Christian Horner on Ricciardo | "It's just very sad"
General
Daniel Ricciardo will always be close and have connections to the Red Bull Organization as he grew up throughout their young driver program. Before going on to achieve 7 of his 8 wins with Red Bull Racing under Christian Horner. It's his former team boss who is the latest to speak on his situation where he's been dropped from McLaren ahead of the 2023 season, and at the minute has no seat for the future.
A Sad Situation
"It's just very sad" is how Horner starts to conversation clearly emphasising with the Australian before continuing with "I don't recognise him as the same driver as he was when he was with us. He's one of the best guys out there, you know, that he's definitely got the capability and I hope that he finds a seat in Formula 1". The Brit continues later in the interview with "His confidence has been zapped. We're used to seeing him on the podium doing shoeys messing around with that big smile and we don't see that anymore.", in which he concludes "It's better off having him in this championship than not"
"I hope he finds his Mojo because if you think back to some of the races he drove for us. Winning the Monaco Grandprix with 50% power. He had some amazing performances", Horner also reiterates how close he was to Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen staking the claim that on his day he had world championship pace. Although the team boss skirts around the question of how Ricciardo would fare again Max now, his response begins "We saw how close those guys were, Max has evolved since you know, Daniel left the team but on Daniel on his day was right there"