Horner rules out Ricciardo at Red Bull next year: 2025 his 'golden objective'

Ricciardo’s sensational return to AlphaTauri - Red Bull’s sister team - was confirmed last week as he replaced the underperforming Nyck de Vries.

• How Ricciardo rediscovered himself ahead of F1 return

The Australian will return to an F1 cockpit officially for the first time since the end of 2022 when he was dropped by McLaren.

Ricciardo’s surprise return has inevitably put more pressure on current Red Bull driver Sergio Perez.

With Ricciardo eyeing up a return to Red Bull alongside Max Verstappen, Horner made it clear that it would only be a possibility for 2025, not 2024.

“At the moment there’s only something in place until the end of the season,” Horner told the F1 Nation Podcast.

“So there’s no thoughts or expectations beyond that. We’ve loaned him to AlphaTauri to the end of the year. Obviously our drivers are going to be Max and Checo again next year. But it’s always good to have talent in reserve.

“I think Daniel is viewing AlphaTauri, he firmly wants to be pitching for that 2025 Red Bull seat. That’s his golden objective. And by going to AlphaTauri, I think he sees that as his best route of stating his case for 2025.”

The key moment in Ricciardo’s return was his driving appearance in the Pirelli tyre test for Red Bull.

Horner admitted he was very “impressed” with how Ricciardo handled it given his seven months away from an F1 car.

“What impressed me the most when I went up to have a look at the test was, bearing in mind he hasn’t driven this car, hadn’t been in a car for seven months, within his third or fourth lap he was down to a time that was within a second of what our drivers were achieving,” he added.

“Then in his first proper run, as it were, on tyres that were comparable, you could see his confidence was growing and growing and that first lap on probably what was his seventh lap of the day would have put him on the front row of the grid. So it was hugely impressive.

“I was just pleased to see that he was still able to operate at that level. You could see, I mentioned to him ‘that would have put you on the front row of the grid’ and you could see almost the relief in his eyes and almost like the pressure release off his shoulders that he could still do it, that he wasn’t going mad and the old Daniel was still there. 

“And then his long runs were very impressive and the work that he did for Pirelli was absolutely on the money.”