The story of the “Goodbye Daniel Ricciardo” books at F1’s U.S. GP

In the fan zone at the Circuit of the Americas, next to a jar of earplugs and a few feet from an industrial sized jug of free sunscreen, sat a 3-inch thick book with heavy blank white pages. Fans were shuffling from the midday heat into the tent where the book sat, writing notes in Sharpie to Daniel Ricciardo, the man whose absence hung over the race weekend like a loved one lost.

“You were my first F1 favorite driver,” read one note in the book. “R.I.R. (Rest in Retirement),” another. “Come to COTA to see you & you weren’t here…so sad.”

It wasn’t hard to see all the signs that Ricciardo was meant to be at the U.S. Grand Prix. Literally, Ricciardo’s illustrated, Stetson-wearing face stood out front-and-center on a printed fabric mural of F1 drivers (all wearing cowboy gear) covering a fence at Turn 15. Saturday, in downtown Austin, Ricciardo’s clothing brand Enchanté launched a pop up store with a new capsule collection, conspicuously minus the man himself. Ricciardo facetimed a few lucky fans who’d lined up early for the opening, but otherwise the shop stayed a shop for the weekend. And that was him on the COTA website’s schedule of weekend events, wearing a University of Texas jersey and smiling next to a note about the driver’s parade happening from 12 to 12:30 on Sunday (just before the Globe of Death).

There had even been a rumor that Ricciardo was meant to receive the keys to the city — though when reached for comment, the mayor’s office responded that this was “news” to them.

And then there were the books. Twelve in total — thick black hardcovers sandwiching 600 pages of pristine paper, strewn throughout the fan areas surrounding the track. Signs touting “Letters to Cowboy Ric from Austin”, also featuring another illustrated Ricciardo-as-cowpoke, stood outside the tents. By Sunday morning three had been completely filled, with notes from fans claiming to be from Argentina, Israel, the UK, and beyond.

The books themselves had been the slightly off-handed idea of Bobby Epstein, chairman of COTA.

“We did it for the fans, but we did it for him, is really why we did it,” Epstein explained. “I feel like he’s made so many contributions to our event and to the spirit of sport that we didn’t want to see him walk away and not know that he was appreciated and loved and beloved. And if he’s not gonna have a…