Ricciardo offers blunt warning to Antonelli: 'Ignorance is a superpower'
Photo: Race Pictures
Kieran is a freelance Formula 1 journalist for GPblog, covering breaking news, live race blogs and feature content across the F1 calendar. An NQJ-qualified journalist with more than a decade of experience, he has previously written for publications including MailOnline, the Manchester Evening News and the Eastern Daily Press.
Daniel Ricciardo has offered some blunt advice to Kimi Antonelli ahead of the weekend where the Italian is set to become the youngest F1 champion of all time.
Antonelli needs just two points to achieve his dream at the age of 20, one which Ricciardo also had hoped to accomplish when he was challenging for wins with Red Bull in the 2010s.
Ricciardo, speaking on F1's Beyond the Grid podcast, said that 'ignorance is a superpower' and that the Italian will inevitably acquire baggage at some point during his Formula 1 career.
He said: “I got asked by a friend about Kimi Antonelli the other day and I said, ‘Ignorance is a superpower.’ I’m not trying to be mean to him at all, but being young is a superpower, and being ignorant, and not being exposed to the world.
“I remember my first year at Red Bull, you’re naive, you’re young, you’re ignorant and it comes easy. Oh wow, I’m winning, cool, I’ll just keep winning because I’m the best. I don’t mean to compare myself to him or anything, but the power of being young in some situations where this sport and the world can be very intense, over the years you’re just going to accumulate baggage.
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“Right now, he’s at that sweet spot where he’s obviously very talented, very fast, but he hasn’t yet really acquired any baggage, so it’s like, let’s just go and race, and there’s nothing else going on up there.”
Ricciardo opens up on humiliation from losing seat
Ricciardo, who won eight races in 258 Grands Prix, last raced in 2024, with his final outing coming at the Singapore Grand Prix, before he was replaced by Liam Lawson.
The Australian admitted that although he acted as if nothing was wrong, there was a "lot of pain and sadness" at the end of his F1 career.
He said: "People saw me out in public. I was having a good time and having a drink or whatever, and I was just really hiding from what I really felt deep inside, which was a lot of pain and sadness.
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"It's then a sense of humiliation, like I failed and I didn't do what I once could," Ricciardo said. "That was the first phase of thinking everything was okay, but obviously I was very hurt inside."
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