Daniel Ricciardo should go down as one of the best and most consequential drivers of the past 15 years in Formula 1, even if results of more recent times may not have reflected the talent he had.
Ricciardo’s departure from RB — finally confirmed on Thursday — was a prolonged farce that forced him into a tearful and undignified exit at the Singapore Grand Prix, where Red Bull left him to fend off swirling rumours about his future in the build-up to the event and then let him go into the race without clarity on where he stood. After the race and his now-famous fastest-lap sign-off, it was clear Ricciardo knew what almost everyone else did: his world championship career was over.
F1 drivers come and go, but the reaction to Ricciardo’s departure — an outpouring of affection for the Australian and considerable frustration at how Red Bull treated one of the sport’s favourite characters — proved he has been one of the few who can say he truly resonated with F1’s fanbase.
On a pure performance level, many would happily take the stats Ricciardo walks away with: 257 race starts with five different teams, eight wins, three pole positions and 32 visits to the podium, many of which featured his famous shoey celebration: the act of chugging champagne from his sweaty race boot and, occasionally, getting the likes of Lewis Hamilton to begrudgingly go along with him.
It’s a sight we haven’t seen in a while. His unlikely win for McLaren at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix was his last appearance on an F1 podium.
The previous seven wins came with the Red Bull family that treated him so poorly at the end. That stint with Red Bull between 2014 and 2018 seems like a distant memory, and given his struggles with McLaren and RB, it would be easy to forget how good Prime Ricciardo was — in fact, some might not have seen it at all.
The perpetually grinning Australian can be given at least some of the credit for the wave of popularity F1 continues to ride into the middle of this decade. The genesis of that boom is usually considered to have been the Netflix smash hit series “Drive to Survive,” which turned Ricciardo from an ambitious racing driver into a bonafide superstar. He was the first driver to realise the opportunity that the streaming service was providing him and his fellow competitors, and he grabbed it with both hands.
His endearing personality shone through in the first season, which featured the decision to leave Red Bull for Renault as a major…
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