Ricciardo and abstinence from GP: "In Melbourne I'll understand how I'm doing"

Daniel Ricciardo was one of the great protagonists in the presentation event of the new season organized in New York by Red Bull. The Australian, who grew up in the Austrian team’s Academy and who remained in the Milton Keynes team from 2014 to 2018, returned to the fold this year after unfortunate experiences in Renault and above all McLaren. However, as known, after the separation that took place with the Woking team, the Honey Badger was no longer able to find a starting seat, surprisingly agreeing to take the third guide for the team directed by Christian Horner. A particular situation for the one who remains the only driver to have beaten Max Verstappen for points obtained with equal half over an entire season.

In order to guarantee himself a chance to return to F1 in 2024, Ricciardo refused proposals that came from other motorsport categories, accepting the ‘torture’ of living a year within one of the strongest teams on the entire grid without having the possibility to compete. The Perth boy’s stop also has ‘therapeutic’ functions, given that the Australian driver himself clearly made it clear that he had suffered a lot mentally during the last year. The first part of the 2023 season will therefore also serve Ricciardo to understand if that still burns inside him fire of competition which is the gasoline needed by any top-level athlete.

The eight-time F1 Grand Prix winner spoke to the site about it MotorsportWeek, indicating his home weekend in Melbourne as the first real moment in which he will be able to draw an ’emotional’ balance of this year away from the races. “I will watch the first race from a TV – revealed the pilot aussie – so i think this will start to warm up some feeling inside of me. Then I will be in Melbourne and that will be the first race I will attend. I think the atmosphere, the noise, the smell and all the context will probably play its part and we’ll see if I’m excited and eager to get back to racing or if I’m just happy to be a spectator for a while longer. I think Melbourne will tell me a lot”ruled Ricciardo.