Making the case for Daniel Ricciardo to replace Mark Webber at Red Bull in 2014

While Kimi Raikkonen remains the odds-on favourite to replace Mark Webber at Red Bull in 2014, the case for Daniel Ricciardo to partner Sebastian Vettel has considerable merit...

He'll do wonders for Red Bull's image
Despite - or, more likely, because of - their success, Red Bull are a strangely unpopular team; any brave fan at a grand prix bedecked in Red Bull colours would be a study in solitude. Hiring Ricciardo wouldn't transform attitudes overnight, but his personable, engaging manner would be far more appealing to the public than Vettel's court-jester act or Webber's grittiness has proved to be. The wonderfully-personable Ricciardo is impossible not to like. Best of all, he would be considered synonymous with Red Bull's image whereas a central tenant of Raikkonen's popularity is that he is seen as a lone wolf. Red Bull need their driver programme to work
After the brutally-emphatic ousting of Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari at the end of 2011, can Red Bull afford the bad publicity of another failed class? The next crop of rising talent may be minded to take their fledgling talents elsewhere if they are not convinced that the Red Bull/Toro Rosso driver programme isn't a dead-end street. The ongoing success of their famous graduate, a chap by the name of Vettel, provides some leeway, but questions will have to be asked about the point of Red Bull's tie-up with Toro Rosso, and their young driver programme as a whole, if Ricciardo is denied promotion by the oldest man on the 2014 grid. He'll give a better interview
And from our myopic perspective, these things matter! PG