The struggles to adapt to McLaren’s car,one honed by Norris that required a driving style alien to Ricciardo’s previous machines at Red Bull and Renault,were only matched by an unusual feeling of homesickness off it.
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For the first time in his career,his native Western Australia locked down with some of the harshest border restrictions anywhere in the world,Ricciardo couldn’t lean on friends and family and come home whenever a break in the schedule allowed. He had the time,means and will to return,but simply couldn’t.
Since he left Perth to start the pandemic-delayed 2020 season in Austria in July that year,Australia was largely off-limits. It was the longest period he’d not been home since leaving to race in Europe as a teenager in 2007,and it played on his mind.
When Ricciardo did eventually return to Perth for the first time in 18 months last December,two weeks of mandatory hotel quarantine prolonged the pain. One week after he had a front-row seat for the final-lap shootout for the world championship between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi,Ricciardo found himself staring at the walls of a Perth hotel room,his childhood friend turned performance coach Michael Italiano doing his own quarantine next door,his fatigued mind wandering with too much time on his hands either side of Christmas.
“Doing two weeks in hotel quarantine wasn’t easy,mostly because I was so close to being where I really wanted to be,” he says.
“I’m in an adjoining room with Michael and home,my family,is half an hour up the road … and I couldn’t be there. That was literally the hardest part. One weekend I’m on the grid in Abu Dhabi,the next Sunday I’m in quarantine in my home city and I’m not sick,but I can’t get out.
“That second week,I was very,very over it. If I was doing it in another city and my home wasn’t a short drive away,in some ways that would have been easier. But it made January sweeter when I got to be around family again,hanging out with my nephew and niece,those sorts of simple things.
“I was just happy to chill and just be present,in a way. It was what I needed,just switch off and enjoy what I’d been missing. Low-key,but I relished every day of it.“
The younger Ricciardo would have,as he puts it,“been stir-crazy,gone out and gone nuts” with his mates after two weeks in quarantine and nearly 18 months on the road,but the character-building 2021 season brought his longevity and F1 future into sharper focus.
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Now 32,Ricciardo can glance at the driver set to be the next Australian on the F1 scene,20-year-old Alpine reserve Oscar Piastri,and remember his first Australian Grand Prix on the cusp of being on the grid,when he was test driver for Scuderia Toro Rosso 11 years ago.
Now edging towards being inside the all-time top-10 for F1 races started,Ricciardo says age has made him more reflective. “The cliché is that a career goes quickly,and I did my first Australian GP when I was 22. I’m 33 this year … it feels like yesterday,but you realise a lot has changed professionally and personally,” he says.
“Australia 2012,I remember being on the grid in the Toro Rosso very vividly. Back then it was all about that race,then the next one and the one after that. That was a very young Daniel with no long-term focus. Now I’m at this different stage and I feel I get better at looking further ahead,but I’ve tried to keep the strengths and the energy that comes with being young,thinking young,when you’re just in love with every element of everything because it’s so new and exciting.
“Those days of being naïve and maybe a bit overexcited are some of the most carefree days,and sometimes it helps to break everything down,go back to basics,and remember why we’re here. I try to keep elements of that.”