Brown: Everyone has an opinion but they don’t all have facts

Adding insult to Ricciardo's injury was the fact that McLaren paid him to leave the team a year earlier, out of a drive and relegated to Red Bull reserve. Full circle for the 34-year-old Australian, who began his F1 journey thanks to RBR backing and guidance.

By 2018, Max Verstappen had done to Ricciardo what the Big Smiling Aussie did to Sebastian Vettel, five years earlier at Red Bull. Rather than digging into the team that cherished and respected him, to take on the Verstappen challenge, surprising all Dan followed the dollars to Renault led by Cyril Abiteboul, reportedly earning $42-Million during his two seasons with the French outfit.

That big bucks spell at Renault yielded little in terms of results. Nevertheless, McLaren believed. They signed him (on a reported $15-Million per-year deal) in 2021. Expectations were very high, but it only got worse for Dan despite a single fortuitous GP win at Monza that year, his last in the top flight and Brown's first as an F1 boss.

Since then Ricciardo simply never found the form he displayed at Red Bull up until he departed Milton Keynes at the end of 2018.

During the spell at McLaren, teammate Lando Norris, a benchmark of a young F1 generation of drivers, simply destroyed Ricciardo in the two years they shared a garage.

Brown related the story in a Track Limits podcast: “Breaking up with Daniel was very difficult. You know, love Daniel. Great guy. It just didn’t work out but that wasn’t the master plan in the end. So it was a very difficult situation.

"Something like that is very public and then everyone has their opinions, and 99% of them don’t actually know what’s going on behind the scenes. So to get accused of certain behaviour… where they’re just not informed, and that’s the nature of the beast when you’re in the spotlight.

"Everyone has an opinion, but they don’t all have the facts, so that was very difficult," declared Brown, referring to the firing of Ricciardo and the wily swoop on highly-hyped Piastri that deserves an Oscar for execution and making Alpine look like fools.

Adding the cherry to Brown's cake was the fact that Piastri lived up to that pre-arrival hype, delivering beyond expectations as one of the most outstanding rookies to break into F1 in recent memory. Norris was challenged, and forced to raise his game to deliver as well as he did this season.

Asked what difference Piastri made to Norris, Brown ventured: “I don’t necessarily think he brings something different, Lando hadn’t been challenged by his teammate the last couple of years on a regular basis.

“But Oscar is keeping Lando on his toes. The benefit is they like a very similar race car, so we’re getting consistent feedback from the two. The last thing you want to do is have two drivers: one says they have understeer, and the other says they have oversteer... Then what do you do?

“We’re benefiting from having two very technical and very fast drivers. We had an experienced one and a rookie, it’s just that our experienced guy happens to be pretty young," added Brown, referencing 24-year-old Norris. Piastri is 22.

Despite the awkward divorce from Ricciardo, Brown wishes his former driver well for more than one reason: “On a side note, great to see Daniel doing so well at AlphaTauri because he’s a great, great guy, won me my first race!"