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He's solid and consistent in bringing points home for the team and takes advantage of his opportunities. Sometimes he's blisteringly quick in qualifying and often produces very fine race pace. However, some believe that as early as this season (2017) that Max is outperforming Ricciardo when bad luck doesn't strike and this also includes one-lap pace, and Hamilton made him look utterly ordinary in Singapore in mixed conditions. By the same token, he's obliterated Vettel in a single season and has repeatedly shown the ability to pace his race well and finish on the podium. He has 5 race wins over the last 4 seasons vs Vettel's 7.

Which bracket does Ricciardo belong in? Is he firmly in the top bracket with the likes of Hamilton, Vettel and we still presume Alonso, or is he clearly below? I don't really have an opinion on this but what I will say is that he's absolutely capable of bringing home WDCs.

FWIW, Ricciardo drove the bulk of Singapore with a dud gearbox, and Bottas honestly couldn't get near him so the drive I thought was very very solid all things considered.

His racecraft is second to nobodies, obviously we know he can fight wheel to wheel with anyone and doesn't take a backward step. He has told RBR its 2018 or he's looking elsewhere, so clearly he rates himself highly enough to do warrant a WDC capable seat.

Will he win a WDC? Poor bloke has walked into Formula 1, with three of the best drivers the sport has ever seen and another driver who with a bit of luck probably goes into that bracket in time. He did walk into Red Bull though and summarily flatten Vettel as you said and he's not exactly on a go slow now even with a car that's clearly only 3rd best, so I'd suggest given the right equipment he can definitely carve himself a piece of history.

I would say he is probably slightly better than Vettel but not as good as Verstappen will end up. Winning championships depends on situation as much as anything else. He's certainly good enough to win WDC's.

I forgot to mention in the OP that Ricciardo is also an expert overtaker - clean, efficient and highly effective. His racecraft is very well balanced. He is sometimes caught napping at race starts.

It's an interesting question. He has spent his whole career in a situation where any time he gets a good result, he is praised heavily for it (and rightly so). Being in the 2nd or 3rd best car these last 3+ seasons, he has frequently been "best of the rest" (the best performer in a car that cannot realistically win the title). I think he is beyond the point where it's reasonable to wonder if he is really top shelf. He is and he has proven that.

With that being said, it's reasonable to wonder how well he would do in a situation where he is not classified as "the rest" but rather as an actual title contender. Would he handle the pressure well? Would he be consistent enough when a podium is not considered a great result but rather is just par for the course? Would he be able to win races when there's a lot riding on them? There have definitely been many drivers over the years who could excel from the position that Ricciardo has been in but not from the position that Vettel or Hamilton are in.

Personally, I refuse to either give him credit for doing well at that level nor to take anything away from him. He needs to get into that situation so that we have actual data to look at. Daniel needs to do this urgently. If Red Bull are still behind next year, a move to Ferrari or Mercedes for 2018 is essential IMO. He is not as young as Max and he needs to put himself in position to win a WDC before an even younger generation of drivers become the shiny new objects in the eyes of the top teams.

I think he's been the best driver of the turbo era so yeah, he's up there

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FA#14

He's very good. My gut feeling is that Ricciardo/Verstappen could very well be the best 2 drivers on the grid but until I see more from then I can't rate them ahead of Alonso, Hamilton and Vettel overall.

A driver that can stay out of trouble on the track is an unsung hero. Even if it is at the expense of a couple of points now and again, it more than comes out on top over a season. I think this is one of DR's strengths. I know Max has had DNF's due to unreliability and accidents, but I wonder how many accidents DR has avoided and we do not eve know about. He also seems good at driving a compromised car, as we saw last week.

This.

At the end of the day this season we can't get a proper comparison of the two RBR drivers because Max has spent far too many races with a dead car after a few laps or involved in collisions.

Still if they were both title contending each other I'm sure people will say it can't be used as an excuse (even though it can).

Both drivers are talented and when on form they have both been very close to each other.

Good point. Fans are always behind the guy who is the 'fastest' or the 'natural talent', but teams probably value a driver like Ricciardo as much as a guy with ultimate pace. In a midfield team he will be the guy who collects the all important points and in a top team he will be the guy who takes points off the opposition and helps the team win the WCC. It remains to be seen whether DR can overcome a Lewis or a Vettel (yeah he did but clearly Seb was not in a good place that year).

Either way I see Dan having a long career and earning himself a LOT of dosh, and maybe a WDC or two if he gets in the right car.

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Ricciardo is exceptionally good.

In 2014 he was still a rookie and walked all over the reigning 4 x champion in the same car.

In the 3 races where Mercedes didn't drive away, it was Ricciardo who was there to take the win. And the passes he made to get those wins were phenomenal.

Every time he starts from the back of the field (due to penalties) he streaks through the field with decisive but clean overtaking moves and ends up either on the podium or very close to it.

Verstappen has a raw speed which seems to edge Ricciardo (but only slightly), but as a whole package Ricciardo is as good as any driver in the field.

He will be hot property next year.

Eh... he was far from a rookie

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FA#14

Unless taking part in 50 Grand Prix's counts for rookie status?

If Red Bull are uncompetitive next year or are forced to switch to an uncompetitive Honda engine the next, Ricciardo will be off. He will hold all the driver market cards in 2019 because Verstappen will still be locked in for another year. I think he will be then off to Mercedes to be paired with Hamilton although of course there is always the ethnic Italian factor that might draw him and Ferrari together instead. So how good he is can be ascertained by the fact that both Kimi and Valteri only have one year deals as both teams have their future eye on him.

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He is extremely good. Some of his best qualities is his amazing racecraft and his patience, he is always positive and it's rare to not see him with that big smile.

He is let down by his somewhat poor wetweather skills and although I think he is a good qualifyer he isn't great.

I would put him a step above Vettel and a step below Hamilton.

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I would put him as #2 behind Alonso and before Vettel/Hamilton.

i describe him as a prost rather then senna. thats not derogatory. but most regard senna as having more ultimate pace then prost even though prost made devastating use of what he had.

He is clearly excellent. hes driven some superb races and made some great overtakes. now comes the but. hes got 5 wins and 1 pole. he aint done much yet. yes mainly thats his cars fault. but we havent seem him in a championship battle yet. he isnt as good as max in the wet and i would also be confident he is behind ham alo and vet in that regard. once max realises he needs to take the edge of his aggression in order to put a season together, lets see how he compares.

in conclusion hes a step down from the best for me but still good enough to win a champ, but its too early to put him any further up.

He's very very good. Mentally strong, quick over a lap, quick over a race, top race craft, reads strategy very well like we saw in Hungary 2014 and doesn't seem to have much weakness outside of wet weather driving but that's only in comparison to the other 4 big names rather than in general.

Big shame he's still waiting for a car to challenge for a title but that's F1 and your talent only gets you so far no matter how much talent you have.

Can easily be a WDC in the right car, could already have won a couple, and up until this season for me he was the most impressive in this turbo era but Max has stepped up and has overall impressed me more this year but Dan is still right there snapping at his heels so it's hardly a fall from grace or anything. Can easily turn it around over the last races to swing it back towards him but needs to win Q probably 4-2 for me to look past the Q defeat.(That would make it 12-8 to Max but with a couple of the results under a tenth that's not a problem for me)

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1. Hamilton
2. Alonso
3. Ricciardo

My opinion.

A completely WDC-worthy driver. Hopefully his CV at the end of the day looks better than Kimi's, than whom he is clearly better in my opinion. He has written a chapter in this year alone to be placed in the textbook of 'How to Conduct a Recovery Drive'. As many others have opined, he has arguably the best racecraft on the grid, at least on the attack. I'm not as sure on defense. We've seen Vettel dispatch him this year without too much trouble in Spain whereas Bottas caused a lot more problems and, yes, much of that difference is undoubtedly car-related, but Max has been in a Red Bull the past few years and still makes passing more difficult for the cars that are faster in a straight-line, even apart from his resorting to double-moves in braking zones.

Similar to Alonso, in any category he isn't outright supreme, he is always in the top 3 or 5. His relative deficiency (and it's not by much) in wet conditions versus the outright best in that area shouldn't hurt him unduly in title campaigns save in seasons like 2008 where there are an improbable number of wet races and those seasons don't come around very often.

Interestingly, whenever he gets bullish about his chances on a weekend, either his own performance or some extenuating circumstance sees to it that he doesn't make good on his own pronouncements. It seems like his Singapore Q performance has been swept under the rug in the wake of the whole start/crash controversy. It was a sort of put-up or shut-up time and he kind of had to swallow his pride there. If he was in a front-running car with a good teammate or a competitive rival from another team each race season would be nothing less than an unrelenting series of 40 or so of these moments of exposure. Is he ready for that? I'm thinking back to how the press would get their cutlery out for Lewis whenever Nico had a hot streak in Q or the races, or the summarily negative way in which Vettel is being viewed now for just the Singapore start even though that was an isolated event in what has all the same been a really great season of driving from him. If Vettel hadn't collected himself in a big way and taken pole from what till then had been the presumptive front row of Max and Daniel the condemnations would have come a day earlier. Can Ricciardo put in those sorts of showings that save his and the team's face at the last hour?

A top drive for Daniel cannot come fast enough for me, I say, because I have doubts about whether he could sustain the rigors of the visibility such a situation confers. Would the ever-present smile become a relic of the past? We'll all have a better sense of just what the competitive landscape looks like among the top drivers when that situation is realized.

'Consistency' is trumpeted here, often and everywhere, as the quality of champions and it does figure highly in the makeup of a top-shelf driver. But more important to my mind when I look back at the championship tables for many a while is the ability for a driver to go into a 'microwave' mode and reel off 3 or more victories on the trot. After Belgium 2000, we didn't know if Michael was going to choke in the home stretch of the season, after which his and Mika's relative estimations might have had to undergo a drastic re-evaluation. Instead he won the final 4 races in dominant fashion and a competitive outcome that seemed in the balance then has a never-in-doubt sheen in retrospect. Fernando basically won the 2006 title in that stretch from Spain to Canada. The rest of the season he just had to hold on. Vettel stole 2010 with that stretch from Japan to Abu Dhabi. When Hamilton's car failed him in Singapore 2012, Vettel said 'Don't mind if I do!" took the win, and used it as a springboard to dominate the Asian swing, after which he just had to hold on. The 2014 title looked to be Rosberg's until the stretch from Monza to Austin, after which Hamilton just had to hold on. Championships are more about striking while the iron is hot for as long as you can than stringing 2nds and 3rds. All of the aforementioned names have shown they are capable of doing this. I want to see if Ricciardo is.

Just how good is Ricciardo?
Well, better than Vettel but not quite as good as Verstappen. Excellent!

The only thing we know for sure is that he is a lot better than Vettel but also there is a nagging suspicion that he is not as good as Vetstappen......

He's much better than Verstappen at this point, it's madness to suggest otherwise. Verstappen seems like he is capable of delivering big things, Ricciardo is actually doing it.

I'll just point out that over the last 8 races, in a car that's clearly 3rd best he's outscoring the lead driver in the team that a lot of people think has the best package.

He's doing very well but I think it's unfair to make a judgement on if he is doing better than Verstappen or not. We've not seen them with an equal opportunity over the last 8 races. Same other way as well. It would be unfair to assume Verstappen is doing a better job. We haven't seen enough to compare.

Yes we have.

There's a reason Incidents follow Verstappen around. He might have the raw speed but this season has exposed him as a driver who has a lot to learn about his racecraft.

Really? What about the the 3 races in the last 8 where he has broken down? Or Austria where he really was just caught up in someone elses accident. That's half the races where the best race craft in a row wouldn't change the outcome.

You can't penalise him for these things if you want to have an accurate view of what is going on. How do you now he wouldn't have performed better than Dan?

Take Baku - He was set for a win until he broke down. But he may have put it in the wall himself. Impossible to compare because we just don't know.

Ricciardo is definitely WDC material. IMO he's better than either Button or Rosberg. He's got more ultimate speed than the former, and significantly better racecraft than the latter.

He beat Vettel convincingly in 2014, but my gut tells me that it was simply a very poor season on Vettel's behalf, and that Vettel at his best would beat Ricciardo slightly more often than not.

How does he compare to Hamilton and Alonso? No idea. I wager that he would lose 60/40 but it would be a very good fight. I reckon he's as fast as Alonso, and only a tad slower than Lewis.

With that being said, I think that Max will surpass all of them.

I disagree it's madness. Ricciardo is doing very well but Verstappen has been beaten with the bad luck stick pretty severely this season. I think it's reasonable to understand that the points don't necessarily reflect the relative driving abilities of both.

This bang on I think. And I'd love to see a Ham vs Ric title challenge.

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he is the real deal, no doubt.

He takes advantage of anything he can get, and he is pushing his car over it's performances.

For a reason or another he is also taking the car home, unlike Max.

Not saying Max is not good, just saying that he is delivering above the car.

I see him on a level similar to a young Alonso with better more precise racecraft but less adaptable to rainy conditions or a bad car than Alonso. All in all a very similar potent package of a driver.

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I'm not so sure he is, tbh. He is doing a great job staying out of trouble and delivering the results, but I don't see that he's delivering above the car. That's not to take anything away from him, as he's positioned himself to take advantage of others' misfortunes, but I don't think he's punching above his weight

I'd disagree there actually. He often takes a Mercedes or Ferrari.

Does he? Often? I don't think so. Usually he positions himself to pick up the pieces, which is a skill in itself, but I don't think he often takes them on.

Italy? He overtook Kimi. And Spa he overtook for his third place.

Indeed; Ricciardo has finished ahead of a total of 16 Mercedes or Ferrari cars this year, or an average of 1.4 per race finished. He's actually only had two races where he didn't finish ahead of at least one running Mercedes or Ferrari. He is, statistically, definitely outperforming the natural position of the car.

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Looking into it, of those 16 occasions, he's been ahead on actual merit (meaning nothing happened to the others) 7 times, and those were Raikkonen and Bottas being quite a bit away of their teammates.

The question then begs, is he placing it where it shouldn't belong, or is it that Bottas and Raikkonen struggle to consistently put the car where it belongs?

Just for the record, not counting Monaco as the RBR didn't look worse than the Merc there.

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Spa was Kimi wrecking his own chances with a penalty. Dan & Kimi both took Bottas at the restart, so I'd say Bottas wasn't paying attention very well there. And overtaking was pretty hard there in normal racing. Still good from Dan, but I wouldn't blow it up out of proportion. The Ferraris were notably poor at Monza, to be fair, and I doubt they were much better than the Bulls. I wouldn't class either as out-performing the car

which 7? I don't really see it but happy to stand corrected

Anyway, I didn't want to start a talk here, it just seems to me that this season, he could not do much more, could he ?