New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nHe came close on several occasions and was offered the chance to join a winning team in Mercedes following Nico Rosberg\u2019s retirement, according to Sky Sports journalist and presenter Rachel Brookes.<\/p>\n
In her new book Drive she revealed the German team were keen on Ricciardo, but he opted against the move to stay with Red Bull.<\/p>\n
Mercedes dominated without the Aussie as Lewis Hamilton won the championship in every year from 2017 to 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll be hard pushed to find a driver who admits to a poor decision, but did you know, for example, that Daniel Ricciardo had an offer to replace Nico Rosberg at Mercedes when Rosberg left the sport in a shock announcement at the end of 2016?,\u201d Brookes writes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, the Mercedes team that won in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. <\/p>\n
![\"Oscar](\"https:\/\/content.api.news\/v3\/images\/bin\/3140e61a884c1e66281f4d8c15809aee\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Ricciardo was tied into a contract with Red Bull at the time, we all know that contracts are just bits of paper if both sides agree to end them (for an inordinate amount of money, no doubt!).<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead, Ricciardo moved to Renault in 2019 and then McLaren in 2021, just before their resurgence.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Ricciardo accepted the contract he would have replaced the reigning champion, and had a platform to challenge Hamilton to become world champion himself.<\/p>\n
Instead Valtteri Bottas got the gig and finished second in the standings in 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n
He also won nine races for Mercedes – eclipsing the three Ricciardo won at Red Bull in that period.<\/p>\n
Read related topics:Daniel Ricciardo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Ricciardo had the chance to join Mercedes in 2017, a new book has revealed. The ex-Formula 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-684812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}