How one-of-a-kind Ricciardo left a permanent mark on F1 – both on and off the track

It’s September 12, 2021, and Daniel Ricciardo is stood in the Italian Grand Prix TV pen at Monza, a multi-coloured Vans SK8-Hi trainer resting against his lips. That trainer is my trainer, but whereas 30 seconds previously it was housing my foot, now it contained the contents of a 330ml bottle of Heineken.
He then proceeds to drink it all, bar the last few drops that dribble down his race suit. He drops the trainer down to reveal a Santa Claus-esque beard – and that trademark, beaming, infectious smile. “It’s a foamer!” he chuckles.
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At the time, this felt like a breakthrough moment – the Monza victory, where he headed a McLaren one-two, not the shoey, obviously. After a difficult start to life at McLaren, Ricciardo had given the team their first victory in nearly a decade and his first since a brilliant triumph at the 2018 Monaco Grand Prix for Red Bull.
As it turns out, that win at Monza would be his last and signal a final high point in a career that delivered so much early on but faded far quicker than he and many others had anticipated.
This was not for want of trying, though. Ricciardo believed you could be a driver dedicated to your craft – and still be yourself and have fun along the way.
In being himself, he has near single-handedly brought a new legion of fans to Formula 1 through his leading role in Netflix’s Drive to Survive. He was the first voice you hear, the first face you see – and thereafter an ever-present character that captured fans’ attention across all six seasons so far.
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The Ricciardo you saw in Netflix is the Ricciardo we saw in the paddock – friendly, chatty, funny and engaging. But beneath that lay a driver who was fiercely competitive and hugely talented with an inner steel that harnessed an obsession to become Formula 1 world champion.
You must be all those things to survive the Red Bull junior programme – and Ricciardo did just that, all while retaining a personality and endearing himself to his engineers, mechanics and all those he worked with day in, day out at the track.
There were signs that he might achieve that dream when he was at Red Bull, the Australian securing seven wins with the team – all of them absolute crackers that will go down in history. At the start of 2018 he was in title contention, but as the year went on he suffered woeful reliability and, gradually, those chances started to evaporate.
In Austin, he retired after just eight laps through a mechanical problem when running fourth and the frustration bubbling inside became uncontrollable. He got back to his driver room and started punching the door. One punch was so potent, it broke the material and hit a metal bracket.
His hand began to swell. Fortunately, he hadn’t broken it – and was able to compete in Mexico the following week. But when he recounted the story to me a few years ago, he admitted he “scarred myself”.
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Boss Christian Horner and Motorsport Advisor Helmut Marko didn’t say anything. “It was one of those situations where, because I had such a bad run, they couldn’t get angry at me for getting angry. It was just an awkward thing. But it was OK!”
If anything, that incident showed just how badly Ricciardo wanted it. He knew that 2018 was one of his best chances of fighting for a world title and a run of bad luck and unreliability had hauled him out of contention. While he is usually smiley and funny, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t take his job seriously.
Fast forward four years and Riccardo is at his fifth team in McLaren (having previously driven for HRT, Toro Rosso, Red Bull and Renault) and while he secured that aforementioned victory at Monza, it was the only high point of an otherwise barren two-year stint that destroyed his confidence, robbed him of his love for the sport and essentially sucked the happiness out of him.
He found Covid particularly hard because he was cut off from his family, with whom he is very close, as they were on the other side of the world in Australia. It’s easy to forget sometimes the sacrifices drivers from outside of Europe make to pursue their dream of competing in F1. Going more than a year without seeing his family, especially at a time when he was struggling to find a way to make his McLaren work, was painful.
Sitting with him on the middle floor of the McLaren hospitality unit in Belgium, not long after it was announced he’d be leaving the team at the end of the season – one year before his contract was set to expire – it was clear Ricciardo was broken. He’s no robot and thus he doesn’t have a shield for his emotions. You’ll know when he’s really happy and you’ll know when he’s really sad.
ANALYSIS: Ricciardo’s F1 career looks to be over – how did it come to this?
Ricciardo and McLaren was the relationship that should have made sense and yet they parted ways without either of them understanding why it didn’t work. The Australian took a break from the sport, but the moment the lights went out for the first race the following year, he had that urge to come back.
Red Bull gave him that lifeline, bringing him on as a reserve driver and with the carrot that if he could deliver the kind of pace he showed during his stint with them between 2014 and 2018, there was a genuine chance of a return to the works team alongside Max Verstappen.
His performance in a Pirelli tyre test at Silverstone proved to Red Bull that he still had that ultimate performance that had made him so devastating in the right conditions. What he now needed to do – when given the chance – was prove he could do it consistently.
He got that chance midway through last year when he was drafted into AlphaTauri to replace Nyck de Vries. Ricciardo was like a kid in a candy shop when he bounced into Formula One Management’s offices in Biggin Hill to shoot the footage required for the broadcast, opening titles and various marketing and promotional campaigns. His smile stretched so far across his face, it felt like it was going to split. He was so excited to get back behind the wheel and get racing.
When we then sat down to discuss that return later that day, the Ricciardo that sat in front of me, sunk deep into the cushions, couldn’t have been more different to the one who I faced in Belgium, his shoulders down, the colour drained from his face.
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This was a Ricciardo who was ready to go, to take his second chance with both hands. “I’m not scared of anything,” he said. “I’m ready.” Ricciardo had fallen back in love with the sport all over again. The fresh-faced Honey Badger who bounced around the paddock in those early days of his career was back – only this time with a bit more facial hair.
Unfortunately, the comeback didn’t go to plan. Just two races in, he broke his hand. While he did an impressive job to recover in time to only miss five races, the pressure was well and truly on given his replacement Liam Lawson had starred in standing in for him.
The end of the year was OK, a seventh place in Mexico a real high in an otherwise mediocre run of results. That didn’t get him down, though. Because now he’d have a full pre-season to ready himself.
And so, when we caught up in IMG Studios in London in February, for the annual pre-season shoot, he was buzzing – even though he had to talk to me at 6pm local time having started his day 11 hours earlier. “I’ve still got more to prove,” was the headline. Do that and the carrot of a Red Bull drive remained.
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But while the speed was clearly there – as was showcased with a brilliant fourth in the Miami Sprint and points finishes in Canada, Austria and Belgium – it was the consistency that Ricciardo was missing. That was once Ricciardo’s strength, but for whatever reason, he simply couldn’t knit together a run of strong results that he – and his old boss Christian Horner – were convinced he was capable of.
What made life worse was that his team mate, Yuki Tsunoda, was starring in the other car. Given Red Bull have yet to be convinced they should promote the Japanese driver, even despite his form this year, that Ricciardo couldn’t score points – regardless of the fact that strategy didn’t always help him this year or the fact his improvement in form coincided with a downturn in the quality of the car that pulled it out of points-scoring contention – hurt his stature among Red Bull’s top brass.
This wasn’t for want of trying. Ricciardo was giving everything – driving his heart out as he always did. For whatever reason, though, it wasn’t working any more.
So, when we spoke in the TV pen on Sunday evening in Singapore, there was sadly no call for a shoey. Instead, it was a time of reflection and recounting those thoughts that raced through his mind as he sat in the cockpit for a while after the race – as he knew at that point, he had driven his last race in Formula 1.
“A lot of emotions, because – look, I’m aware it could be it, and I think it’s also just [being] exhausted after the race,” he said. “So, it’s like a flood of many emotions and feelings and exhaustion. The cockpit is something that I got very used to for many years. I just wanted to savour the moment.”
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It wasn’t the way Ricciardo – or his legion of fans – wanted it to end. But time is a healer and, eventually, he can reflect well on what he achieved during his time in Formula 1.
He was the latest of the late brakers in his pomp, delivered box office drives in every single one of his eight Grand Prix victories (not many drivers can say that) and he did that while always being one of the most fun people to have around.
He loved the sport with all his heart, is one of a kind and will be greatly missed.
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