Daniel Ricciardo admits he would consider a sabbatical from Formula 1 next year.
On Wednesday, it was revealed the Australian and McLaren had “mutually agreed” to end his contract one year early at the end of 2022 after two difficult seasons blighted by underperformance.
And while Ricciardo is thought to have options at the likes of Alpine and Haas for 2023, if the 33-year-old didn’t see a competitive opportunity he would decide to take a break from F1.
“If it made sense, then yes,” he said when asked about a sabbatical on Thursday.
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“[F1] is the only racing that I am interested in at this stage of my career, but as I said if the stars don’t align and it doesn’t make the perfect sense, then I am willing to [take a year off in 2023].
“I think through all of this, I guess you’d call it adversity, I haven’t lost that confidence in myself. For sure we’ve had some tough weekends and you can’t help but show emotion sometimes.
“I still love it and I still want to do it competitively. I want to do it in the right place.
“I never said I want to just be a driver to make up the numbers. If I’m here, I want to be here for a purpose. I don’t know what that means yet for the future, but of course, if it’s the right opportunity, then this is where I want to be.”
After his McLaren split was announced, Ricciardo insisted he would look back on the past two years “with a smile”, and he continues to have that same positive outlook.
“It’s not the result we wanted in terms of when I joined the team – this wasn’t desired. We just didn’t get it right,” he conceded.
“We put in a lot of effort and tried to get through it, understand the car etc. There was just too many weekends that were a bit of a struggle. That’s how it came about.
“It’s not the nicest feeling but I can hold my head high in trying to make it work. You have to accept you tried and it didn’t work out. It’s just one of those things. I am proud of how we tried to make it happen.”
It is expected that Ricciardo will be replaced at McLaren by Oscar Piastri, who is managed by former F1 driver Mark Webber.
But the Perth native denied there were any hard feelings with his fellow countrymen.
“I honestly still don’t know what the future holds for Oscar. It’s just business,” he said.
“Mark is doing his job for Oscar. I don’t take any of that personally. I will be supporting a fellow Aussie.”