Brown: We’ve had to write a big cheque

The first Silly Season domino to topple was Sebastian Vettel announcing his retirement at the end of this season, which tipped ever-young Fernando Alonso to Aston Martin, which somehow toppled over Oscar Piastri, who defied logic to take up with McLaren which then toppled the final domino for now - Danny Ricc - and leaving Alpine with a seat no one seems to want!

As it stands, how much money changed hands between McLaren and their departing driver is not known but one could assume Ricciardo's 2023 salary of $25-million (or so) would have to be covered.

Speaking on the latest High-Performance podcast, McLaren CEO Zak Brown admitted a lot of money made the move happen: “We’ve had to end the relationship early. We’ve had to write a big cheque, which is fine because that’s the deal that we cut.

"What I’ll do next time is maybe have some more performance protections for us and not just assume that a great driver’s going to always be great. I think that’s the one learning as more a contractual one, but it’s a big one.

“I think the only thing is from a business standpoint, we could have (thought about), ‘What if it doesn’t work?’ I think we went into it so excited and not really thinking of a downside scenario.

“But you also don’t know if you would have got those contractual protections. Sitting here now, I can say: I wish I had this in the contract, but who knows whether he would have agreed to it.

“But also he might have, because he might have been going: Well that’s never going to happen," explained Brown.

In retrospect, from the moment he stepped into a McLaren Ricciardo too often never found the sweetspot relative to his teammate Lando Norris in the sister car. Last year, it was understandable as it was all new for the 33-year-old Australian.

Monza was a great moment for him and the team. The victory, albeit fortuitous as Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton crashed, provided some hope that he would improve but performances since then, including this season have been largely disappointing.

But the new generation F1 cars put drivers new or old to the team on a level playing field from ground zero.

So what went wrong for Ricciardo at McLaren? Brown replied: “We’re not sure, he’s not sure. We’ve tried changing cars and offering to change people. It’s been two seasons, two different cars. We thought year one, maybe it just didn’t gel with the car.

"Year two, it’s a totally different car but we got to the point where our only strategy was hope, and hope’s not a great strategy. So it’s a great mystery.

“We saw in Monza it’s in there. The guy did not win eight grands prix by accident, we just weren’t able to unlock it together. And Lando’s driving great and getting the car to perform.

“So I don’t think there’s anything we would have done differently, or could have seen, or should have known," ventured Brown, who also revealed that a place in Indycar was bandied about to keep Dan within the McLaren family.

To date Ricciardo has won eight F1 races, Monaco last year his last and prior to that a streak of seven wins as a Red Bull driver, his last for them at Monaco in 2018.

After that he departed for Renault where he spent two years, first as Nico Hulkenberg's teammate in 2019 and the next year partnering Esteban Ocon who remains with the French team.

In fact, logic suggests Alpine (formerly Renault) would welcome back an experienced driver such as Ricciardo, who they know, despite losing out to highly hyped but unknown Oscar Piastri who intends to make McLaren his team.

However, how much damage Ricciardo has done to his F1 reputation and value remains to be seen, as he is keen to stay on the grid next year but the question remains: Who wants him?