Revelation that Daniel Ricciardo rejected $10m Red Bull deal equal to Max Verstappen’s pay
Daniel Ricciardo turned down a contract at Red Bull which would have matched Max Verstappen’s massive salary, Christian Horner has revealed.
Ricciardo quit Red Bull to go to Renault in 2019 in a move that surprised the F1 paddock, but now new details have been explained which makes his decision even more stunning.
Team principal Horner has told a tale that Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz personally sanctioned a salary for Ricciardo which was equal to the reported $10m per year already being paid to the team’s up-and-coming star Verstappen.
Horner told the Eff Won with DRS podcast: “I spoke to our owner Dietrich before the Austrian Grand Prix and said ‘it’s looking marginal with Daniel, can you just show him some love? Helmut is very pro-Max, if you could just balance it out…’
“He said: ‘Yeah, no problem.’
“He took him upstairs and they were gone for well over an hour. I was thinking ‘s***!’
“They re-emerge with smiles on their faces. I said ‘how did it go?’
“Dietrich said: ‘Yeah, no problem, not even a question’.
“I said: ‘What did you agree with him?’
“He said: ‘We will just give him whatever Max is on…’
“I said: ‘Wow, do you know what we pay Max?’
“He said: ‘No, how much do we pay Max?’
“I gave him the number and he said: ‘Who the f*** agreed to that?’
“I said: ‘You did!’
“He was like: ‘That is a lot of money… he’s a great guy, let’s do it! Give him the same deal that Max has’.
“His agent was obviously jumping through hoops, at the time. That was for a two-year deal.
“Then we went to Germany for the race and his engine blew up. The big issue was the engine, at the time, it kept letting him down.
“We went to Hungary and got the paperwork sorted out. His agent came to me and said: ‘Daniel is nervous about the engine situation - he will do one year’.
“I said: ‘That’s not what we talked about because, in six months, we will be having the same conversation’.
“I remember it went back to Dietrich. He said ‘it’s about relationships, not contract lengths, give him a year’.
“At this point, he’s got everything that he wants.
“Then he was doing a test for us after the Hungarian race. [His agent said] he would sign the paperwork on Monday. Then Monday goes… I was starting to smell a rat.
“You’d have thought he would be in a rush to sign this deal.
“He didn’t sign it before he got in the car on Tuesday morning. Then he’s going to sign it at lunchtime, that didn’t happen…
“He rings me. I was in the car. Geri was in the car with me. He just got off a plane and was in LA. He said: ‘I am not going to sign the contract, I am going to sign another contract’.
“I said: ‘Wow, okay. Have you got Mercedes or Ferrari?’
“He said: ‘No, I am going to sign for Renault’.
“The engine that had just let him down! Daniel has a sense of humour and I was convinced he was taking the p***.
“After 10 minutes he persuaded me that he was going to go to Renault. It was disappointing.”
Ricciardo spent two years at Renault, then two at McLaren, before rejoining the Red Bull family as their third driver at the start of this year.
He was then swiftly placed as full-time driver for their sister team AlphaTauri mid-season instead of the under-performing Nyck de Vries.
Rumours continue to swirl that Ricciardo may earn the Red Bull seat in 2025 alongside Verstappen again.
