DR x GQ

Back on track: Daniel Ricciardo on fame, failure and why he’s not done racing yet

A few hours outside of Perth, on a spit of land fashioned into a hobby farm, Daniel Ricciardo is living his life untethered. It’s 2022 and he has just been axed, publicly and decisively, from McLaren’s Formula One team following a lacklustre season. After a year of bad races, long flights and endless interviews, he has returned to his Western Australian paradise to recalibrate and he is switched off.

Ricciardo’s days go a little like this: a slow morning that wakes up with coffee, followed by a bracing morning dip. Then, dirt bikes or horse riding, a fishing trip, maybe a visit to a friend down south in Margaret River. He’ll treat himself to a beer or two, a good meal, and then his ultimate indulgence: watching a sun slip low underneath the horizon, giving way to an unobstructed spray of stars in the night sky, every corner lit up.

You might not guess from the private planes and celebrity shoulder-rubbing that his nine million fans see on his Instagram, but this could be Ricciardo’s favourite way to spend an evening, stargazing beneath a western sky. Out here, hours away from the city, the gleam is brighter than any racetrack starting light.

“I was burnt out,” he tells GQ of his sojourn away from the track. “I needed to just be home and not have a schedule, not have anywhere to be, not have any pressure—from anyone.”

The lack of schedule took a bit of getting used to. With the year’s 22 grand prix events scattered across the globe and any downtime scripted into media opps and partnership obligations, Ricciardo was used to living life at one speed: breakneck.

But this forced hiatus pumped the brakes. Not only was he not planning anything, he wasn’t even planning to plan something. Ricciardo made a decision to step away from the sport during the break, if only to prove he really wanted it in the first place. “I consciously didn’t think about [Formula One] because I wanted to really remove myself from it and switch off. I wanted to find out … Do I truly miss it? It kind of felt like a cleanse,” he says.

And he needed a cleanse—badly. Not only had 2022 been a disappointing year results-wise, it was also mentally draining, the pressure building from both the inside and out.

This, of course, was the story with Ricciardo and McLaren. When he and the car clicked, they clicked hard. Pushing into fourth place at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, 13 top-10 finishes, and—of course—his famous Monza win, Champagne frothing in a race boot, the taste of victory so sharp and sweet that the shoey may as well have been a crystal chalice.

But when it was bad, it was really bad. 2021 was a year of learning (“Definitely not a disaster, but ... I think we all came in with high hopes and they were only met a handful of times”), then came 2022, with all its new expectations.

In Formula One, 10 teams race two drivers, who fight over a length of about 305 kilometres for positions one to 20. In the numbers, there’s no place to hide and Ricciardo’s 2022 was on stark display: P14, Did Not Finish, a rare bright spot in P6, P18, P13, P12, DNF, P13, P17, DNF. You get the idea. No matter what Ricciardo did, he struggled to climb up through the leaderboard the way his peers were.

“I felt like the season started a bit more competitively and then it started to get away from us more and more. At that point, I think on both sides we were just a bit at a loss. Clearly I’m starting to lose confidence in myself, in the team around me. I think they’re losing confidence in me and what they’re doing. It started to feel like a very uphill battle,” he says.

“The moment I knew where it was too far gone is, if I was still qualifying behind Lando [Norris, his McLaren teammate], but maybe only two-tenths [of a second] behind him instead of five-tenths, that was now seen as a good job. That’s just not how it is. [If you’re] any little bit behind your teammate, it’s never good enough. I realised … no one really expects me to be beating him now.”

At about the midpoint of the season, when he hadn’t managed to put his MCL36 any higher than sixth, McLaren and Ricciardo came to a mutual decision to terminate his contract a year early.

Some 25 years earlier, far from the sunny streets of Monaco or the sprawling British countryside, Ricciardo had found his love of racing hiding in Western Australian suburbia.

His dad, Italian-born Giuseppe (or “Joe”), raced a little bit. Ricciardo spent long hours trackside with his family, watching the cars blur around the track. Spectating led to karting when he was about nine. And while he dabbled in tennis and AFL, the typical appetite of a sporty teenager from Duncraig, nothing seemed to top racing.

But unlike AFL and tennis, translating karting from a weekend hobby to something more serious is difficult. Australia had at that point only produced 12 F1 drivers since 1950, but the lack of racing presence wasn’t a deterrent for Ricciardo. Instead it was a challenge.

“Growing up, I played nearly every sport,” says Ricciardo. “What drew me to racing was also that not many had done it. It was a little bit left of field, a little bit less obvious. And I think for me as a kid I was like, ‘Oh, that’s even cooler’.”

It was quite a change from Duncraig to the European leagues where racers go to be made. When Ricciardo raced in Australia, it was in beat-up karts around the tracks of Wanneroo, lined with painted tyres and old oil marks. When his peers karted, it was down Avenue de Monte-Carlo on the French Riviera. Those promising drivers were climbing into formula cars at 13. By comparison, Ricciardo didn’t see the leather until he was 16.

Which was possibly what made his ascent into the league even more impressive. In 2005, a 16-year-old Ricciardo raced a 15-year-old Van Diemen RF90 in the Western Australian Formula Ford Championship, where his name started to make waves. A turn in the national championship, and a few subsequent impressive performances funded a 12-month trip to Italy, where he raced in the Formula Renault 2.0 Italia series. His sharp, pacey driving got him picked up by the Red Bull Junior Team in 2008, Hispania Racing Team in 2011 (with whom he made his F1 debut at the legendary Silverstone circuit), and then Toro Rosso in 2012.

Toro Rosso was a handy home for Ricciardo. His seat at the sister team to Red Bull allowed his skill to flourish while he watched from the wings, his idols and rivals racing in the navy and red; Mark Webber, Ricciardo’s countryman, among them. It was Webber that Ricciardo eventually replaced in 2014, the younger Australian’s aggression and dynamism winning out and landing him that coveted Red Bull seat next to the four-time F1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel.

Ricciardo’s five years at Red Bull could maybe be summarised as this: his promising ascent, being groomed as an heir apparent under Vettel, was interrupted by the arrival of Max Verstappen in 2016. The then 18-year-old’s talent immediately shot him to the top, ahead of Ricciardo. His transition from first to second driver was peppered with collisions between the teammates, both on and off field. Ricciardo parted ways with the team in 2018 to seek greener pastures at Renault, while Verstappen has gone on to win three consecutive World Championships with Red Bull.

At Renault, Ricciardo once again took the position of first driver over his teammates and found space to move. He took Renault from a back-of-the-grid team to fighting in the middle, managing 22, top-10 finishes and two podiums. During his tenure in the black and yellow, the Australian was widely considered to be a top-five driver, one perhaps destined for World Championship glory.

Maybe it was the call of that championship, maybe it was the prestige of the team—the same one that made champions out of legends Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost—but in 2021, after two years of racing for Renault, Ricciardo signed with McLaren. The rest is history.

4/5

Jacket by Fendi; Prince of Wales check jacket by Burberry; leather T-shirt by Bottega Veneta; necklace by Cartier; necklace by Paspaley.

Ricciardo looks good in an AlphaTauri. After taking five races off after breaking his wrist in a collision, he finished 2023 with a string of valuable performances: P15, P13, P14, P11, including a P7 in Mexico, the team’s best finish of the season between either driver. He has been outspoken in his desire to finish out his career where he started, at Red Bull, openly chasing the seat of the underperforming Sergio Perez.

“As it stands, it is believed Ricciardo tops senior management’s list of suitable replacements,” wrote F1 expert Lawrence Barretto of the speculation.

“The Australian will need to get back to his very best this year, and with many insiders feeling his AlphaTauri team will make a big step forward this year in terms of competitiveness, there’s a strong chance he’ll deliver.”

But even if that doesn’t work out, Ricciardo has achieved something most drivers never will: superstardom. In 2019, Netflix premiered Drive to Survive, a documentary-style series about the inner workings of Formula One. The once opaque sport suddenly opened up, its private stars becoming main characters as the world was introduced to the high-octane, dramatic world of racing. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Ricciardo came out of it on top. While many were more attracted to the softly spoken and handsome Charles Leclerc or the legendary Lewis Hamilton, Ricciardo’s aggressive driving and high-beam smile won over fans. And then, seemingly overnight, the sport flung open the saloon doors to let everyone in.

“It was nearly an overnight change,” says Ricciardo of the rise in popularity. “There were some cities you’d go to where no one would recognise you—America definitely [was like that]—and now you’re going to cities that you wouldn’t think had any idea about Formula One, and there’s people running across the road trying to get a photo.”

Luckily, the headrush of fans navigating oncoming traffic for a selfie hasn’t gotten to him—at least according to Aussie snowboarding champion Scotty James, one of Ricciardo’s best friends.

“It’s strange because he doesn’t look to have gotten any bigger, physically. But his head doesn’t fit through doorways anymore since fame has escalated,” James jokes.

“If anything I have noticed DR is more critical about what’s important to him, who he surrounds himself with and most importantly, not forgetting where he came from. Being a good person, genuine and true to himself regardless of the craziness is a quality I admire greatly about him.”

This genuineness isn’t something reserved for his mates, either. When he’s in America, rodeoing in Texas or laying low in California, Americans love him. He appears on talk shows and podcasts, people stop him in restaurants to shake his hand. Most of the drivers live in skinny jeans and T-shirts (Lewis Hamilton notwithstanding) but Ricciardo was invited to the Met Gala, dressed by legendary American designer Thom Browne. When he appeared on the cover of US digital platform GQ Hype in 2022, they labelled him “America’s First Formula 1 Superstar”.

“He combines the perfect amount of playfulness, cockiness and self-awareness,” says actor and podcaster Dax Shepard, another of Ricciardo’s close friends. “I call him the Shaquille O’Neal of Formula One. He seems to be having more fun than everyone else. Don’t we all hope to be having that much fun?”

It’s hard to disagree. It’s there in the way he carries himself on the track, the shoeys or the custom helmets emblazoned with images of his own face or one bearing the scribble F.E.A. (Fuck ’Em All). His social media presence is goofy and earnest: grinning ear-to-ear, an arm around a mate, or posting perhaps-too-close selfies following a good race (or even a bad one).

Off track, things have been just as spirited. There’s his Enchanté clothing line, Ricciardo’s wine collaboration with St Hugo, or the production of a Hulu series about racing. But if 2022 taught him anything, it’s that he wants to keep racing as his No.1 priority.
“Nearly losing a seat made me realise that those things could potentially be there post racing, but the racing, that’s only there for maybe a few more years. So I don’t want to lose sight of that. I’m just trying to check myself with those things and make sure I don’t stretch myself too much.”

It’s a good play in the modern context of F1. Like any sport, each year becomes more gruelling. The seasons grow longer, more grands prix, more media, more commitments. Drivers used to show up, race and go home. Now they star in TikToks and react to thirsty tweets on YouTube. They’re required to do interview upon interview, meet with fans, promote whichever product has signed on for that year’s livery sponsorship. And then they have to get into the car and throw themselves at 250km/h around a hairpin turn, while the internet critiques their performances in real time.

Ricciardo is aware that not only is the sport bigger and more glamorous than ever, it’s also far meaner and under much closer scrutiny. It’s why, when we ask about the legacy he’s building, he maintains that it’s all about putting in the effort.

“Ultimately I owe my parents for teaching me the right amount of discipline and teaching me the value of a dollar. You work hard, you get rewarded,” he says. “I tell younger kids, ‘Don’t just think big picture and about becoming an F1 driver or becoming an AFL player. A lot of the time it’s associated with the fame, the money, the popularity. Ultimately, yes, these are all perks and it’s icing on a beautiful cake. But you’re chasing your dream. And if you do it well, you will have the opportunity to live a very comfortable life’. But I think it’s making sure that their priorities are right.”

To him, commitment is everything—commitment to your craft, commitment to your standards, the commitment to getting every last bit of it out. Right now, that’s what’s standing between him and the retirement finish line. It feels as though everyone and their mechanic has had some sort of discussion around Ricciardo’s hypothetical retirement. But when put to the man himself, it’s simple: he’s not done yet.

“I hope the day I choose to retire is because I’ve exhausted myself from it. I’ve gone all in, I’ve put every bit of heart and soul into it. And then I’m at a point where I’m so content that it’s like, ‘I’ve done all I can. That’s it’. I close the book and then I move on to chapter three in my life,” he explains. “Ultimately, I still feel like I’ve got something left on the table. That’s really the simple answer. I believe I can still win races.”

Ricciardo is teeing up for another big year. A year of races, a year of wins and no doubt losses, another 100 flights and 25 grands prix, each one promising its own possibilities. Maybe there will be a chance at the Red Bull seat, maybe there won’t. Either way, he will be there for the ride, eyes on the track, the WA farm in his rear-view mirror, for now.