Daniel Ricciardo says the prospect of losing long-standing race engineer Simon Rennie at Red Bull was a key factor in deciding the Aussie to move from the Milton Keynes-based outfit to Renault.
Ricciardo spent the first half of the 2018 season mulling his future, weighing extending his stay at Red Bull or moving on to a new challenge.
The seven-time Grand Prix winner took many criteria into account before ultimately setting his choice on Renault.
But Rennie's decision to travel less with the race team and accept a factory role at Milton Keynes was an important element to consider for Ricciardo who had worked alongside the race engineer since 2014.
"There were a lot of reasons, but losing Simon - I knew he wasn't going to engineer this year, if I stayed at Red Bull, and I thought I had a good relationship with him, and there were some unknowns," said Ricciardo, speaking in Hungary before the summer break.
"I was certainly comfortable with him. If I knew he stayed, I don't know if that would've been the deciding factor, but it was another [thing] - obviously when you've got the Honda concern and a few others, I guess that was another little thing.
"As I said, there were lots of these little things which probably added up - I don't want to say ‘concerns’ but unknowns, ‘concerns’ is probably a bit disrespectful."
©Renault
In addition to Renault, Ricciardo also held talks with McLaren for 2019. He remembers the 2018 Hungarian Grand Prix weekend as the moment where everything started to come to a head.
"Sunday night we had to start to really decide what to do, and I was like 'I'm just going to go out tonight, have a few drinks, and maybe I'll find my answer with a few friends'," he remembers.
"And then on the Monday it all kind of started to kick off a bit more."
Ricciardo flew to Los Angeles the following day, and the long flight brought him his pick.
"When I landed, I was like 'alright, yellow and black'."
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
