Written by Alejandra Guajardo Lozano, Edited by Tarun Suresh
When Daniel Ricciardo was booted out of Formula 1 in 2022, everyone thought he was done for. But the honey badger made a comeback to the sport less than a year later with the Red Bull family. He joined Alpha Tauri (now Visa Cash App Racing Bulls) alongside Yuki Tsunoda.
He suffered an unlucky injury that left him on the sidelines for some races, but he managed to return to the grid for the second time in a year. This season, the Australian has had some highlights, especially at the Miami sprint where he delivered a masterclass drive finishing P4, showing that he still had the ability to deliver surprising results.
However, his demonstrations do not come so often. In an interview with F1.com, Ricciardo admitted he has not been performing at the best level:
“[It’s] my biggest frustration,” the VCARB driver told Lawrence Barretto.
“It’s a frustration because I look at myself in the mirror and say I can do this very, very well so how do I make sure I do it consistently? Because if I do, I’m laughing. But it’s more positive than negative.
“There will be a day when I won’t be able to do it as good, but I’m much rather have these sporadic good days that it shows I’ve still got those capabilities to do something great – and then it’s up to me to unlock it more often.”
Ricciardo has scored 11 points this season while Tsunoda has scored 20. Even so, Ricciardo is the more experienced driver and surely has a lot to teach a younger Tsunoda. The Japanese driver told the media, including RacingNews365, that he has learned a lot as Ricciardo is a “more complete driver”:
"I think we have good communication and we're able to always turn it around in the week, and in qualifying we were able to put it all together as a set-up and everything.”
So that will, for sure, affect consistency. And I think also he's more of a complete driver in general, like his emotional control, everything.”
"For example, last couple of years, I started in a pretty bad position, especially with my emotional control. How much you can be consistent throughout the weeks, and after he became my team-mate, he is very, very strong at that and was doing much better than me.
“For sure, those things I learnt, I got from him which affected my consistency throughout the year, especially my emotional control will affect the performance moods throughout the week. I think just for me, being able to grow race by race from his performance knowledge and everything."
The Australian driver still has a lot to offer, even when higher-ups like Helmut Marko publicly say his seat is at risk; he believes his time is not up yet.
“There will be tough days ahead, there will be lows, but I still love the anticipation of a race week. I love the opportunity,” Ricciardo said. “There’s the curiosity – could this week be a standout week, could something special happen? I still believe it can – so that’s where that excitement still lies and remains.
“The competition is great. Of course, I have won before, and I love nothing more than winning, but right now, scoring points is our little victory – so that’s the fight. If I have managed to do that, I’ll leave the track happy – and I’m sure I’ll have fun doing it.”
Ricciardo is still striving every day to be better than every driver in the sport. After all, F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport.
“A few things have [changed],” he admitted. “It was after Monaco – I was scratching my head a little bit. I felt like I was at the race weekend – I was ready to go, but the results weren’t really coming. With the help of my team and people around me, I tried to address and see how I can change some other things.
For example, one [thing I’ve changed] – when I got back in last year, I decided to do things on my own for a bit, do my training. I felt I had been doing it long enough and felt I knew what I need. It worked for me a little bit.”
“But now I’ve started more full-time working with Pyry (Ricciardo’s performance coach). He’s always been at track with me since I got back, but I’m utilising his expertise a bit more.
Ultimately, it’s just remaining open minded. Even if six months ago something worked great, it doesn’t mean it will now. So I’m just trying to search everywhere, where I can find a few per cent here, a few per cent there.”
Ricciardo is an eight-time Grand Prix winner. He was considered a championship contender at some point during his years at Red Bull. With a huge question mark over Red Bull’s second seat, the Australian has a spark of hope of returning to the team that gave him seven of his eight wins.
He just has to start delivering results more often to prove he is still the Ricciardo that once placed himself third in the driver standings.
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