Red Bull racing adviser Helmut Marko said he believes Daniel Ricciardo lost his killer instinct when he left Red Bull for Renault in 2019.
Ricciardo claimed seven of his eight race victories at Red Bull, before spending two years apiece with Renault and McLaren — winning the 2021 Italian Grand prix for the latter.
Ricciardo returned to RB last season, but on Thursday it was confirmed he will make way for Liam Lawson for the rest of the season.
Marko said Ricciardo was never the same after leaving the company’s main team.
“I think the decision to leave Red Bull Racing was the turning point in his career,” Marko told Motorsport Total. “Then he didn’t have a winning car at either Renault or McLaren. He did win at Monza, but those were special circumstances
“I don’t know what exactly happened, because if we knew, we would have helped him. But the speed and, above all, this late braking, and then he goes left or right… in these last few years he tried but it was no longer there, the killer instinct was gone.”
Marko also suggested, as Red Bull did when Ricciardo signed his Renault contract, that the Australian left because he did not think he could beat Max Verstappen in equal machinery.
“He had certain reservations about the Honda engine and apparently he listened more to the sweet talk of Renault and Cyril Abiteboul. Financially, there wasn’t much difference between what Renault offered him and what we offered.
“I also told him: ‘Shoeys will be hard for you’. I don’t think we’ve seen Renault on the podium a lot. He came to us, beating Vettel with three-to-zero victories in 2014 and after that, Daniil Kvyat was faster than him at times, but over the season he also had him under control.
“And then Max came and he got stronger and stronger, so that was certainly one of the reasons for his decision to choose Renault over us.”
Sources have told ESPN that Marko was the senior member of Red Bull’s management pushing for Lawson to replace Ricciardo, with Christian Horner backing the veteran driver to the end.
Marko wants to turn the company’s second team back into a training ground for its younger talents.
Lawson, who joined Red Bull’s driver academy in 2019, has six events this year to show off his talents as the company decide which of its teams he’ll drive for next year, with Sergio Pérez’s future still unclear.