The Rise & Fall & Rise of Ricciardo

“The Honey Badger” is back in Formula 1 after a sour season at McLaren last year. The man paying the price “effective immediately” for his re-entry to the top echelon of motor racing is Nyck de Vries.

The loneliness of the long distance runner is matched only by the ruthlessness of Red Bull racing academy.

Ricciardo, from Perth in Western Australia, started karting when he was 9-years-old and raced in the Australian Formula Ford Championship before embarking on his European journey.

He joined the Red Bull junior program after finishing sixth in the 2007 Formula Renault 2.0 Italia Championship. He was winless but scored six top-five finishes.

For 2008 Red Bull placed him in the main European iteration of the same series. He won four of the first six races. Two more wins, including the season finale in Barcelona, helped Ricciardo secure runner-up position; only three points behind championship winning driver, Valtteri Bottas.

Ricciardo raced to championship success in the 2009 British Formula 3 with Carlin racing team. He won three of the first four races, three additional wins saw him finish the season with an impressive 87-point lead over second place driver, Austrian Walter Grubmüller.

In 2010, the ever smiling Aussie mate was placed by Red Bull with the French Toulouse-based Tech1 team to compete in Formula Renault 3.5, aka World Series by Renault. He won four races – including the prestigious
Monaco round – but lost the championship in the season finale by two points to Russian racer Mikhail Aleshin.

Ricciardo’s first foray into Formula 1 came at Silverstone in the 2011 British Grand Prix with the now defunct Spanish team HRT. The team was perpetually short on pesos so not much was expected in terms of points-finishing performances. The best he could do was 18th – at Hungaroring and in the inaugural Indian Grand Prix in Delhi.

In 2012, Red Bull put him in their junior squad at Toro Rosso. Ricciardo started the season on a high note, scoring a couple of points in the season opener on home soil. Next pair of points will not come till Round 12 at Spa-Francorchamps.

In the Drivers’ Championship he finished 18th with 10 points, six points behind teammate Jean-Eric Vergne.

Both Ricciardo and Vergne were retained by the Toro Rosso team for the 2013 season. Seventh in China and Monza were Ricciardo’s best results. This time he finished ahead of Vergne, the Australian scoring 20 points for 14th place in the championship against 13 points for the French driver.

Ricciardo Rising

Few expected the “Smiling Assassin” to deliver a lethal blow when he was promoted to the all conquering Red Bull team, especially against their original wunderkind, Sebastian Vettel, who had delivered four-in-a-row Drivers’ titles to the Austrian-owned energy drinks company.

Incredibly, Ricciardo shocked the monkey and their top jockey by winning three races (maiden win came in Montreal) while Vettel would go winless in 2014. Ricciardo placed third in the championship with three wins and 238 points. Vettel was fifth with 167 points, and at the end of the season left Red Bull to ride a Prancing Horse.

The 2015 season was winless and Ricciardo reached the podium in only two races, Hungary and Singapore. The following season he returned to the top step of the podium in the heat and humidity of Sepang circuit in Malaysia. He was again third in the championship behind the two Mercedes drivers, championship winning Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.

By now there was additional heat that Danny boy was feeling as the Fahrenheit was constantly rising in the form of the new Red Bull junior at Toro Rosso – Max Verstappen.

The Dutch teenager’s victory in the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix on debut for Red Bull started a Barry White-like Love Unlimited Orchestra – still in full swing – at the team.

Max took two wins in 2017, Malaysia and Mexico, while Ricciardo’s only success was in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Ricciardo had the upper hand in the championship, finishing fifth with 200 points compared to sixth and 168 points for Max.

What a difference a year makes. The tango in Baku in 2018 with Max and subsequent lack of support from the team (think Webber & Vettel in Turkey) convinced Ricciardo to get out of the kitchen. He cooked – what many considered ill advised – a new lucrative deal to join Renault. Two wins were scored during the season in Shanghai and Monte Carlo. He finished sixth in the championship on 170 points. Max was fourth with 249 points.

The yellow submarine was not expected to appear in the winning docks anytime soon but Ricciardo won a bet with team principal Cyril Abiteboul
and delivered a couple of podiums in his second year (2020) with the team – Nürburgring and Imola.

His next stop was a multi-year deal with McLaren. In the 2021 Italian Grand Prix he beat pole man Max to deliver McLaren’s first Grand Prix victory since Jenson Button at Interlagos in 2012. He was again feeling intense competition from another whipper snapper from within the team. Lando Norris scored 160 points to finish sixth in the championship while Ricciardo was eighth on 115 points.

Tumble Dry

The 2022 season was a nightmare for the “Honey Badger”. He scored only 37 points to finish 11th in the championship. Teammate Norris scored 122 points for seventh in the final standings.

Ricciardo’s biggest supporter at McLaren, team principal Zak was no longer asking ‘what can Brown do for you?’ Instead, he put a tracer on fellow Aussie Oscar Piastri to grab him from Alpine and handed Ricciardo an envelope with the termination of contract and a healthy payout.

Nyck de Fired

The lackluster performance in the opening 10 races of this season of the 2022 Monza Magic Man Nyck de Vries came under scrutiny of Dr. Marko, the late Dietrich Mateschitz, appointed Red Bull advisor and slasher.

The Dutch driver was the King of Karting in his younger days. He was in the McLaren Driver Development Program and managed by Anthony Hamilton (his son races in Formula 1 also).

De Vries was never a Red Bull junior but his debut at Monza last year in a Williams gave Dr Marko an opportunity to give him his big break for a full season. Alas, there are no guarantees of a full season under Dr Marko’s watchful eye. Ask Scott Speed, Jaime Alguersuari and many more.

Formula 1 is a cut throat and dog eat dog world. Performance is demanded each time a driver gets into the cockpit. Just as one performance impressed Dr. Marko last September, another one last week in testing at Silverstone by Ricciardo got his attention and machete.

Chop, chop goes de Vries. “The Smiling Assassin” will have to slay the Japanese dragon in the other Alpha Tauri “effective immediately.”

The world is watching – so is Sergio Perez.

– – Nasir Hameed.