Opinion: Alex Kalinauckas

The Aussie has joined Mclaren as the squad is on the rise, and the mix of his popular, broad-grinned appeal, race-winning pedigree and fearless racing style is set to thrill

“Ricciardo is ‘basically just fitting into the puzzle, rather than trying to put it all together’”

The clothes and colours were different; the smile was the same. Daniel Ricciardo made his first full public appearance for Mclaren at the unveiling of the team’s MCL35M challenger. The Formula 1 world is reading the opening sentences of the latest chapter in his story, the cuddly‘honey Badger’on display again.

It was only two years ago that Ricciardo was settling into another F1 home, but this change will be a little different to the last, given the ongoing disruption of the pandemic. And Ricciardo’s first challenge will be fitting in at his new squad, something he highlighted as particularly important. A good thing, then, that he is who he is, with his former squad Renault noting his ability to lift a room, such is his engaging character.

This is an intriguing moment for Ricciardo. He has now arrived at Mclaren, a team that he suggested hadn’t quite got its puzzle pieces fully arranged when he considered it as an option for his move from Red Bull in 2018. Now, he says it’s got “really good stability in the team and the infrastructure”thanks to the ongoing work of Zak Brown, Andreas Seidl and James Key, and that he will be“basically just fitting into the puzzle, as opposed to trying to put it all together”. Ricciardo will do this at 31, which puts him 10 years older than new team-mate Lando Norris.

Ricciardo is in his prime years – although age of course is no firm barrier to motorsport success – yet he is making another new start. These things generally take time to bed in, to optimise, to infuse – pick your cliche. But Ricciardo opted to make this change before turning a wheel for Renault in 2020, the Honey Badger’s ruthless side on display.

He has now revealed that his Mclaren deal will run for three years, which commits him to the team through F1’s upcoming rules reset. Both team and driver will be eyeing that moment as a pivotal point in their shared futures. It offers the tantalising hope of world championship success for the squads that can nail the new regulations and prevail in what F1 observers hope will be a closed-up field.

During the virtual press conferences that preceded the MCL35M’S launch, Ricciardo was asked about the 20th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt’s death (today, see page 38).

As a child racing in karts, Ricciardo was a big fan of the NASCAR megastar’s style, taking Earnhardt’s #3 designation as his own in karting homage, and going back to that number when F1 drivers were allowed to pick their own from the start of 2014.

“I felt it was really my year to make a bit of a statement, to be the guy that was not afraid to put on a big move, to race hard,”ricciardo explains.

Joining Red Bull was Ricciardo’s first real stab at starting afresh in a new F1 team (after making his debut in 2011 with a half-season for HRT before racing, as expected as a Red Bull junior, for Toro Rosso from 2012). So, it’s worth revisiting that year as he embarks on his latest team change.

Ricciardo’s stated approach to making a splash paid off. He won three times in a year when Mercedes utterly dominated at the start of the turbo-hybrid era, and essentially ended Sebastian Vettel’s time as Red Bull’s untouchable star. He finished third in the championship and was selected as Autosport’s number one in our Top 50 Drivers of the Year ranking. He repeated that latter feat in 2016, maturing after shuffling down five spots in 2015 as he struggled to accept that, despite his skills at the top level, he lacked the machinery to be world champion and so overdrove.

In 2017, Max Verstappen’s first full year as a Red Bull racer, he slid down our ranking, as for the first time since joining the senior squad he was outperformed by a team-mate (though still scored more points). In 2018 he couldn’t overcome the reliability issues that plagued his final Red Bull year, and in 2019 both he and Renault had rather low-key campaigns, although Ricciardo earned praise for edging a driver of Nico Hulkenberg’s calibre. In 2020, as Renault finally made good on its aim to get back to the podium, Ricciardo shone to a much greater extent.

Before F1 gets to its 2022 reset (assuming the competitive order is indeed shaken up), the 2021 midfield fight could be even more crowded than last year, with Ferrari hoping to surge back up.

So, perhaps it’s worth Ricciardo revisiting the approach that made him an F1 megastar in 2014. It’s not because he lost that

– he has remained one of the championship’s best racers – but for the potential benefits it may bring. An impressive immediate display for Mclaren would reinforce his quality and help both parties gather momentum going into the new era.

After all, Ricciardo is convinced that Mclaren is now“a real contender”. Linking all of that together with his potential

(plus Norris’s) raises expectations of Mclaren doing something special. Its former charge, the highly rated

Carlos Sainz Jr, knows this is hard to achieve in the crowded midfield, but his Mclaren displays led to a Ferrari drive…

At the very least it will be entertaining. But that’s where Ricciardo comes into his own. The captivating Honey Badger.