Daniel Ricciardo opens up on making a return to F1 and when that motivation came through in these six months, as he adds on AlphaTauri move.
In his first interview since the announcement of a F1 return with AlphaTauri in place of Nyck de Vries from next weekend’s Hungarian GP, Ricciardo recalls the moment he was asked to sign up and the motivation that re-started in the past six months.
He talks about attending Super Bowl which slowly started the fire and the subsequent attendance in the Australian GP and Monaco GP further fuelled the fire to make his F1 return and he now has that same enthusiasm as he had before to drive these cars.
He knows that driving that AlphaTauri car will be a challenge since it is not the best on the grid and his main aim will be to finish in the Top 10 and help the F1 team to take a good development path to improve its performances in the long run.
Call with Helmut Marko –
“It’s good, it’s really good. I enjoyed this… Call it six months off – I think it was really good for me. But the more races I started to attend, the more sim I started to do, I was certainly getting the bug back, so to speak. Then jumping into the car a few days ago, I was like, ‘Oh yeah!’, it all felt very normal. It was one of those ones, the very first lap, ‘Oh, this is fast!’, then within a few it’s, ‘OK, I want to go faster now!’, so it was really good. I was like, ‘OK, let’s just hear what he has to say’. I think that’s probably the best thing, because sometimes you’re trying to prepare yourself, ‘What if he asks for this?’ So [I thought], ‘Let’s just hear him out and see what happens’.
“I didn’t really need to think much about it. I think, as well, being back in this family, I feel so much… I would say there’s certainly some familiarity, but I also feel at home, I feel like I’m kind of just going through it all again. These were the calls I used to get and these were the moments they used to kind of throw in front of us. There was no question that I was going to say yes, it was just I guess the reality of, ‘OK, it’s going to happen pretty soon’.
“Getting back to Red Bull and just kind of the reception I had walking back into that team was really kind of, in a positive way, a little bit overwhelming. Then getting back on the sim, I was still a bit unsure how it was going to go, if the car would feel like it used to, if I was going to be, for the lack of better words, like the old me. Once I’d done a few sim sessions and started feeling like myself again, it then just kind of brought me back to normal Daniel, where I was falling back in love and ready to go again.”
Driving the current AlphaTauri car –
“The car will be what it is. I’m going to drive it and work from there. I don’t want to get too much… Preconceived ideas. I appreciate the car’s going to have its limitations. I’m sure they’re probably just lacking some overall downforce and things like this, but I think if it’s a car that feels balanced – it might not have as much grip as the Red Bull I drove a few days ago – that’s something I can work with. I’m looking forward to also developing it and using my experience, and ultimately, I think, for Budapest, just go out and have fun, try and use more right foot than left and have a good time!”
Thoughts of using the platform for Red Bull drive –
“That’s why it feels a bit like back when I was working my way up through it, in the Red Bull family. That was it, ‘If you get results, we’ll keep pushing you, we’ll keep pushing you’. That’s really like the mindset. I know the team… It’s been tough to get a points finish this year, a top 10, so to push this car and try to get it inside the top 10, I think that would get everyone pretty fulfilled and excited.”
Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrxsVmZjjVA
Here’s Daniel Ricciardo visiting Faenza
Here’s drivers reacting to Nyck de Vries getting out
Here’s news on Daniel Ricciardo replacing Nyck de Vries
