what IS going down with daniel? ive seen a few things about it but nothing that actually explains (i am very much not an f1 person, apart from knowing some names from what you guys post lol)
ah yes. daniel ricciardo's fall from grace.
daniel ricciardo is a driver at vcarb. vcarb is the second team of red bull racing. red bull wins stuff, vcarb is meant to ready drivers to get into the red bull team.
daniel was previously a red bull driver and he was doing well there. he was the number one driver at the team for a few years (meaning he was prioritized over his teammate because he was the "better" or "more successful" driver) and red bull wasnt really winning anything at that time, but they weren't sucking. i think he joined red bull around 2014? was teammates with Sebastian vettel (who had won 4 consecutive championships with red bull fro 2010-2013) for a year until he went to ferrari, then was teammates with daniil kyvat for another year and then i think it was partway through 2016 max verstappen, who was at toro rosso (the old team name for vcarb) got swapped with daniil who was "under performing" (red bull do this a lot) and max became Daniels teammate
at first this was fine. max was really young, like 18 years old really young, and daniel had a few more seasons under his belt. daniel was still the number 1 driver. but max was kind of wild and insane and regarded as a future world champion and after a while he started getting better and better and becoming more of a threat to daniel
i need to stress here that the two of them were friends. like absolutely they were friends. they aparently shared hotel rooms and lived in the same building for awhile. they are very good friends. that was not the problem that they hated eachother.
the problem was that daniel wanted to win a world championship and he couldnt win a world championship if the team decided to prioritize max over him.
this all came to a head in 2018. daniels contract was up at the end of the year. the car was fast but not quite fast enough to win the championship, though they did manage to get a few good wins in that year (namely daniel won in monaco which is a big deal) but they also had some shit moments (max and daniel both crashed into eachother while max (?) was leading the race in baku) and the car had some technical problems, mainly with the engine. the engine was a renault engine (renault was another team on the grid, only so many comapnies or teams make f1 engines so multiple teams use the same engine) and it kept literally exploding. daniel was making it work (he won monaco unable to shift past like 3rd gear) but it was not ideal if you want to win a world championship
red bull was set to change their engine provider for 2019 and they were going to go with honda. but daniel was still unconvinced because honda hadn't done f1 engines before (or recently i dont remember which) and also there was the whole max thing.
everyone was still convinced he was going to resign with red bull. but he didnt. he signed with renault. the team with the bad engines.
renault were no closer a championship winning team than red bull were, they were actually slightly behind red bull in the championship at that point. and this shocked everyone. why did daniel choose this? well he wanted to be a teams number 1 driver and also he liked the project they were working towards and whatever whatever etc. anyway this doesnt pan out. daniel was at renault for 2 years and then signed with mclaren.
which was by all accounts a disaster. mclaren at this point were still a flaming hot disaster. (mclaren prior to mid season last year were a definitively mid field car). his teammate was lando and lando had only 2 years of experience in f1 and was still quite young (20 i think) but lando essentially had a better time driving the car than daniel did. which no one was expecting. daniel did manage to win a race with them though, in monza in 2022. mclarens first win in many many years.
despite that, he was not treated well. it was easy to see. he looked underweight a lot, looked generally miserable and clearly the team didnt really care too much about him. he and lando were friends though, which was good. media tried to pit the two of them against eachother, but they were and still are good friends.
anyway. daniel's contract was supposed to run through 2023. mclaren and daniel supposedly both elected to end it early at the end of 2022 (mclaren signed oscar as a replacement) leaving daniel without a seat and retired
which was not great. daniels a big personality in f1, hes a funny guy, he says out of pocket stuff, hes goofy and whatever else. people like him, hes fun. so this was upsetting to see the spark leave him and then also see him leave the sport.
adding salt to the wound here, max won the championship in 2021 and 2022
so he got a call from Christian horner, the red bull team principal. christian is not a great guy but he likes daniel. he invites daniel back to red bull as a third driver, which basically means he does pr.
now remember the junior red bull team. in 2023 it was called alpha tauri and yuki tsunoda was there along with nyck devries. nyck had had an awful season by mid point and scored no points. christian had daniel do some tests in one of the red bull cars, his numbers were good and promising and what do you know daniel was back on the grid as a driver at alpha tauri. it seemed the plan was to leave him there for the rest of the season then maybe swap him with checo peer, the second driver at red bull, for the following year.
Daniel ended up breaking his hand a few races back at zandvoort and was replaced briefly by liam lawson, who was the red bull and alpa tauri reserve driver. liam lawson did better than anyone expected and managed to get points and also knock max verstappen out of qualifying in his most dominant season ever.
daniel finished out the last 5 races of the year and had a contract with vcarb (name changed again) for 2024.
checo had a rough end to the 2023 season and it was rumored for awhile that they were going to swap daniel and checo at the start of 2024 but this never panned out. most cause it seemed like daniel was not performing as well as they thought he would. there were a few times where everyone thought he was going to get cut and get replaced by liam lawson again who is still on deck. checo also got resigned at red bull for 2025 and despite having a not so great run for awhile is still on the team.
daniel has not been re signed for 2025
the rumors bounce back and forth every week. some weeks people say hes leaving some weeks people say hes getting promoted to red bull. he generally ignores them. but its no secret he wants to go back to red bull to finish his career.
this all came to a head this weekend in singapore.
heading into the weekend there were some heavy rumors that daniel was going to be replaced by liam lawson for the last 6 races because daniel is underperforming. and this was a Strong rumor. so strong in fact that it started to get properly addressed by commentators and announcers.
why would red bull pick now to swap him? not sure. williams did a driver swap a few weeks ago and that has worked in their favor. it would also i guess let them see if liam still has what it takes for 2025. whos to say.
in any case. daniel had a bad qualifying and ended the race in 18/18. however. at the end, they pitted him to get soft tires. (the fastest ones) to potentially get him the fastest lap of the race.
fastest lap of the race gets you one extra championship point if youre in the top 10. and daniel was not in the top 10 but it would take the point away from lando norris, who was winning in his mclaren by almost 30 seconds. lando is behind max in the drivers championship standings by about 50 something points and slowly gaining.
so daniel ricciardo, in what might have been his last ever f1 race, goes balls to the walls in a slightly shit box mid field car, on the second to last lap, and pulls out what is not only the fastest lap, but the track record fastest lap, taking a point away from lando norris, who drives for the team that mistreated him so badly and kicked him out of the sport the first time, all to help max verstappen, his ex teammate and the very reason why he left red bull in the first place, win the championship.
yeah.
anyway, all of the commentators were treating it like it was daniels last race. they asked him what his emotions were getting out of the car and he almost cried in the interview, they showed him a montage of his career, the whole team was waiting for him outside of the hospitality when he got back, he got voted driver of the day by the fans despite being virtually in last place. it seems like hes done and he knows hes done but unfortunately no one can say anything about it yet.
which is unfortunate. as i said everyone likes him. and it was general consensus of everyone announcing this weekend that he deserved a better send off than this weird cut right before the end of the season. for someone who has in fact done so much for red bull, it feels like theyre shooting him in the foot.
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HIYA EHE- so for your fantasy au, do people (specifically socs) pull on the Curtis’ wings and tails? Idk I just feel like they would because it’s the easiest way to bug them. I DONT THINK ANYONE WOULD MESS WITH DARRY- because my guy is BIG- but Soda and especially Pony are on the table, though they can very well fly away if they are bothered 🥲
I feel like one time a few socs surrounded Pony (this would replace the jumping scene in the book, because I have no logic 🥲) and they’d find some way to tie his wings together, and instead of trying to cutting his hair, they’d try to cut (the already) small antlers he has
((THIS AU IS SO COOL-)
Awh thank you-I gotta formulate the AU so it has an actual plot that isn’t just “book characters but fantasy” but y’know-
But YES-they would definitely try on Darry ONCE while he was sleeping or at work (he has tail feathers alongside a tail) and they tried to pluck one of his feathers but he literally nearly burnt them to a crisp. So they never tried with him again (also because he’s like…sixty feet tall and does not play around)
But they’ve definitely plucked Soda’s feathers and cut his tail before he could get a chance to shock them. They also try to distract him while he’s “cloud managing” to try and get him to “overvolt” which leads to him just being unsafe to be around people because he’ll shock anybody who comes into contact with him so he has to hide until he can charge down and actually absorb everything. But they definitely try to tie his wings back but he has a mean kick when you piss him off and has sent a soc to the hospital.
And with Pony like in my post before, his antlers and hooves are made from prisms, which the Socs obviously really really value. Do they probably would in all honesty try to tie his wings-maybe they even try to clip them but they barely make a dent before the rest of the gang shows up. He’s not all too menacing since he’s still learning about his powers and doesn’t have his parents there to help him (and glowing in the dark isn’t too tuff in his opinion-i’ve gotta give him a useful power set) but they’ve definitely cut into his hooves or tried to declaw his back talons (also made from prisms) and it gets worse when he gets older actually because his antlers grow and it’s easier for them to cut pieces off.
This au is really fun and if anyone wants to talk about it i mean…hmu
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