What Daniel Ricciardo's dream performance means for his F1 team

Ricciardo's words turned out to be prescient. While he was unable to stop Mercedes and McLaren in the Mexico City Grand Prix, he held his nerve to finish in seventh  — AlphaTauri's best result of the season. 

"This is the weekend I dreamed of," Ricciardo said after the race. "I feel good, better than good."

The feat lifted AlphaTauri off the bottom of the Constructor Championship table, taking the team from 10th to eighth and passing Haas and Alfa Romeo.

The Constructor Championship is vital for smaller teams like Ricciardo's AlphaTauri. It runs concurrently with the better-publicized Driver Championship and works in the same way: Teams receive points for how well they perform in specific races, and the team with the most points at the end of the season wins the championship.

The Constructor Championship, however, also determines something crucial: what percentage of the prize money each F1 team will receive. In general, the better a team's Constructor Championship finish, the bigger its slice of the financial pie for the next season.

AlphaTauri's Ricciardo-led jump from 10th to eighth will be massive if it holds for the final three races of the season. That placement differential could earn AlphaTauri up to $20M in additional funding —big numbers for a small team.

It's also caught the attention of AlphaTauri's sister team, Red Bull.

While Red Bull has already won this season's Constructor and Driver Championships, it has struggled to motivate its second driver, Perez.

Ricciardo's strong performance in Mexico has led many to wonder if Red Bull will promote him into Perez's seat in 2024.

While it's too early to tell if Red Bull and AlphaTauri will make that controversial call, Ricciardo is ready regardless of what lies ahead of him.

"It's definitely more fun fighting at the front," he  said with a laugh. "It just feels better, feels right. I'm so happy with the weekend and we'll try to keep this thing rolling."