Daniel Ricciardo biography
Daniel Ricciardo is an Australian Formula 1 driver who currently competes for the McLaren F1 team, a squad he joined in 2021. The Australian started his career in the 2011 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, with the HRT team. A member of the Red Bull Junior Team back then, Ricciardo then joined the Scuderia Toro Rosso in the 2012 campaign.
The first points of his career came in the 2012 Australian Grand Prix when he finished ninth in his first home race and his first race with the Scuderia Toro Rosso. After 10 races without finishing in the Top 10 in the 2012 Formula 1 season, he returned to the points at the crazy 2012 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, when he finished ninth again.
Ricciardo scored points in five of the last nine races in 2012, and ended the year with 10 points. He would double that tally in the 2013 F1 season, when he scored 20 points for Toro Rosso and achieved a couple of seventh places, his best results at that time. When fellow Australian Mark Webber announced his retirement at the end of 2013, Ricciardo was named as Webber’s replacement and he would be the teammate of then reigning four-time champion Sebastian Vettel from 2014 on at Red Bull.
Ricciardo started 2014 with mixed feelings, as he crossed the line in the 2014 Australian round, his debut race with Red Bull, in a podium place (something never achieved by an Australian driver at the home event before), but was later disqualified for a fuel flow infringement. After another pointless outing, with a DNF in Malaysia, Ricciardo put together a couple of fourth-places at Bahrain and China, and then scored his first podium at Spain, and followed it up with another third-place finish at Monaco.
Ricciardo’s first win in Formula 1
Ricciardo’s first career win in Formula 1 came in the 2014 Canadian Grand Prix, and he would repeat the feat four races later at the 2014 Hungarian Grand Prix, while also following that up with his second win in a row, after taking P1 in the 2014 Belgian Grand Prix. Ricciardo ended 2014 in third place in the World Drivers’ Championship, comfortably ahead of his teammate and being the only driver to win a race apart from the Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton (11) and Nico Rosberg (five).
The 2015 season was difficult for Red Bull, and the Australian only scored a couple of podiums and finished behind his teammate Daniil Kvyat in the WDC. He returned to victory in the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix, and then won the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. In the 2018 Formula 1 season, Ricciardo won two of the first six races, at China and Monaco, and looked like a possible contender for the WDC that year. However, his final year at Red Bull was a total mess, with him running into lots of mechanical issues throughout the season, and his departure to Renault was also announced way before the campaign ended.
Daniel Ricciardo Teams In Formula 1
With Renault, Ricciardo stayed for a couple of years, and he managed to score a couple of podiums for the French brand in the 2020 F1 season, at the Nurburgring and Imola. He switched to McLaren in 2021 and has been with the team in the last two campaigns. Although he had a rough start to the 2021 season and couldn’t match his teammate Lando Norris’ pace, Ricciardo had a brilliant weekend during the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, and he ultimately led a McLaren 1-2 at Monza, achieving the eight Grand Prix win of his career and the first for McLaren since 2012.
After leaving Red Bull, Ricciardo showed some extraordinary helmet designs, expressing the freedom he seemed to have after his departure from the Austrian team. His helmets with Renault were quite stunning and unique, and included phrases that seemed quite important for him personally, such as ‘Stop being Them’ in the 2019 design, ‘Become Unstuck’ in 2020 and ‘All Good, All Ways’ in 2021.
In the 2022 season, Daniel Ricciardo has scored eight points in three races and is 11th in the World Drivers’ Championship.
