This was published 7 years ago
Daniel Ricciardo: The other side of Formula One's Mr Nice Guy
By Brad Spurgeon
A gladiator is generally not expected to be gentle and lighthearted, smiling and joking.
That may be why it has taken a few years for Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo to solidify his reputation as one of the hardest, fastest, meanest and best drivers in Formula One.
Daniel Ricciardo of Australia and Red Bull Racing signs autographs for fans.Credit: Getty Images
In a season again dominated by Mercedes, 27-year-old Ricciardo arrived at the Italian Grand Prix track on the weekend after scoring three podium finishes in a row. He finished fifth in Monza.
Ricciardo has been driving for Red Bull since 2014. That first season, he out-qualified and outscored his teammate Sebastian Vettel, the reigning four-time drivers' champion.
Daniel Ricciardo celebrates on the podium during the Formula One Grand Prix of Belgium.Credit: Dan Istitene
In fact, Ricciardo was the only driver that season to have challenged the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, who won all the races except three – and all three were won by Ricciardo.
In his first race that year, at home in Australia, Ricciardo qualified second and then finished second, becoming the first Australian driver to score a podium finish in his home Grand Prix. But he was disqualified after the race: the team had made the car slightly underweight.
Ricciardo, though, has a way of weathering storms. If a survey could be made of the 22 Formula One drivers to establish who smiles the most, has the sunniest disposition and seems to be generally the nicest guy, Ricciardo would surely be the leader.
Yet this season another side of him has surfaced. He says he is like a honey badger, the small weasel-like animal whose image is on the back of his helmet.
Runner-up: Daniel Ricciardo celebrates on the podium after the Belgium GP.Credit: Getty Images
"When you look at it," he has said of the honey badger, "he seems quite cute and cuddly, but as soon as someone crosses his territory in a way he doesn't like, he turns into a bit of a savage and he'll go after anything tigers, pythons. He turns very quickly, but he's a good guy."
Last season and the beginning of this season, Ricciardo dominated his teammate Daniil Kvyat, who had replaced Vettel. In April, Red Bull decided to demote Kvyat, sending him to the sister Toro Rosso team and replacing him with Toro Rosso's 18-year-old driver, Max Verstappen, starting at the Spanish Grand Prix.
There, the two Mercedes drivers, Hamilton and Rosberg, knocked each other out of the race. Ricciardo, meanwhile, had qualified higher than Verstappen, and after the accident between the leaders, Ricciardo led the race, ahead of his teammate. Then Red Bull gave a better pit-stop strategy to the young recruit, having him make two pit stops to three for Ricciardo. As a result, Verstappen won a race that should have been Ricciardo's.
For the first time, the public got a glimpse of the honey badger. But only a glimpse.
"The outcome of the race was frustrating," Ricciardo said. "Is it easy to move on? I wouldn't say easy. Can you move on? Absolutely."
He added: "It's a tough one. It's a team sport, but you are doing it for yourself as well, and that balance is a tricky one to try and manage. Obviously, from a personal side, it's still a hard one to take."
Worse was to come at the next race, the Monaco Grand Prix. Ricciardo set pole position on the street circuit, where the pole is essential to victory because it is impossible to overtake. It was the Australian's first pole position in Formula One.
He went on to lead the race with ease, while Verstappen showed his inexperience by having two crashes, one during qualifying, and the other ending his race.
With the race under control, despite dropping behind Hamilton during a pit stop for what would be a temporary drive in second, Ricciardo made a pit stop on Lap 31, from which he was expected to easily emerge in front of Hamilton, who had stopped just before that. But the Red Bull mechanics were not prepared with his tires. They ran about the pits with the wrong ones, then the right ones, and by the time Ricciardo left, he was behind Hamilton.
The race was lost, and this time the honey badger showed his true face. Never before had Ricciardo been so visibly angry and bitter, and he seemed to have no qualms about using crude language and blaming his team in public.
"Two weekends in a row I've been screwed now," he said, adding, "It hurts."
When pressed about why the pit-stop error had occurred, he continued: "No idea. I was called into the box. I didn't make the call. I got called. They should have been ready. It hurts. It hurts."
Christian Horner, his team director, unhappy about the team failure, but equally unhappy about Ricciardo's reaction, responded in a coolly calculated team statement after the race: "We as a team owe Daniel a huge apology today, as we failed to support him in the way we did to get him to his first pole position yesterday."
The signal was clear: It was thanks to a team effort that the driver was on pole in the first place, and any victory is also thanks to the team.
Still, Ricciardo's anger was understandable. Once again, as in 2014, the Australian might have been the only driver to beat Mercedes. He would have had two victories. Instead, he now had none.
A driver who rose slowly up the racing ranks is coming into his own.
Ricciardo started by entering his own outdated Formula Ford in the Australian championship in 2005. The next year, he finished third in the Formula BMW Asia series. In 2008, he won the Formula Renault 2.0 series in Europe, and in 2009, he won the British Formula 3 series.
Ricciardo was signed as a test driver for Red Bull and Toro Rosso. Midway through the 2011 season, he was hired to race for the rest of the season at the now defunct HRT team. He joined Toro Rosso the following year and spent two years there. In 2014, Ricciardo was called to join Red Bull after Mark Webber, another Australian, announced his retirement.
It was a surprise that he won the only three races not won that year by Mercedes drivers – the Canadian, Hungarian and Belgian Grands Prix – and that he overshadowed Vettel.
Now, as Formula One arrives at the Italian Grand Prix, Ricciardo is in third position in the series, behind Hamilton and Rosberg. While Verstappen has continued to prove his worth, Ricciardo has shown that he is not yet finished.
"There's an argument I am now going beyond a level I thought was there," Ricciardo said. "It's a tough one, because I always like to think I am pushing myself to my limit, but the human body is interesting, so maybe there is always more."
The New York Times