciardo in all 2024 qualifiers.
• Tsunoda is 11 years younger than Ricciardo.

– He is definitely under pressure, says Viaplay commentator Atle Gullbrandsen to VG.

– Initially he lost his place in Formula 1 because he did not perform well enough, but Red Bull thought he still had what it took and brought him in as a replacement for Nyck de Vries, who struggled last year.

– Now we see that Ricciardo is still struggling, and I don't think De Vries would have done anything worse than Ricciardo in the right-back team if he had been allowed to continue.

– what happened after that?

The question now is whether Ricciardo will be able to pick up the pace enough to continue the season, or whether Liam Lawson will take his place. Personally, I think Lawson can do as good a job as Ricciardo, says Gulbrandsen.

The Italian edition of motorsport.com claims that Ricciardo has received an ultimatum; Either you deliver before the summer, or you are replaced by Liam Lawson.

Lawson is from neighboring New Zealand. In 2023, he got the chance to race in five races for Team RB (then called AlphaTauri). It gave Singapore's 9th best place, as well as two 11th places. In four of these five races he was in a better position than Tsunoda.

– A number of sources say that when Red Bull brought Daniel Ricciardo back to the Red Bull family, and then appointed him to AlphaTauri, it was to assess whether he could take Sergio Perez's seat at Red Bull, Lawrence Barreto wrote in Formula 1 website.

– Ricciardo is very popular in the Red Bull system, is good in terms of the market and showed in the Pirelli test at Silverstone last year that he has not lost his speed potential when given the right equipment and environment, writes Barretto. additional.

– That's why they gave him the opportunity to show that he can succeed.

After Ricciardo crashed on the first lap in Japan last time out (“race accident”), Red Bull team boss Christian Horner was asked about Ricciardo.

-Daniel is a big boy. He just needs a good result and the smile back. His teammate shoots the ball and that puts him under pressure, of course, but he's been there before and I'm sure he will come back.

This weekend, Formula 1 finally returned to China once again. It's been five years since the last time.

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