Riccardo out at McLaren

[Willy]

https://www.pitpass.com/73373/Official-Ricciardo-to-leave-McLaren

No real surprise as he can't get the handle of the car like Lando has. Daniel is a big presence and funny friendly guy to have on the grid but its on-track results that keep your ass in the seat.
I have expected this for a while now.

[Jericoke]

it's tough when a driver just doesn't do as well as you'd hope.  After scaring Vettel out of Red Bull, I was sure that Ricciardo was going to win a championship or two.  I think Max really rattled him, and he never really recovered his mojo.

Hopefully he can find a place to become his old self, but I'd be surprised if he did.  Not sure what team is looking for a veteran driver right now.  (Haas might have an opening, but if they go Daniel/K-Mag, that's a kick in the teeth of trying to be a team that can develop a driver.  Alpine would be a good fit, but I doubt they're in a position to win next year, or else it would have been easier to keep Alonso.  Do they really want to tread water with Ricciardo AND Ocon instead of developing a younger driver?  I love Williams as much as anyone who watched racing for a while, but what would Daniel accomplish there besides making up numbers?)

[rmassart]

I never understood why he switched to Renault. I agree it looks like Max scared him off. Nevertheless it was a bad decision - switching from proven world champions to a team, that despite being best of the rest at the time, showed no signs of being able to make the leap to championship contenders. I guess the pay check certainly helped. And then he made a sideways step to McLaren when it was clear Renault are not getting any closer to the front.

Given that the top three teams were not interested in his services, I get the impression he's been making switches to the next best team in the hope of getting lucky and landing a championship contenders drive.  But his options have just dried up. He's 33 and has simply not shown enough speed in the last few years for anyone to give him a serious drive. It seems he'll be making up the numbers for the rest of his F1 career...

[Willy]

And the rest of his F1 career looks to be about 9 races long.