Daniel Ricciardo Probably Won’t Be Third Time Lucky

From the outset, it is abundantly clear as to where might the fan’s interest lie for the 2024 Formula 1 World championship.

There’s going to be, and rather expectedly, a huge faction of fans whose interest area will be about whether Max Verstappen can clinch a fourth title? Remember, it was thanks to his sheer dominance, leading seventy five percent of the 2023 laps overall that ensured that Red Bull won over 95 percent of all the races held last year.

Then, there’ll be a section of fans, another racing obsessed faction, for whom whether Lewis Hamilton can forge a comeback and claim that elusive eighth driver’s world title will be the biggest reason to follow the new season.

For most others, Leclerc and Lando and what might they possibly do to curb the dominant Red Bull show, might become the biggest reason to follow F1 in 2024.

But away from the usual dominant subjects, if there’s a person who’ll be quite keen on the brand new F1 season much like any other spectator, then it will be Daniel Ricciardo himself.

The former Red Bull driver who has against his name 8 race wins and 32 career podiums has established a cult following being in the sport for now over a decade. In this period of being funny, goofy even, but without a speck of doubt, an ultra competitive racer, Daniel Ricciardo made the art of overtaking an inveterate habit.

He popularised triple overtaking as seen at previous events like Baku. But after no fewer than 240 race entries, from which he’s registered 239 starts, Daniel Ricciardo can’t sit comfortably with a bent back and amid much joy and delight.

For he could well be driving his final season unless something miraculous collided with other drivers on the grid and conquered the decision makers’ mind so as to allow the Aussie yet more continued run at the top of the Motorsport drawer.

For a driver who was with Toro Rosso once upon a time, Ricciardo upped his game and prove to be a worthy challenger to Verstappen at Red Bull. It’s where he showed Horner, the fans and those who came to believe in the prowess of the Honeybadger, that pure racing was his calling.

He was fast. At times, too fast for even Hamilton, Vettel and Raikkonen to challenge. Events like China 2017 and Azerbaijan and later, Monaco 2018, proved his mettle.

A bigger calling, or so one felt, came with McLaren. Ricciardo, after feeling not quite comfortable, got going at Monza in 2021, where he won a belter of a contest. The event is still noted for two contrasting images, the former- Verstappen landing on top of Lewis Hamilton in the midst of the contest and the latter, Ricciardo acing one of the fastest tracks on the calendar in a McLaren.

But that’s not all.

Daniel Ricciardo got a third time lucky, where despite having raced at one of the greatest sporting outfits in F1 and hugely underperforming, he got another shot at the sport at the erstwhile AlphaTauri for 2023. That’s after spending a few months just wondering about what might happen to him in the highest annals of Grand Prix racing.

For someone who got millions transferred to his bank account for simply leaving McLaren, could Daniel Ricciardo ever dub his stint with the iconic British marquee a success? Then to arrive at AlphaTauri only to get injured sadly and having to sit outside for much of what was to follow in 2023 was perhaps more insult to injury than a comeback to racing of sorts.

But in 2024, with the realisation that someone much younger and perhaps just as talented in Liam Lawson hasn’t been contended with and the Perth-born has been given yet another chance, Daniel Ricciardo can’t take things for granted.

He’d know that Yuki, his teammate, is clearly the more experienced draw at the Visa Cash App RB team, whatever that name is. What he’d also know, in addition to the fact that Tsunoda had more points in 2023 than he himself, is that 2024 will be the final chance to prove a point.

While surely strange are the ways of F1 in that even those labelled too old for racing show the world how it’s done, think for instance about the legendary Fernando Alonso, it would be a fool’s ploy to tread carelessly in the pinnacle of racing.

The newly named Visa Cash APP RB team had a lukewarm last season, where Williams perhaps reminded them about a thing or two concerning pure speed. This, however, is a new chance to begin again. Begin again or melt away, once and for all, Daniel Ricciardo.