Draft: a fan’s take. Check the details and make it your own before publishing.
Daniel Ricciardo was always the driver everyone liked. The grin, the laugh, the shoey. But it’s easy to forget how good he was in a race car, especially when it came to braking later than anyone else and making it stick.
Getting in
He’s from Perth, Western Australia, and came up through Red Bull’s junior programme. His F1 debut came halfway through 2011, on loan to the tiny HRT team at Silverstone. He then spent 2012 and 2013 at Toro Rosso, Red Bull’s junior team.
Red Bull, and beating Vettel
In 2014 he replaced his fellow Australian Mark Webber at Red Bull, alongside four-time champion Sebastian Vettel. Mercedes dominated that year, but Daniel won three races: Canada, Hungary and Belgium. He was the only driver outside Mercedes to win all season, and he finished well ahead of Vettel. Vettel left for Ferrari at the end of the year.
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The late brake
His trademark was the lunge from a long way back: diving up the inside into a heavy braking zone when it looked impossible, and still making the corner. He once described it as “licking the stamp and sending it”, and that line followed him for the rest of his career.
Highs and heartbreak
Monaco 2016 should have been his. He was on pole and leading, came in for tyres, and the team didn’t have them ready. He sat in the pit box while Lewis Hamilton went by, and that was the race gone. He won in Malaysia later that year.
In 2017 he won a chaotic race in Baku. In 2018 he won in China after a late pit stop for fresh tyres and a string of overtakes, then finally won Monaco, even after losing a chunk of engine power with a lot of the race still to go.
Leaving Red Bull
With Max Verstappen rising fast in the same team, Daniel left for Renault in 2019. It was a bold move that didn’t quite work out. He did score Renault’s first podiums in years in 2020, which meant team boss Cyril Abiteboul had to get the tattoo Daniel had bet him.
McLaren and Monza
He joined McLaren for 2021 and never really got comfortable in the car. But at Monza that year he led from start to finish, with Lando Norris right behind him for a McLaren one-two. It was McLaren’s first win since 2012, and he celebrated with a shoey on the podium, of course.
McLaren and Daniel agreed to end his contract a year early, after the 2022 season.
One more go
He spent 2023 as Red Bull’s reserve driver, then got a race seat back at AlphaTauri halfway through the year. A few races later he broke his hand in a crash at Zandvoort. He stayed with the team, by then called RB, into 2024, and was replaced by Liam Lawson after Singapore. In what turned out to be his last race, he set the fastest lap.
What he leaves
Eight wins, some of the best overtakes of his generation, and a reminder that you can take racing seriously without taking yourself too seriously. The sport was more fun with him in it.