Daniel
Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo was born in Perth, Australia, on 1 July 1989. He started karting at the age of nine and entered the Western Australian Formula Ford championship in 2005. After finishing sixth in the 2007 Italian Formula Renault 2.0 series, he was taken on by the Red Bull Junior Team. He won the Formula Renault 2.0 WEC title in 2008 and the British Formula 3 Championship with Carlin in 2009. In 2010 he finished runner-up in his first season of Formula Renault 3.5, two points behind Mikhail Aleshin.

After testing for Red Bull, Ricciardo made his Formula One debut at the 2011 British Grand Prix with HRT, replacing Narain Karthikeyan. He contested eleven races and ended the year 27th in the championship. He drove for Toro Rosso alongside Jean-Éric Vergne in 2012 and 2013, finishing 18th and 14th. In 2013 he finished seventh in both China and Italy. For 2014 he took over from the retiring Mark Webber at Red Bull.

In his first season with Red Bull he won in Canada, Hungary and Belgium and finished third in the championship. He was the only driver outside Mercedes to win a race that year. In 2016 he took his first pole position in Monaco, won in Malaysia and again finished third overall. He won in Azerbaijan in 2017 and ended the season fifth, then won in China and Monaco in 2018 and finished sixth.

He joined Renault in 2019 and finished ninth. In 2020 he took podiums at the Eifel and Emilia Romagna Grands Prix and ended the year fifth. At McLaren, where he partnered Lando Norris in 2021 and 2022, he won the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, his eighth and final victory. It was also McLaren's first win since the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix. He finished eighth in the championship in 2021 and 11th in 2022. He left the team at the end of 2022.

In 2023 he began as Red Bull's reserve driver and, from the Hungarian Grand Prix, replaced Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri. After a crash in practice for the Dutch Grand Prix, he missed the rest of that weekend and the next four races. He finished seventh in Mexico, his first points for the team. In 2024 he raced for RB alongside Yuki Tsunoda, and Liam Lawson took his seat after the Singapore Grand Prix.

Overall, Ricciardo started 257 races, won eight, stood on the podium 32 times and took three pole positions. He retired from racing in 2025. In 2022 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to motor sport.

Source: Wikipedia, “Daniel Ricciardo”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.