The next five drivers most likely to leave F1 after Daniel Ricciardo axe

After F1 bid a fond farewell to Daniel Ricciardo in Singapore, which drivers will follow the former Red Bull driver out of the exit door over the coming years?

For the purposes of keeping this interesting, let’s assume that Zhou Guanyu and Kevin Magnussen, two other drivers almost certain to be left without a seat for F1 2025, are already toast…

Sergio Perez, Fernando Alonso among the next drivers to leave F1?

Sergio Perez

Sergio Perez may have laughed off those annual rumours that he was planning to announce his retirement at his home race in Mexico, but who’s to say he will have much say in the matter?

He has already come close – exceptionally so – to losing his Red Bull seat once in F1 2024, with PlanetF1.com revealing over the summer that the team had a change of heart in the 24 hours following the Belgian Grand Prix (below).

The uncertainty surrounding his future at Spa is believed to have centred around a clause in the two-year contract extension he signed in June, which gave Red Bull the freedom to replace him during the summer break as he had fallen more than 100 points behind team-mate Max Verstappen.

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With his points deficit to Verstappen now at 187 (!), and Perez’s revised deal widely thought to contain stricter performance demands, it would come as some surprise if a similar mechanism does not exist to allow Red Bull to drop him over the winter.

Might that be why VCARB stopped short of confirming Liam Lawson for F1 2025 when the team announced that he will replace Ricciardo for the rest of this year?

Why wait? The only plausible explanation is that a strong end to this season could see Lawson emerge as a serious alternative to Perez for next year.

Perez may not choose to walk away, but the end of his F1 career could be closer than he thinks…

Yuki Tsunoda

Yuki Tsunoda has enjoyed the best days of his career in F1 2024.

But far from being a springboard to bigger and better things, what if this year ends up being as good as it’s ever going to get?

Certainly, it will be fascinating to observe how just long – if at all – Red Bull stick with Tsunoda once the (presumably contractual) obligation to field him ceases to apply at the end of F1 2025 when the team’s partnership with Honda concludes.

For some time it seemed Tsunoda would simply follow Honda over to Aston Martin once the Red Bull deal was done.

Yet the staying power of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll counts against him even before you realise that he simply doesn’t fit the profile for Lawrence Stroll, who tends to target multiple World Champions of a certain vintage.

Ever get the feeling that your face just doesn’t fit?

Unless he takes control of his own destiny or gets picked up by another midfield team – Audi? Haas? Alpine? – pretty soon, Tsunoda’s medium/long-term future could be as a reserve driver at best.

Valtteri Bottas

What if Valtteri Bottas is a better driver now than during his race-winning Mercedes days, just without the car to show it?

For what it’s worth, the man himself is convinced that he is. Well he would say that, you’d argue, but his dominance over Zhou in qualifying in F1 2024 (17-1 up at the time of writing) would suggest so too.

But what Bottas says, and what Bottas does, is almost irrelevant at this point. Why?

Because when people decide that you’re too old, too uninspiring and only in it for the money these days, that perception is nearly impossible to shake off.

Recent reports have indicated that Bottas has signed a new one-year contract with Sauber for F1 2025, which, if true, would represent a compromise on his previous public demands of a multi-year deal.

And you can guarantee that Audi will be on the lookout for something fresh and exciting for F1 2026, potentially even resulting in a scenario where Bottas’s eventual replacement will be breathing down his neck, in true Liam Lawson-style, throughout next season as Sauber’s reserve driver.

Jack Doohan

Jack Doohan has been promoted to a permanent seat by Alpine for F1 2025, yet his signing hardly received a glowing endorsement in August when Flavio Briatore declared that the identity of Pierre Gasly’s team-mate “makes no difference.”

Flavio’s view? It doesn’t really matter who drives the car when the car itself isn’t up to much.

Only when it is capable of scoring regular points, podiums and victories is a leading driver necessary to extract the last little percentage points of performance.

So let’s assume that after sinking to rock bottom in F1 2024, Team Enstone tentatively re-emerge next season as Oliver Oakes brings a little bit of respectability back to the place.

And with a Mercedes customer engine expected to be on the way for the new regulations in F1 2026, that second Alpine seat alongside Gasly will suddenly become very attractive to quite a wide selection of established drivers.

If there is any hint that Doohan is not capable of matching Gasly and bringing those crucial percentage points to Alpine next year, the team will likely not hesitate to search for an upgrade for F1 2026.

Fernando Alonso

At long last, Fernando Alonso has Adrian Newey on his side – but will he stick around for long enough to taste the fruits of Newey’s labour?

That is the overhanging – and potentially very awkward – question ahead of F1’s 2026 rules revolution.

Alonso made it abundantly clear during Red Bull’s first dominant period that his true opposition was Newey and not Sebastian Vettel, whom he considered to be a lesser driver.

And now he finally has access to Newey’s genius, the stage is set for Alonso to harness the immense power of Adrian and Aston combined and finally claim that third F1 title two decades after his last.

But! Not so fast.

Alonso has defied the sands of time to date, yet teams across sport tend to get a little triggerfingery (the technical term) when their top stars reach a certain age and suddenly develop an obsession with planning for the future, almost willing to see the signs of decline and sometimes inventing excuses to turn to the next generation.

Fernando – set to turn 45 during F1 2026, an unprecedented age for a grand prix driver in the modern era – has already had a brush with this phenomenon once before at Alpine, who planned to shuffle him off into retirement to quicken Oscar Piastri’s rise and only succeeded in losing both.

What will happen, for instance, if Max Verstappen really does become available over the next 12 months?

Bet your bottom dollar that Lawrence Stroll will bulldoze his way to the front of the queue, just as he did the moment the first little whispers came through that Newey was no longer content at Red Bull.

There is a parallel waiting to be drawn here with Ross Brawn, who despite all they had achieved together had no trouble elbowing Michael Schumacher into retirement in 2012 when Lewis Hamilton wanted to leave McLaren.

Nothing personal, Michael: it’s just business. You understand, don’t you?

In other words, if Stroll is determined to reunite Red Bull’s holy trinity of Honda, Newey and Verstappen for F1 2026, it won’t be Lance forced to make way…

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