After dropping his McLaren drive on the finish of 2022, Ricciardo finishing a sensational return to the F1 grid with AlphaTauri on the Hungarian Grand Prix as he changed the under-performing Nyck de Vries.
However the 34-year-old Australian’s comeback was rocked when he broke his hand in a crash throughout observe at his second race again at Zandvoort, ruling him out of the following 5 occasions.
Ricciardo starred in Mexico with a surprising lap to qualify fourth on the grid, earlier than changing that into seventh, marking AlphaTauri’s finest results of the season.
However as F1 co-commentator Brundle admits, he thought Ricciardo would have out-performed teammate Yuki Tsunoda by a extra convincing margin.
“I do not assume Daniel has maybe outperformed Tsunoda as I’d have anticipated him to,” Brundle mentioned in a Sky F1 fan Q&A.
“I do know he was thrown in on the deep finish and he was actually unfortunate with that incident in Zandvoort. So the jury is out on that.
“And it’s important to say McLaren changed him with Piastri, at some value and ache, and that proved to be a fairly good transfer, did not it?”
Ricciardo is focusing on a return to Crimson Bull as he eyes Sergio Perez’s seat alongside Verstappen, however Brundle is uncertain how properly he would fare in opposition to the triple world champion.
“So for me, Daniel’s obtained much more to do earlier than I’d assume that he is able to go and take the battle to Max Verstappen,” he added.
Again in July, Brundle described Ricciardo’s return with AlphaTauri as a “high-risk” transfer.
“He is obtained to beat Tsunoda, he is completely obtained to,” Brundle mentioned on the time. “He must edge him in qualy and within the races, that is an absolute given as an expectation.”