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Daniel Ricciardo has been voted Max Verstappen’s best Red Bull team-mate by RacingNews365 readers, taking 48.33% of the vote and finishing well clear of Sergio Perez on 27.80% in a result that underlines how no other partner has matched his level against the reigning benchmark inside the team.
The verdict was built on more than reputation alone. Ricciardo remains the only Red Bull team-mate to have beaten Verstappen in the championship standings, doing so in both 2016 and 2017. Across the 58 races they contested together, the pair also shared nine victories, a record that still sets Ricciardo apart from every driver who has occupied the second seat since.
That gap in the poll is significant because the Red Bull seat alongside Verstappen has become one of Formula 1’s most difficult jobs. Seven different drivers have now filled it, and the voting reflected just how rarely any of them have managed to leave the same impression Ricciardo did before his departure at the end of 2018.
Perez was the closest challenger in the reader ranking, and his second-place finish suggests his four seasons in the role still carry weight despite a difficult end to that spell. He played a key part in Verstappen’s first title run with his defense against Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi in 2021, and his five wins between 2021 and 2024 made him the most productive of Verstappen’s supporting cast in pure results terms. Even so, the poll never became a close contest, with Ricciardo polling nearly half the total vote.
The most eye-catching result behind the top two was Isack Hadjar’s rise to third on 17.47%. That share stood out because the current Red Bull driver is only nine races into his time alongside Verstappen, yet he still drew far more support than several predecessors who had much longer opportunities in the car.
Hadjar’s early momentum appears to have resonated with readers. He put together five straight points finishes from the Canadian Grand Prix through Silverstone, and his fourth place in Monaco gave his opening stretch a standout result that few would have expected to carry this much weight so quickly in a poll like this.
The rest of the order showed how unforgiving the role has been for most of Verstappen’s team-mates. Liam Lawson received 3.49% after lasting only two races without scoring before being replaced in 2025. Yuki Tsunoda took 1.46%, Alex Albon 0.87%, and Pierre Gasly just 0.58%.
Those numbers do more than round out the leaderboard. They reinforce the central point of the vote: while several drivers have contributed important moments or flashes of promise alongside Verstappen, Ricciardo is still viewed as the one who genuinely pushed him, and Hadjar’s early support now sets the standard for whether Red Bull’s latest team-mate pairing can develop into something closer to that level.