Daniel Ricciardo Fights His Way Back in Formula 1

There was a degree earlier this 12 months when Daniel Ricciardo realized he was by means of with rediscovering regular life and that he nonetheless needed to be a Formula 1 driver.

Ricciardo had spent two lazy months at dwelling in Australia with household and associates after he was dropped by McLaren final 12 months, attempting to find out whether or not the love he as soon as held for the game nonetheless existed. During that interval, he educated simply as soon as.

“Other than that day, I was living life,” Ricciardo mentioned in an interview. “I wasn’t going stupid, but I was having beers with friends, camping, fishing, doing these things.

“Then, it got to the end of January, I’ve probably done eight weeks of just holidays, and I was starting to be like, ‘OK, I don’t really want to fall into this, having a beer every day, having fun.’ I didn’t feel I was at that point. I didn’t want to become a bit of a slob.”

Two months earlier, Ricciardo had left McLaren. After two troublesome years, and with a season to go on a three-year contract, the workforce terminated the settlement in August.

Ricciardo was harm, however he knew he wanted to distance himself to reset and rebuild.

“At the time, it was a bit of a harsh reality getting fired,” he mentioned. “It’s never the way you want to end something, but I feel like I needed out, to step away for a bit, to refind myself, refind my love for the sport.”

Ricciardo acknowledged that “the results weren’t there.” Aside from a victory within the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, his eighth in Formula 1, he was unable to extract the efficiency required from the automobile.

“By the end of the season, when I got home for Christmas, I thought, ‘OK, it probably doesn’t help my reputation’, but at that point, I didn’t care anymore. It was a blessing in disguise,” he mentioned about being fired.

So it proved. Just three days after final season ended, Ricciardo was introduced because the third driver with Red Bull for this season, aiding the workforce in testing and the simulator, a digital atmosphere that simulates the expertise of driving a automobile.

Returning to the Red Bull household, the place he was nurtured as a junior earlier than two years with its sister workforce on the time, Toro Rosso, and 5 with Red Bull, would enable him to stay concerned in Formula 1.

It was not till a go to to the Super Bowl in Arizona in February that Ricciardo first began to really feel anxious a few return.

“It was a bit of a workweek as I was with C.A.A.,” he mentioned, referring to his agent, the Creative Artists Agency, “and I met some people and talked about some projects, which got my work side firing again.

“Then, I went to the game, and I was like ‘I miss this.’ I was very envious of the players on the field, the anthem and just that feeling of competition, so when I got back from the Super Bowl, I went back to my place in L.A., got the weights out and started doing a bit of training. I knew I wanted to get back into it.”

The first day within the simulator informed Ricciardo and Red Bull all they wanted to learn about the place it had gone unsuitable for him at McLaren.

“We’ve spent the last seven months rebuilding him and getting the old Daniel back that we recognized from when he was last with us,” Christian Horner, the Red Bull workforce principal, mentioned in an interview.

“He had picked up a lot of bad habits. It took some of his old engineering team to unpick some of those and very quickly, and in a virtual world, get him back on a par with what we were used to.”

One drawback, Horner mentioned, was that Ricciardo’s braking method “had changed dramatically.”

“He was trying to put a sticking plaster on a weakness of the car,” he mentioned. “Once we sorted that, then everything started to become more natural.”

Ricciardo accepts Horner’s appraisal and mentioned his two years with McLaren robbed him of an important component: confidence.

“I genuinely do feel that I lost some of my technique, some of my strengths,” Ricciardo mentioned. “Things that had worked in the past weren’t working anymore, so I had to throw them away. I’d then try some other stuff and they wouldn’t work, then my confidence would go down, and that was the biggest thing.

“I realized that when I got back into the Red Bull sim, that I was not a very confident person, so in a way it was a relief for me to see I wasn’t operating at the level I thought.”

It was not till his second run within the simulator that Ricciardo started “to unplug a few things,” and his confidence returned.

Over time, Ricciardo proved himself. In July, on the Silverstone circuit, two days after the British Grand Prix, he drove for Red Bull throughout a tire check for the provider Pirelli.

His efficiency led to Nyck de Vries’ being changed at AlphaTauri with Ricciardo. De Vries was a rookie who drove in solely 10 races for the Red Bull sister workforce.

“It was always scheduled for him to do that test, and that was very much going to be a moment in time just to see where he was at,” Horner mentioned.

“With Nyck struggling to get to grips with it, it just felt it took on more relevance, and to give AlphaTauri some direction with an experienced driver,” Horner mentioned. “After his performance at the test, it was a no-brainer.”

Ricciardo by no means anticipated to return so rapidly, even questioning whether or not it could be higher to attend two extra races till after the summer time break. It was solely after driving within the Hungarian and Belgian Grands Prix that he appreciated the logic of the choice.

“Having those two races before the break was the best thing because it gave me a platform, something to build on,” he mentioned.

But on the third race of his return, the Dutch Grand Prix in August, Ricciardo broke a metacarpal in his left hand in a number of locations in a crash throughout a observe session. He become a barrier to keep away from hitting the McLaren pushed by his fellow Australian Oscar Piastri, who had simply crashed and was on the racing line.

Ricciardo underwent surgical procedure, requiring screws and a plate, forcing him to overlook the final race in Italy.

Despite the setback, he has been assured of his seat at AlphaTauri when he recovers, along with his goal of incomes a contract for subsequent 12 months and a return to Red Bull in 2025.

“I told Christian, ‘Look, now that I’m back in the family, I feel so much happier, like myself, and I don’t want to leave,’” Ricciardo mentioned.

“The big picture is that I would love to work my way back up to the top team. I’m not talking to any other teams, I made that clear, and now it’s up to me to perform well because I’d love to remain.”