Honestly, it makes sense. Ricciardo has only been declining since leaving Renault.

He got a really good chance to get back on the horse when he was given the RB seat which he had not earned on recent performance (arguably, he earned it on past performance from years ago)

However, it was noticeable quickly he wasn’t better than Yuki or even some of the back markers.

I think Baku put the nail in his coffin when 2 rookies on lesser cars outperformed him handily. Today, he didn’t even make it out of Q1 in Singapore with Yuki qualifying 8th