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McLaren Racing announced Wednesday it's reached an agreement to part ways with driver Daniel Ricciardo after the 2022 Formula One season.
Chris Medland of Racer reported McLaren agreed to pay out the final year of Ricciardo's contract, and he'll be free to join any team in 2023.
Ricciardo posted a video statement on social media, saying he's "not sure yet" what comes next:
The 33-year-old Australian joined McLaren ahead of the 2021 season after previous stints with HRT, Toro Rosso, Red Bull Racing and Renault.
He finished eighth in the championship standings and recorded just one win during his debut campaign with the team. This season, he's finished no better than sixth through 13 races, leaving him a distant 12th in the standings.
While Ricciardo has been criticized for the lack of success, McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl said McLaren also deserves a portion of the blame, per Medland.
"We tried everything we could from both sides. Unfortunately, we couldn't make it work, which is obviously also my responsibility, being in charge of the team," Seidl said. "In the end, it's a team effort between the team and the driver and that's how I also see it. It's a shared responsibility for also not getting it to work."
Sky Sports reported McLaren continues to work toward signing Alpine reserve driver Oscar Piastri to fill the void, though Alpine has argued it already has a contract in place for the 21-year-old rising star from Australia.
The F1 season returns from a monthlong break Sunday with the Belgian Grand Prix at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.
There are nine races left on the 2022 schedule. Defending champion Max Verstappen is cruising toward another title with eight wins in 13 starts.
McLaren Racing have withdrawn from the 2020 Australian Formula One Grand Prix after a member of the team tested positive for the coronavirus.
They confirmed the decision with a statement on Twitter:
The opening race of the 2020 season now appears to be in doubt, with first and second practice scheduled to start on Friday in Melbourne.
According to Philip Duncan of the Press Association, 12 members of the McLaren team are in self-isolation, although they are not currently showing any symptoms of COVID-19.
The employee who tested positive for the coronavirus is said to have traveled from England and was informed of the diagnosis on Thursday night.
Per BBC Sport, F1 said they are "co-ordinating with the relevant authorities on the next steps" and that their "priority is the safety of the fans, the teams and all personnel at the race."
McLaren's decision comes after defending world champion Lewis Hamilton was critical of the organisers for not postponing the race.
"It's a concern I think for the people here—it's quite a big circus that's come here and it's definitely concerning for me," Hamilton said, per Giles Richards of the Guardian. "Cash is king. I can't add much more to it. I don't feel like I should shy away from my opinion."
In 2019, an estimated 324,100 fans attended Albert Park in Melbourne for the Grand Prix.
Formula One legend Fernando Alonso has announced he will be retiring from the sport at the end of the current season.
Sky Sports News reported the former double world champion will leave McLaren after the final race of the campaign at Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on November 25.
The Spaniard is regarded as one of the greatest drivers of his generation, but he has struggled for a place on the podium as his team develops their car.
Alonso recently won the 24 Hours of LeMans race and participated in the IndyCar series' Indy 500 in 2017. His departure will now open new opportunities for him in motorsports.
The driver won consecutive world championships in Formula One in 2005 and 2006 for Renault, but he was unable to repeat the feat after four years with Ferrari.
Alonso thanked his fans around the world on Twitter:
Formula One will be poorer for Alonso's exit, but the lack of a competitive drive has seen him maligned over the years. Alonso currently lies ninth in this year's title race, accumulating only 44 points from 12 races. The closest he has come to a top-three podium spot is at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, where he finished fifth.
The 37-year-old remains a superb driver and he's likely to find fresh success in other disciplines.
McLaren's boardroom may be in turmoil, with the team announcing the ouster of Ron Dennis as chief executive, but their on-track results, while not near McLaren's historical levels, are starting to show promise.
Glancing down the Formula One drivers' standings, the most surprising thing isn't Nico Rosberg leading Lewis Hamilton in the title race, nor is it Daniel Ricciardo ahead of pre-season championship hopeful Sebastian Vettel. No, the most surprising result with one race remaining in the 2016 season is McLaren's Fernando Alonso leading Williams' Felipe Massa.
That's Alonso, driving a McLaren with a Honda engine that struggled to finish a race last year—13 retirements and two races where a car did not even make it to the starting grid—let alone finish one in the top 10, leading Massa, in a Williams with a Mercedes engine that has powered its factory team to three straight world championships.
Why is that so significant, you might be wondering?
Well, for one, it reminds us of just how damn good a driver Alonso is. He has made more headlines in the past two years for radio rants, lawn-chair sunbathing and fake podium celebrations than for his results on the track, but the two-time world champion is still one of the best drivers in the world.
The Spaniard has outscored Jenson Button, his team-mate and another former world champ, 53 to 21 this year.
More importantly, though, Alonso's lead over Massa (even if it is just two points) reminds us that McLaren made the right decision in ditching Mercedes engines and bringing Honda back into F1.
With the complexity of the new hybrid, V6 engines introduced in 2014, engine customers—as McLaren was with Mercedes—were always going to be at a disadvantage. History demonstrates that teams who manufacture their own engines usually dominate after a change in engine regulations.
With the ability to build their engine and chassis in unison, Mercedes have achieved a significant advantage (their engine is also simply better) over the customer teams waiting for Ferrari and Renault or Mercedes to provide their latest engine to be integrated into a chassis that is already moving along in the design process.
McLaren don't actually build their own engines, but they are Honda's sole customer, which confers most of the same benefits.
"No grand prix team is going to win a world championship in the future unless it is the dominant recipient of an engine manufacturer’s efforts," Dennis said back in 2014 as McLaren were preparing to make the jump from Mercedes to Honda, per Sky Sports' Pete Gill.
Despite the boardroom drama surrounding Dennis, who built McLaren into an F1 powerhouse, the McLaren-Williams dichotomy is proving him correct. While McLaren are slowly improving, Williams are headed in the opposite direction.
In 2014 and 2015, Williams finished third in the constructors' championship, scoring 13 podium finishes and occasionally challenging for race wins. McLaren were fifth in 2014, with Merc engines, before slipping to ninth last season, scoring just 27 points.
Now, Williams have slipped to fifth in the championship, while McLaren have improved significantly and are sitting just one spot behind Williams. The points gap is still large (136 to 75), but the trend line for McLaren looks much more promising.
In the last six races, a McLaren has finished ahead of a Williams three times—something that happened three times all of last year.
In qualifying this season, Alonso and Button have combined for 11 Q3 appearances, and their average qualifying positions are 12.68 and 13.1, respectively, according to F1Fanatic's statistics.
Last year, neither McLaren made it to Q3 and were more likely to be eliminated in Q1 than get to the second round. Alonso's average qualifying position was 15.67 and Button's was 15.95.
Of course, the major overhaul of the technical regulations for 2017 have the potential to derail McLaren's progress, but it is also an opportunity for the team to take a big leap forward. Working hand-in-hand with Honda, McLaren will certainly be better-positioned than Williams and Force India—the two teams directly ahead of them in the constructors' standings.
Before the 2016 season began, Autosport's Ian Parkes wrote of McLaren:
The fact its relationship with Honda, as well as the Japanese manufacturer's power unit, is still so immature, means any kind of progress this season must be viewed as a success.
It is too much to expect a title tilt or race wins, but if there was some semblance of evolution with regard to the reliability and performance of the package then that is a step in the right direction.
That progress is certainly there, although it's unlikely anyone within the walls of the team's Woking, England, facility would label the season a success—see Dennis' current employment status for the shareholders' views of the team's direction.
But there is reason for hope. Perhaps a change at the top will give the team a renewed impetus, rather than chasing past glories. Even without Dennis, the management team is still full of capable people like Eric Boullier and Jost Capito.
Meanwhile, young hotshot Stoffel Vandoorne is set to replace the underwhelming Button alongside Alonso next year, which should give the team another boost.
Williams and Force India are certainly in the better-funded McLaren's sights for 2017. After that? Well, just look at the trophy cabinets at the McLaren Technology Centre for an idea of what is possible.
It has been a long journey, and McLaren are certainly not at the finish line, but there is finally some cause for hope in Woking.
Matthew Walthert is an F1 columnist for Bleacher Report UK. He has also written for VICE, FourFourTwo and the Globe and Mail.
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McLaren have a recent history of chewing up and spitting out young Formula One drivers. With 24-year-old rookie Stoffel Vandoorne taking over Jenson Button's race seat in 2017, will the results be any different for the young Belgian than for Sergio Perez or Kevin Magnussen?
Back in 2012, Perez came this close to winning a wet Malaysian Grand Prix, just his 19th F1 race. Ultimately, the then-22-year-old settled for second in Malaysia and scored two other podium finishes in Canada and Italy. In September, McLaren named him as their replacement for Lewis Hamilton, who was leaving for Mercedes.
Unfortunately for Perez, his arrival coincided with a downturn in McLaren's form and (to that point) one of the worst season's in the team's history. While Button and Hamilton combined for seven wins and 13 podiums in 2012, the closest the team got to the podium in 2013 was Button's fourth place at the season-ending race in Brazil. He finished 20 seconds behind third-place man Fernando Alonso.
By the end of the year, Perez was out of a drive. It appeared he was taking the fall for McLaren's failure to design a competitive car, although then-team principal Martin Whitmarsh denied that was the case.
In an interview with the official F1 website, he said McLaren opted to replace Perez with Magnussen because a deal fell through to place the Dane in a race seat at another team. Magnussen had just won the Formula Renault 3.5 title and, according to Whitmarsh, was such an extraordinary talent that he could not be kept out of F1 any longer.
Less than 12 months later, after scoring McLaren's best result in two years—second in his F1 debut in Australia—that extraordinary talent was pushed aside after a single season to make way for the second coming of Alonso.
After a year as McLaren's reserve driver, he received an email from McLaren CEO Ron Dennis telling him he was out of the team.
Perez's Mexican millions provided a soft cushion for his landing at Force India in 2014. In the three seasons since he was swept aside, Perez has scored four podiums, compared to McLaren's two.
Magnussen spent 2015 as McLaren's reserve driver before finding a race seat at Renault this year, where he has outshone 2014 GP2 champion Jolyon Palmer.
With that recent track record for young drivers, why should we expect any different for Vandoorne?
For one thing, Vandoorne is older than either Perez or Magnussen were when they arrived at McLaren. The Belgian will turn 25 next year, possibly on the day of the season-opening grand prix. Perez was 23 when he made his McLaren debut and Magnussen was just 21.
In an era where a 17-year-old can race in F1, that may not seem like a huge difference, but there is a lot of room for development and personal growth in the four years between the ages of 21 and 25.
More importantly, though, Vandoorne spent those extra years gaining experience (and piling up strong results) in some of F1's top feeder series.
Perez arrived in F1 with just one big result in a top-level junior series: second place in the 2010 GP2 season. Of course, he also had two years of F1 seasoning with Sauber before he was thrown into the McLaren mix. Still, after Perez's axing, Sky Sports' Mark Hughes wrote that McLaren felt they had not properly vetted the Mexican before signing him.
Magnussen raced two years in Formula Renault 3.5, winning the title in 2013, which spurred McLaren to move him up to F1. He also finished second in the British Formula Three championship back in 2011.
Vandoorne, meanwhile, finished second to Magnussen in his title-winning Formula Renault season and then moved on to GP2 for two seasons. He finished second in 2014 and won the title last year in a dominant performance.
This year, alongside his duties as McLaren reserve driver, he sits fifth in the highly regarded Japanese Super Formula. And let's not forget Vandoorne's memorable F1 cameo, subbing for an injured Alonso at the Bahrain Grand Prix, where he scored McLaren's first point of the year.
As an aside, Vandoorne is closer in the drivers' standings to Button (16 points down) than Button is to Alonso (19 points behind).
But perhaps the most important sign that Vandoorne's McLaren tenure will turn out differently than his two young predecessors is the performance of the team itself.
Both Perez and Magnussen were hamstrung by underwhelming McLaren cars and can, to some extent, be viewed as scapegoats for the team's failures. Now, Button and Alonso have endured the difficult years of the renewed McLaren-Honda partnership, but there are definite signs of progress.
At the Singapore Grand Prix, Alonso said he momentarily dreamt of a podium finish following his fantastic start, per Autosport's Matt Beer—something that was nothing more than a joke a year ago.
With significant changes coming to the technical regulations for 2017, McLaren will have an opportunity to leap forward (of course, there is also the possibility they will fall further behind) and close the remaining gap to the front-runners.
While it might have been ideal for Vandoorne to have a season or two of development at a smaller F1 team, McLaren's sole-supplier deal with Honda does not leave them with the same leverage the other engine suppliers have when trying to place their drivers at other teams.
McLaren racing director Eric Boullier recently said, "He doesn't have the experience of these guys, but he will grow up beating them," per ESPN F1's Nate Saunders. Of course, first he will need McLaren to provide him with at least a moderately competitive car.
Back in that 2013 interview about the Perez-for-Magnussen swap, Whitmarsh already identified Vandoorne as a future F1 talent. Now, the time has come for him to fulfill that potential.
He is better-positioned than either Perez or Magnussen were to do it at McLaren.
Matthew Walthert is an F1 columnist for Bleacher Report UK. He has also written for VICE, FourFourTwo and the Globe and Mail. Follow him on Twitter:
Jenson Button finished a lapped 14th in the 2016 season-opening Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park, but far more important for him was the result on the other side of the McLaren-Honda garage.
Fernando Alonso's collision with the Haas of Esteban Gutierrez on Lap 17, which saw the Spaniard slam into the outside wall of Turn 3 before rolling repeatedly in the gravel trap, had ensured the second year of the renewed partnership had got off to a spectacular, if not exactly successful, start.
Despite the sheer violence of the crash—Alonso experienced "a peak impact force of 46G" having glanced Gutierrez's rear-left wheel at 305 kilometres per hour, per motorsport.com's Jonathan Noble—the two-time world champion was relatively unharmed in the incident.
But as he clambered out of his crumpled car, which was upturned against the crash barrier, hobbled away from the wreckage and paused to rest his hands on the grass-stained knees of his race overalls, it soon became evident all was not well.
And that McLaren might finally have the excuse—or rather, the opportunity—they had been looking for.
As reported by BBC Sport's Andrew Benson, the team had regarded Stoffel Vandoorne as a future race driver and potential world champion since he was first confirmed as McLaren's reserve driver at the beginning of 2014.
His title-winning GP2 season in 2015, when he became the most dominant champion of a series once conquered by drivers of the calibre of Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean, had only crystallised that impression.
So when Alonso told an FIA press conference ahead of the next race in Bahrain how "a small pneumothorax on the lung" and "some rib fractures" would prevent him from competing, there was no need for McLaren to hurriedly sign a random journeyman on a short-term contract as, for instance, Lotus did in late 2013.
For the team already had a very capable, in-house, ready-made replacement.
So late was the decision to rule out Alonso, though, that Vandoorne entered the Bahrain GP weekend fighting a losing battle—even by the normal standards of stand-in drivers.
Having arrived in Sakhir on an overnight flight from Tokyo, per the official F1 website, Vandoorne had just hours to prepare for a practice session behind the wheel of a car he had never driven at a circuit that—with several long straights—was set to expose McLaren's major weaknesses.
Yet in this seemingly no-win situation, Vandoorne managed to survive the weekend with his reputation even further enhanced.
After beating Button by two positions in qualifying, he went on to produce an assured performance in his first grand prix, evading the chaos of the opening two laps, sparring with Sergio Perez and ultimately finishing 10th.
And even had Button finished in the top six—a result he felt was possible prior to a race-ending engine issue, as he told the team's official website—it would have paled into insignificance alongside the achievement of Vandoorne, the latest unflustered youngster to score a point on his Formula One debut.
Although that race was hardly a direct shootout between Vandoorne and Button for a 2017 seat, it was undoubtedly the moment the latter ensured he could no longer be overlooked—having been denied a seamless graduation to F1 at the end of '15.
Indeed, the 24-year-old—with no more time to waste in an era when teenagers have arrived on the grid and immediately excelled—seemed well aware his position had been strengthened as a result of his performance at Sakhir.
Having previously sworn allegiance to McLaren, Vandoorne warned he would happily explore "other options" if the team were unable to give him what he wanted, per motorsport.com's Valentin Khorounzhiy and Jamie Klein, placing pressure on the management.
Even since Bahrain, McLaren had frequently insisted no decision regarding their lineup would be made until September—around the time their contractual option on Vandoorne was set to expire, according to motorsport.com's Noble and Jacobo Vega.
Per the same source, racing director Eric Boullier outlined how discussions over their plans risked distracting the drivers and the team, who had grown tired of answering relentless questions surrounding the future of Button, arguably the most popular driver in modern F1, for two years.
But the delay was also down to the fact that when McLaren eventually came to make the decision, it was a remarkably quick and simple one—as evidenced by the confirmation of their "innovative three-driver strategy" on September 3.
Button's determination to cling on to F1 by accepting an ambassadorial role with McLaren, rather than acknowledging the time had come to retire, had the unfortunate effect of robbing the attention from Vandoorne when the announcement was made over the Italian GP weekend.
Yet the muted response to the Belgian's move to a race seat was a reflection of both the man himself—quiet, calm and controlled—and just how inevitable his promotion was.
After giving Vandoorne a taste of F1 in Bahrain, McLaren simply couldn't hold him back any longer.
Make no mistake, Felipe Massa knew the moment—the day he would announce his retirement from Formula One—was coming.
As long ago as last November, he had hinted the 2016 season could potentially be his last, telling Brazil's UOL Esporte (h/t ESPN F1's Nate Saunders) he would only continue if he had a "competitive" car in a team who made him feel "loved."
The competitive element faded away at a very early stage of the year as Massa, the only driver to score points in each of the opening six races, scored just one in the next six.
And as that barren run continued—and Williams became increasingly aggressive in their pursuit of McLaren-Honda's Jenson Button and Force India driver Sergio Perez—it was obvious Massa was no longer held in such high regard by his team.
It was, at last, time to go.
But it didn't matter how much Massa prepared himself, how accepting he was of his retirement or how often he visualised the day itself and what was to come.
Because it wasn't until he appeared in the busy Williams hospitality unit ahead of last weekend's Italian Grand Prix, with his family sat on the front row, that he knew exactly how it would feel to walk away from the sport that had become his life.
"So, yeah, erm...what should I say?" he laughed anxiously at the beginning of the televised press conference with all those eyes fixed on him. "I think I'm more nervous now than all my race starts in Formula One, I would say.
"So after 27 years of my career, since I started in the go-kart and I was eight years old, 15 years in Formula One, so...this will be my last season in Formula One."
As with all these things, Massa found a way to get it over and done with and—as he wrote in his Motorsport.com column—he went on to enjoy "some very beautiful moments" throughout the weekend as his supporters, colleagues and fellow drivers submitted their tributes.
Among those were Felipe Nasr, the only other Brazilian on the grid, who told Autosport (h/t Eurosport) how Massa has become "a real friend" since his time at Williams in 2014, and Kimi Raikkonen, who told an FIA press conference it was "a big shame" his former Ferrari team-mate—"a very nice guy"—was leaving.
But by far the most compelling comment came from Button, who told the same source Massa had made "a brave decision."
The right decision? For sure. A well-timed decision? No doubt.
But brave?
After two years of fielding endless questions regarding his own future, this was the biggest hint that Button would also be walking away at the end of 2016, and, sure enough, his exit was confirmed little more than 24 hours later—but in a way nobody could have envisaged.
In the latest demonstration of how muddled McLaren have become, the team announced "an innovative three-driver strategy" for 2017 and '18, which will see Button effectively swap places with reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne, who has finally been rewarded with a race seat alongside Fernando Alonso.
Despite chairman Ron Dennis' insistence, per Autosport (h/t Eurosport), that the deal is "not designed to be an insurance policy on anything," it has been widely interpreted as a ploy to ensure McLaren have an in-house replacement available should Alonso follow through on his threat to quit F1 at the end of next season.
But although it will keep McLaren's options open, the overcomplicated arrangement will deny Button the farewell he deserves.
Even since the whispers of his exit first gathered pace in mid-to-late 2014, there have been great gasps of horror whenever his name has been mentioned in the same sentence as the word "retirement," as if F1 itself knows losing a figure of Button's stature would signify the end of an era.
Indeed, the phenomenon that is people power—the outpouring of support and the sheer affection shown to Button as his career hung in the balance—played an instrumental role in McLaren's eventual decision to keep him at the close of that season.
But Button's healthy enthusiasm and determination to remain in F1 appear to have become an outright fear of bidding farewell.
He seems to be reluctant to confront the dreaded R-word, to establish a sense of closure by making the announcement and dealing with the emotions and reflections that come with it.
In that sense, his revised deal with McLaren is—as he told Sky Sports at Monza—"the perfect idea" for him, for it will not only offer him to the chance to return to racing if the opportunity arises but will also allow Button to manage his departure exactly how he wants.
Next season, to all intents and purposes, will be a period of detachment as Button gradually disappears from the sport's consciousness and F1 realises it can move on without him. So when it becomes obvious he won't be coming back, he won't need to say so.
But while Massa will drive happily into the sunset, marking the end of this chapter of his life, in the season-ending Abu Dhabi GP in November, Button will awkwardly climb out of the cockpit at the end of the race knowing he may or may not be back behind the wheel in 2018.
As he told Sky Sports, Button will keep "current" during his year of "not retiring" in 2017.
He will hold an ambassadorial role with McLaren. He will spend time in the simulator, maintain his fitness and attend selected races with the team, presumably filling a similar role to that adopted by Alonso when he was ruled out of this year's Bahrain GP through injury.
And who knows?
He may even sample the revolutionary cars he was so excited about driving in a one-off test appearance, joining Alonso and Vandoorne in providing feedback and establishing a clear development path for the new MP4-32.
Yet, unless Alonso decides the new regulations are not to his liking—and even then, who would bet against McLaren signing a more long-term replacement?—this will be the last we see of Button as a full-time F1 driver as one of the most popular figures of the modern era just fades away.
Button once wanted to stay in F1 because he loved it; now he wants to stay because he can't bring himself to say goodbye.
