Ricciardo makes up top three races: 'Then I earned Alonso's respect'

Eight-time GP winner Daniel Ricciardo will no longer be on the grid full time from 2023, but will start working behind the scenes at Red Bull Racing. As a farewell, the good-humoured Australian reflects back and thinks of his top three best races of his F1 career.

Ricciardo does not pick race win as best race

In 2014, Ricciardo won his first F1 race in Canada. His last victory was with McLaren at Monza in 2021. In his long F1 career, there are plenty of highlights to discover and looking back on his F1 career, the Australian comes up with an interesting top three. At least that is what Speedcafe.com said. The Medium spoke to the former McLaren driver and quoted him on his number three on his list.

"I’m not going to go a win [in thislist] because that’s obvious,. I’ll go Germany 2014. I believe it’s the race where I earned [Fernando] Alonso’s respect." In that race, Ricciardo started fifth but fell back after avoiding the crash between Kevin Magnussen and Felipe Massa at the first corner. After the safety car, the Australian was battling Lewis Hamilton with Kimi Raikkonen, but a fine race ended for him with a battle with Alonso for P5.

'Alonso would learn my name'

Ricciardo: "We were battling. So he came out of the pits just behind me on fresh tyres and he passed me on the DRS straight and kind of didn’t even defend into the hairpin, thinking like, ‘oh, yeah, Ricciardo knows I’m on better tyres, he’s just going to let me go and just focus on his race’. And I was like, you know what, I’ve got nothing to lose, f*** it', so I sent it up the inside at the hairpin!"

Ricciardo thus kept up the fight for four laps, which was unexpected for Alonso. Alonso seemed confident and thought with his tyre advantage he could easily win the fight. Ricciardo: "I had a point to prove. Maybe it was just like, I manifested this in my own head or own mind, I told myself I don’t know, I felt like I needed to earn his respect. For me, I just had a bit of a chip on my shoulder, like that was the day that he was going to know my name. And it was fun. I felt like what should have ended in one corner ended four laps later or something." Alonso eventually finished fifth with Ricciardo less than a tenth of a second behind him.