It will be hard not to have a pang of sympathy for Daniil Kvyat when he sets foot in the Circuit de Catalunya paddock today ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend.
Kvyat endured the public humiliation last week of being effectively demoted down the ranks in Formula One, as he was replaced at Red Bull Racing by Max Verstappen, with the Russian being moved back to Toro Rosso, the team with who he raced his F1 rookie season in 2014.
Thursday will be Kvyat’s first public appearance since the embarrassment, from his point of view at least, happened, and how he handles the extra attention and media questions over Red Bull’s decision to drop him from their senior team and return him to their sister, and less well-funded team, will be fascinating.
Read more on Daniil Kvyat:
• Max Verstappen, 'outstanding young talent' promoted to Red Bull; Kvyat to Toro Rosso
• Daniil Kvyat's Red Bull future in doubt after 'day of disaster' at Russian Grand Prix
• Sebastian Vettel confronts Daniil Kvyat over Chinese GP move: 'You came like a torpedo'
If he is wise, he will put a brave face on it, not agree with the decision publicly, but say he accepts it and will look to prove Red Bull’s bosses wrong in the final 17 races of the season.
Sulking is not a good option. Red Bull could easily have ditched him completely if they wanted to, given the large amount of junior drivers in the lower formulas at their disposal, and Kvyat has to see this as the last chance to be a star in F1 that it really is.
On paper, demoting a man who had been third in China last month, and actually finished ahead of teammate Daniel Ricciardo in the points last season, is harsh.
But the problem with paper and looking purely at results is that it does not tell you the context.
And the context here was the results flattered Kvyat as Ricciardo was consistently quicker than him during 2015, but had more bad luck with reliability and race incidents.
This year Ricciardo had been consistently quicker in qualifying and the races up until China.
Yes, Kvyat finished third to Ricciardo’s fourth in Shanghai, but what the result does not highlight is that Ricciardo had been 0.4 seconds in qualifying, had led until getting a puncture early on, and had fought from the back of the grid to be fourth, just 6.7 seconds behind Kvyat.
That was one issue, another was the clashes on and off track he was having with Sebastian Vettel, which led to the Ferrari man publicly complaining to Red Bull team principal Christian Horner about him during the race in Russia.
That could widely be seen as the reason for the Russian being ditched, but his lack of pace compared to Ricciardo, allied to the team wanting to show faith to the impressive Verstappen, was why the move was made.
F1 is not a sentimental world. It is a performance based industry. And Kvyat’s were not cutting it compared to Ricciardo.
Red Bull are looking for future world champions, and Kvyat was not looking anything like a champion, so they made the change for Verstappen.
How Kvyat fares in the rest of the season, starting in Barcelona this weekend, will decide his F1 future.
If he bounces back well and holds his own against teammate Carlos Sainz Jr then he might still have a long-term future.
If he struggles against Sainz then the Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on November 27 will almost certainly be his last race, at least in the Red Bull family.
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