Formula One’s Alpha Tauri team have been forced into an embarrassing backflip after posting a photo of new recruit Daniel Ricciardo that featured a glaring error. The Aussie joined the outfit on July 11 after spending the first 11 races of the year as a reserve driver for Red Bull and is due to make his debut for them at this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
But when Alpha Tauri posted an official photo of Ricciardo in his new racing gear to social media on Monday, fans pointed out that they it was an image of the 34-year-old’s head Photoshopped onto the body of the driver he replaced, Nyck De Vries. The team reacted by deleting the photo just hours after it went up and replacing it with a non-altered image of the Aussie in their colours.
Alpha Tauri’s very public stuff-up comes after veteran F1 pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz questioned the Perth-born driver’s mindset and warned he could find life very difficult with the struggling team. ‘It’s all well and good to point to [Daniel’s] testing times in the Red Bull RB19, which is the class car of the field, but the reality is Ricciardo’s not driving that car,’ Kravitz said on the Sky Sports F1 podcast.
‘He’s driving probably one of the slowest cars on the grid, if not the slowest, which is the AlphaTauri. ‘My only question is, not that they shouldn’t have replaced Nyck de Vries – clearly it wasn’t working … the surprise is why Daniel Ricciardo would want to go into that car and a car that is worse than the McLaren he left last year, probably.’
Kravitz was also left puzzled after Ricciardo declared ‘I am stoked to be back on track with the Red Bull family’ in the press release announcing his move. ‘That quote, I thought was odd. He can’t even bring himself to say Alpha Tauri,’ he said.
‘If you’re competing in a sport where you’re trying to be the best at something, the best in the world at something, obviously you need full confidence and belief. ‘When that starts to diminish a bit, your enjoyment drops a bit as well. There’s a lot of factors. ‘Getting back to Red Bull, just the reception I had walking back into that team was in a positive way a little bit overwhelming.’
‘There might be some short-term pain [for Ricciardo] if he can’t do any better than de Vries.’ Last Saturday Ricciardo admitted he had to ‘fall back in love with Formula One’ after enduring two shocking seasons at McLaren and his eight-month break from racing. ‘Falling out of love with it took a hit on my confidence,’ he said.
