in the news they were talking about replacing mark webber with daniel ricciardo, or at least replacing one of the torro rosso drivers, but for the life of m,e i cant see why. he doesnt really stand out, against liuzzi whenever i check he is behind him (this is the case more often than not anyway). i really dont see why he has been rated so highly, because lower formulas can be completely different to F1 anbd some struggle like piquet and grosjean did. i dont get why they though he was so good when he had little to no time in an F1 car (as far as i know). to be honest if he cant beat liuzzi in equal machinery, then i dont think he has a big future in F1. i know that he is against a more experienced driver, but so is di resta and he is holding his own against the fairly highly rated driver sutil. anyone got any news on what redbull think of his recent performances?
He's beaten liuzzi for the last few races, especially in qualifying. It shows he has the one lap pace, which is important.
I'll vouch for him. I'm constantly checking to see how Ricciardo is doing anyway. Look, it's very hard to judge someone at HRT, just look at Bruno Senna, but he is really holding his own. Over single lap pace he has left Liuzzi behind and is now even challenging the Virgins for pace. A mechanical issue in Belgium forced him to retire, and cost him what would have been 14th place by the end, even beating both Lotus' and a non-classification cost him in Monza, both occasions where he would have beaten Liuzzi. He is rated very highly due to great amount of success and domination he enjoyed in WSBR and F3 and his close affiliation with the Red Bull team. In the Abu Dhabi test at the end of last year he drove the car around 1.3 seconds faster than Vettel's pole position lap. Admittedly, the laid down rubber of the race weekend supposedly gave him a 1.5 second advantage, but nevertheless it's a great achievement. There are a few people expecting him to be the next Sebastian Vettel. For the first few races I didn't expect him to be beating anyone, but even in Germany he started closing the gap to Liuzzi. The only mistake he's made so far really, was tapping the back of Glock early in Singapore causing him to lose his front wing. Even then he came from a lap down to convincingly beat his teammate. Red Bull are keeping an eye on him, but saying nothing at the moment. However when Marko said that Webber would retire next year (which made a few of us here in Down Under very angry), he said it would likely be Ricciardo who replaces him. It depends on how he does at HRT and STR. He is also a pretty nice and funny kid and is one of the few drivers out there who seem to relish the opportunity to drive an F1 car, even if it is just a Hispania.
tbh when a driver has a couple of good races on here the place seems to go a bit crazy. Too early to tell and the HRT is really a test, he's being outqualified by his team mate 2-1, that's about pace, forget the racing with the HRT, it doesn't really count. Di Resta gets mentioned, yet he's not covered his nuts in glory in that many races, a good startegy from his engineers put him where he was, not seen either do anything that actually stood out (though, once again in Daniels regard, you can't really do anything in the HRT.) We'll see what he's like next year against Alguersuari at STR, the jury is out until we see more of him, but it certainly looks like he has a career in F1 from what I've seen so far.
seems the general concensus is Ricciardo is doing better than expected so the OP is declined until he returns with further damning evidence =)
