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Wednesday 12 July 2023 15:10, UK
Daniel Ricciardo delivering "amazing" performances on his return to Formula 1 could leave Sergio Perez worried over the safety of his seat with Red Bull, Ted Kravitz has told the Sky Sports F1 Podcast.
Red Bull confirmed on Tuesday they have loaned out Ricciardo - from his role as third driver behind Perez and Max Verstappen - to junior team AlphaTauri for the remainder of the 2023 season.
Ricciardo replaces Nyck de Vries, who had his rookie season ruthlessly cut short by the Red Bull hierarchy after disappointing over the opening 10 races of the year.
Ahead of his move to AlphaTauri being confirmed, Ricciardo had been open about his goal being to regain a seat at Red Bull, where he won seven races between 2014 and 2018.
Perez, who's contracted to Red Bull until the end of the 2024, has allowed an early-season challenge to Verstappen to fade in dramatic fashion amid a run of five Grands Prix without reaching the final part of qualifying.
"I think it makes Sergio Perez check the terms of his contract to see if it's as leaky as Nick de Vries' contract with Red Bull obviously was," Kravitz told the latest edition of the Sky Sports F1 Podcast, which you can listen to in the player above.
"If he is amazing, then Checo will be pretty worried actually.
"Even though Checo brings a lot of sponsorship and there are a lot of merchandise opportunities, the selling of Red Bull stuff in Mexico to Mexican fans… he may well be worried if Red Bull decide to go the Ricciardo way If he turns out to be the man who turns AlphaTauri around."
Kravitz has also warned Ricciardo's move could backfire, with a failure to outperform his new team-mate Yuki Tsunoda potentially spelling the end of the 34-year-old's F1 career.
Ricciardo spent two years each with Renault and McLaren after leaving Red Bull, and had his contract with the latter cut a year short after being comprehensively outperformed by team-mate Lando Norris.
"It's a really tricky one because this whole plan of coming back could be scuppered by being no quicker than Yuki Tsunoda in a not good AlphaTauri," Kravitz said.
"But certainly, if he is, and he can score points on debut at AlphaTauri and is kind of the driver who can transform a car - this will be a good deciding value of how much is car and how much is driver won't it? This will give us an idea of that age-old question."
The decision to send Ricciardo to AlphaTauri came after he got the opportunity on Tuesday to drive Red Bull's dominant RB19 for the first time.
The Australian got in the cockpit of the car - which has won all 10 races this season - at Silverstone for a tyre test, and delivered times which Red Bull team principal Christian Horner described as "extremely competitive".
Kravitz has warned Ricciardo's performance in a field-leading car may not guarantee strong performances for AlphaTauri, who are currently bottom of the constructors' standings.
"It's the best car by a country mile in Formula 1, and so maybe Daniel just couldn't deal with the McLaren and its idiosyncrasies that we know it still really has.
"So when they saw that what Daniel could do in the best car on the grid, they were sufficiently impressed to actually put him in.
"Now this is all well and good basing it on the Red Bull RB 19, which is the class of the field. He's not driving that car, he's driving, probably one of the slowest cars on the grid, if not the slowest, which is the AlphaTauri.
"The AlphaTauri had some upgrades to Silverstone and they finished further down than they normally do with a non-upgraded car, so this is not a great AlphaTauri, it's fair to say."
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Watch Daniel Ricciardo's return to the Formula 1 grid at the Hungarian Grand Prix from July 21-23, with every session live on Sky Sports F1.
