Daniel Ricciardo has admitted the ideal ending to his Formula 1 career would be a full-time return to the cockpit with Red Bull Racing.

Ricciardo is officially on an F1 sabbatical following two bruising seasons with McLaren that ended with his dismissal at the end of last year.

He remains inside the paddock as Red Bull Racing’s third driver and as one of the team’s reserve options should either Max Verstappen or Sergio Pérez be unable to race.

He is also a back-up driver for Red Bull Racing sister team AlphaTauri.

The 33-year-old is taking the season off to decide whether he still has the hunger to compete at motorsport’s top level, but as early as the Australian Grand Prix weekend in late March he admitted that his intention was to return the grid in 2024.

He’s now admitted that his ideal scenario would be to slip back into his former seat at Red Bull Racing to write the final chapter of his career.

“This for me would be like the fairytale,” he told ESPN. “Honestly, the fairytale ending [would be] to finish my career here if I could have it all my own way.

“But we’ll see. I’ll probably have to work my way up a little bit, but it’s really nice to be back here.”

Ricciardo forged his hard-racing reputation with the current constructors championship leader, collecting seven of his eight victories with the team along with all three of his pole positions and 29 of his 32 podium appearances.

But the West Australian chose to leave Red Bull Racing at the end of an unreliability-riddled 2018 campaign to join the then nascent Renault team in a bombshell career move, giving up likely race wins in exchange for the opportunity to be a key pillar of the French squad’s rebuild.

But Renault’s progress stalled, and he made the ill-fated decision to move to McLaren for 2021.

Two poor seasons at Woking returned him to Red Bull Racing as the team’s third driver this year.

The problem with Ricciardo’s dream scenario is that RBR is fully subscribed in 2024, with Max Verstappen on a long-term contract and Pérez in the first season of a two-year deal.

Though the Mexican is enduring a results rough patch, team management was satisfied with his strong performances earlier in the year and has publicly backed him to recapture that form before the end of the season.

Ricciardo has also been linked to a potential vacancy at AlphaTauri, where rookie Nyck de Vries has been under pressure after a disappointing start to his maiden full-time F1 campaign.

The team denied the Australian was being lined up for a mid-season switch when rumours emerged in May that De Vries had been given an ultimatum to lift his game or risk the sack.

There also appeared to be little interest from Ricciardo’s side in a mid-season call-up, the Perth native having said many times that he’s revelling in his year-long freedom from F1’s hectic schedule.

But ESPN has reported that Ricciardo is now open to an AlphaTauri drive in 2024 as a pathway to Pérez’s Red Bull Racing seat in 2025, mimicking his formative years in the sport.

Both De Vries and teammate Yuki Tsunoda are out of contract at the end of the season.

Tsunoda has taken a notable step-up in his third full-time season and is unlikely to be dispatched, particularly given his connection to engine partner Honda.

De Vries is yet to score points this year and has only once outqualified his teammate — in Spain, when Tsunoda had his fastest time deleted for exceeding track limits.

Even if De Vries were axed from the team after only one season, Ricciardo would not necessarily be a shoo-in replacement, with Red Bull junior Liam Lawson a likely to be a strong consideration for the drive.

New Zealander Lawson was third in last year’s Formula 2 championship and is currently second in the Japanese Super Formula series.

Super Formula is considered a particularly difficult category for non-Japanese drivers given it races exclusively on domestic circuits rarely visited by those on the European racing ladder.

Championship victory in Japan would mount a compelling argument for a Formula 1 drive.

Other than AlphaTauri, both Haas drivers are coming out of contract at the end of this season as well as Logan Sargeant at Williams and Zhou Guanyu and Alfa Romeo. None of them is thought likely to be on the chopping block at this early stage of the season.