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Australia’s newest Formula One driver Daniel Ricciardo has revealed the secret to how he cracked motor racing’s elite league – luck.
Red Bull, which owns two F1 teams, announced overnight that 21-year-old Ricciardo, of Perth, will be the third driver for its Italian-based Scuderia Toro Rosso squad next year.
In that role Ricciardo will be on the world’s grand prix tracks in 90-minute practice sessions on the Friday’s before each world championship race.
Fresh from topping a two-day test of potential GP racers in Abu Dhabi Ricciardo, at home in Perth, was asked how he had advanced so far so fast ahead of thousands of go-karters from other more populous countries.
“I’m just lucky that someone from Red Bull spotted me four years ago and that I was the kid chosen to be in its junior development team,” he said.
However, he has won 24 open-wheeler races in Europe in the past three seasons, won two championships and been a narrow runner-up in two others.
Next year he will race again in the World Series by Renault, in which he was pipped by Russian Mikhail Aleshin by two points this year, as well as fulfill his globe-trotting F1 duties.
Toro Rosso’s contracted race drivers again next season are Switzerland’s Sebastien Buemi and Spaniard Jaime Alguersuari, but the Ricciardo announcement has turned up the heat on them to deliver better results or he could replace either of them.
Toro Rosso is the former Minardi team with which fellow Australian Mark Webber made his F1 debut in 2002.
Webber is now the winner of six GPs and was third in this year’s world championship to his Red Bull Racing teammate, 23-year-old German Sebastian Vettel.
On Sunday Webber and Ricciardo will demonstrate a Red Bull F1 car at Perth’s Barbagallo Raceway as the highlight of Perth’s first Festival of Speed.
Webber on Saturday congratulated Ricciardo on his elevation with Toro Rosso but warned him that the work really starts now.
“Daniel’s had some amazing results, but it’s a tough road (in F1),” Webber said.
“He’s got a great approach and I’m sure he’ll grab it with both hands.
“It’s great that there’s someone (another Australian) coming along, but whether there are two, three or five of us (Australians) is not what matters, you’ve got to get great results.”
Although Ricciardo also topped last year’s post-season test for potential GP drivers at Jerez in Spain, he said on Saturday that it was only after winning a Renault race on the famous Monaco street circuit, just hours before Webber won the GP there in May, that he felt he was really on the way to becoming an F1 driver.
Australia’s 1980 world champion Alan Jones, who will launch his $250,000 road-going sportscar at Barbagallo on Sunday, said he had nominated Ricciardo as Australia’s next F1 prospect four years ago.
Jones said he had trailed Ricciardo at Britain’s Silverstone circuit when he was running the Australian team in the now-defunct A1 GP series.
“He was the quickest of seven or eight drivers we tried in those days,” Jones said.
“I could see even then how talented and professional he was.
“But Dr Helmut Marko (Red Bulls’ all-powerful motorsport director) wouldn’t let us have him.”
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