Daniel Ricciardo deserved a proper F1 farewell, not his awkward Singapore exit

This was never how Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula One career was supposed to end.For a driver who once looked like a potential world champion and quickly won over fans through his affable nature and infectious personality, he deserved a proper send-off after 13 years on the grid.Instead, he was left in limbo. To treat last Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix as, unofficially, his last grand prix, without any closure or a decision over whether he’d be back in Austin next month.That didn’t arrive until Thursday, four days after Ricciardo had said what he anticipated would be his final farewells to the F1 paddock, when Red Bull confirmed his departure.It put an end to what had turned into Schrödinger’s driver decision: Ricciardo was both leaving and yet to leave. Ricciardo’s emotion on Sunday made clear what was going to happen. Yet he’d been robbed of the chance to properly say goodbye to F1. It was all done with an asterisk.Through his media sessions on Thursday in Singapore, Ricciardo acknowledged the speculation that he could be replaced by Liam Lawson, Red Bull’s reserve driver, as early as the next race. But he seemed more worried about 2025 than the remainder of the season. He didn’t appear to seriously think that it was his last F1 race.By Saturday, as Ricciardo digested his Q1 exit that left him 16th on the grid, while RB teammate Yuki Tsunoda made it through to Q3, his tone and body language suggested there’d been a shift. What became a possibility had now become assumed as fact.He made a concerted effort to soak up every single moment of Sunday, knowing this could be the final time he raced in F1. That even extended to taking a little extra time to sit in his car before getting out after the checkered flag. It had been his home for over a decade.“The cockpit is something that … I got very used to for many years,” Ricciardo said in an emotional interview with F1 TV after the race, fighting back tears. “I just wanted to savor the moment.”Ricciardo may not be the grand-prix driver he once was at Red Bull. The one who burst onto the scene and immediately put Sebastian Vettel, then the reigning four-time world champion, in the shade in 2014. Or who produced magic around the streets of Monaco in 2018, redemption for his heartbreaking loss two years earlier. Or who put up a genuine challenge to Max Verstappen, now recognized as an F1 great, in their time as teammates.But he deserved so much better than this protracted, awkward exit that ended up dragging out into a situation where there were zero winners.Even as Ricciardo spoke like a man who’d raced for the final time in F1 on Sunday, the official line from Red Bull and RB was that no decision had been taken. The only acknowledgement of the potential change in driver lineup came in RB’s post-race press release when, in explaining the decision to pit Ricciardo for the fast lap late on, team principal Laurent Mekies noted it “may have been Daniel’s last race.” Red Bull F1 chief Christian Horner said on Sunday that the break before Austin was a chance to review the driver performances across Red Bull’s two teams, and that Ricciardo was “just one part of the jigsaw.”