Daniel Ricciardo thinks Sebastian Vettel’s fight with Charles Leclerc does share some similarities to Red Bull in 2014.
The Australian made his mark in Formula 1 by beating the four-time world champion in his first season at the Milton Keynes-based outfit, with Vettel going on to join Ferrari the following year.
And 2019 has seen the German face another young threat as Leclerc moved up from Sauber, with the Monegasque has also been getting the better of Sebastian in recent races.
“There are a few similarities: the young guy coming up to give the older guy a hard time,” he told Motorsport Week.
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“We have seen a little bit of this now with Charles. You probably have to ask Seb, but I am sure that there are some similarities there, and a bit of pressure from the young guy coming up.
“I still think Seb is strong enough to be able to overcome it if that is the case, it is really up to him. If he starts to gather some momentum you could see him start to find his form again.
“But also Charles is young and still will probably keep improving, so I think Charles will be at the front for many years.”
The rise of Leclerc, and a disappointing year for Ferrari, even raised the prospect of Vettel retiring at the end of the season, but that now seems highly unlikely.
As for Ricciardo, his decision to move from Red Bull to Renault came in a similar vein as Max Verstappen replaced him as the top dog last season.
Although, he has now revealed an internal shake-up at the team also contributed to his departure, with race engineer Simon Rennie stepping back into a reduced role.
“There were a lot of reasons, but losing Simon – I knew he wasn’t going to engineer this year – if I stayed at Red Bull, and I thought I had a good relationship with him, and there were some unknowns,” he was quoted by GPFans.com.
“I was certainly comfortable with him. If I knew he stayed, I don’t know if that would’ve been the deciding factor, but it was another [thing] obviously when you’ve got the Honda concern and a few others, I guess that was another little thing.
“As I said, there were lots of these little things which probably added up – I don’t want to say ‘concerns’ but unknowns. ‘Concerns’ is probably a bit disrespectful.”
