Daniel Ricciardo confirmed to leave Red Bull Racing at the end of 2018, moving to Renault

Kind of. You need to understand where all of the drivers and teams are at to make sense of it - it's not an illogical choice, but it is not the one people were expecting (or in the case of his fans, hoping for). But it also makes a kind of sense if you put yourself in Ricciardo's shoes.

There's a bit of a traffic jam at the top of the field at the moment. Hamilton and Vettel are GOAT contenders, Kimi is an ex-WDC who people have been expecting to retire for a few years now and Bottas seems to be a good fit for Mercedes (keeping Hamilton happy as a solid #2) despite clearly not being on their level. Alonso is the other notable driver (2x WDC, 2018Le Mans winner) but he is known for being a bit difficult to work with and is not really likely to move to any of the top teams.

That leaves Verstappen and Ricciardo, the current RBR drivers. Ricciardo is very highly rated by many as best-of-the-rest and Verstappen is a prodigy known for a very aggressive racing style that sometimes leads to him pushing a bit too far. Both drivers are very capable of winning a WDC if they get the right car, though Verstappen might still need a bit more practical experience in high-pressure situations before he reaches his full potential.

There have been a few instances of top drivers moving to midfield teams in recent memory. Hamilton moved from McLaren (with whom he won a WDC/WCC) to Mercedes (solid midfielders at the time, having just finished an uneventful comeback attempt from Schumacher), and Mercedes went on to become by far the best team of the Turbo-Hybrid era, winning 3 more WDCs and 4 WCCs. The other big move was Alonso, who moved from Ferrarri (who were at the front but no longer the best team, and failed to give him the results he wanted) to the new McLaren Honda - a partnership that harkened back to the glory days of Senna et.al. and with big promises. McLaren-Honda went on to be basically a running joke in F1, having by far the worst car despite one of the best drivers and mountains of money to throw at problems.

That brings us to 2018. RBR seems to be finding it hard to do any better than being the 3rd best car on any given weekend, memories of 2010-2013 dominance are fading and cracks appeared in the relationship with Renault as their engine supplier leading them to switch to Honda for 2019 onwards. Worse, Ricciardo and Verstappen's relationship seems to be wearing thin after several high-profile avoidable collisions (Baku this year - the one you walks have seen, Hungary last year, and a few other smaller incidents), and those who remember the Vettel/Webber years no doubt can see at least some parallels with Vettel and Verstappen both being Marko's pick at the occasional expense of the others. Given that there have been whispers of Raikkonen retiring for a few years now and Ricciardo being so highly rated and probably having the best media presence of all the drivers, lots of people expected him to be moving to Ferrari if the seat opened up - and just as the team is starting to remember how to win races again.

Instead, after months of speculation we get the news that Ricciardo is moving to Renault. This immediately comes as a shock to many because a lot of people fell in love with a popular driver of Italian heritage moving to Ferrari to give Vettel a better challenge than the ageing Raikkonen. By contrast, Renault is 4th in the WCC standings this year but with only just over 1/3 of RBR's points in 3rd (82 vs. 223), so it seems like the move is retrograde. On the other hand, Ricciardo probably doesn't want to become typecast as a #2 driver in the same team as Verstappen, RBR moving to Honda next year will definitely have a few teething issues and could be disastrous while Renault have been very solidly improving each year since rejoining the sport in 2016, they manufacture their own engine and can design the car around it better than a customer-team - especially important for 2020 when the engine regulations will be changing. It's also not as though Renault are a stranger to winning in F1, having won both WDC and WCC in '05 and '06 with Alonso. Red Bull's major trump card is their aerodynamics and chassis, due in no small part to genius designer Adrian Newey, but the sport is moving towards making aero less critical (starting with less complex front wings to help overtaking next year) so that may become moot.

So the question becomes one of whether having signed to Renault for 2019 and 2020 will turn out to be a Hamilton-Mercedes masterstroke or an Alonso-McLaren disaster, and if the latter whether he will be able to convince the top teams to still consider him a top driver with new drivers like Gasly (likely to move to RBR in Ricciardo's place) and Leclerc (a Ferrari 'junior driver' vastly outperforming his 2018 Sauber) showing lots promise in the rear teams.