How Daniel Ricciardo's injury impacts Red Bull's F1 driver plans
- Posted by storm on Aug 27, 2023
Daniel Ricciardo’s only been back in F1 for a couple of grands prix, but now faces an uncertain number of races on the sidelines after having surgery on a hand injury.
Ricciardo suffered a broken metacarpal in his left hand in what initially looked like an innocuous crash in Friday practice at the Dutch Grand Prix. That’s because he didn’t let go of the steering wheel in time and was injured by the force that came through it when he hit the wall.
He travelled to Barcelona for further assessment and even had surgery from Xavier Mir, the Spanish surgeon who works out of Barcelona’s Hospital Universitari Dexeus. Mir has become the MotoGP paddock’s go-to expert for almost every upper limb surgery performed on riders in recent years.
It has significant repercussions in three obvious ways. It’s disrupted Ricciardo’s comeback and reduced the number of races he has to impress Red Bull; it’s relieved some pressure from Sergio Perez on a weekend that a senior Red Bull figure’s made some strange