This weekend, everyone’s favourite smiley honey badger will be back in an F1 car. To coincide with this, Codemasters will be doing the same on F1 23.
When Daniel Ricciardo’s contract with McLaren was terminated, F1 fans faced the prospect of not seeing the eight-time Grand Prix winner on the grid for the first time since early 2011. Ricciardo became a reserve driver for Red Bull, but is now returning to the grid full time, starting this weekend.
2019 F2 champion Nyck de Vries lost his drive at AlphaTauri only ten races into his first full F1 season. Ricciardo will be taking his place, prompting many to wonder if the popular Australian would be added back into the F1 game as a playable driver. It would appear that is indeed happening.
F1 23 Daniel Ricciardo Return
Speaking to RacingGames.gg, Codemasters Creative Director Lee Mather was asked about whether Ricciardo would be added back in to the F1 game. Mather confirmed in their interview that a future update would include Ricciardo being a selectable driver.
We have every intention to bring Daniel Ricciardo back into the game, we’re going through the process of getting the reference together and building the assets. We’ll be bringing Daniel back into the series as soon as we can at the earliest convenience.
Codemasters Creative Director Lee Mather to RacingGames.gg
It won’t be with immediate effect, with just a few details needed such as his AlphaTauri helmet design and the driver suits with his name. But Ricciardo’s facescan is most likely still in the game, since F1 23 has most of the 2022 drivers in the game files since they all feature in the Braking Point 2 storymode.
Mid-Season Changes in F1 games
Typically over the years, the F1 games have only ever featured the line-ups at the start of a season. Or, at least, the intended line-up for the season. When Fernando Alonso had to miss the first two races of 2015 due to injury, Kevin Magnussen filled in for him at McLaren but when F1 2015 released, Alonso was in the game.
However, that hasn’t always been the case. When Max Verstappen and Daniil Kvyat swapped seats four races into the 2016 season, Kvyat was in the Toro Rosso and Verstappen was in the Red Bull when F1 2016 launched despite starting the season as part of the other team. That was before the game launched, but Codemasters have made changes to line-ups post launch too.
Current Alpine driver Pierre Gasly began the 2019 season at Red Bull, replacing the Renault-bound Ricciardo. As a result, Gasly was also part of Red Bull in F1 2019 at launch, but surprisingly that didn’t last.
After that year’s Hungarian Grand Prix, Gasly was demoted back down to Toro Rosso. Season rookie Alexander Albon – who started the season with Toro Rosso – then got the Red Bull drive. Codemasters subsequently swapped the pair around in-game, the first time they had made a change to the drivers post-release.
When the Gasly/Albon swap happened, player’s pre-existing career mode saves didn’t implement the swap. But if the player began a new save, the swap was in there. Whether that means Ricciardo will be present in active career modes, we don’t know just yet.
Read more: How to get the perfect AI difficulty in F1 23
Are you excited for Daniel Ricciardo to be playable in F1 23? Tell us on Twitter at @OverTake_gg or in the comments down below!
