Apologies for this word vomit but:
Truly feel they aren’t going to drop Daniel mid season for the reasons you stated, But also, the people saying “well, it’s happened before” need to understand that Nyk De Vries is not Daniel Ricciardo.
Nyk did not have the relationship with Redbull that Daniel has nor the experience or the sponsors. Red Bull could drop him mid season and there be no issue (a part from a few people saying that’s a hard way to treat a rookie). Dropping Daniel out of a seat entirely would be:
1. More difficult given (as you've stated) his sponsorship connections and experience that RB has repeatedly said is something they need to help continue to develop the team.
2. Unlikely because of the relationship daniel has with RedBull in general. I'm sorry, they are not going to drop him and leave him without a seat. Is the RBR return in jeopardy, sure. Could he get replaced at RB next season, maybe. But unless he really starts actually bombing, he's not getting replaced mid season.
Also something to remember is that nugget Helmut dropped when the Lewis to Ferrari news came out and everyone was wondering about the opening at Mercedes. Daniel has a “long term” contract with RedBull. Do we know the details? No, but it’s not all as tentative as clickbait headlines and news aggregation accounts want us to believe.
All of this!!
