“Save it,” Daniel Ricciardo fumed over team radio on the warm-down lap at the Monaco Grand Prix. “Nothing you can say can make that any better. Just save it.”
Yes, it’s another analysis of the approaching-folklore status events of the 2016 race in Monte Carlo. Some races are just hard to drop.
The story – Daniel Ricciardo dominates motorsport’s most prestigious event until his team delivers a stunning 13-second pit stop to leave him second behind Lewis Hamilton – is well worn, but the fallout continues.
Partly it is the strong reaction from home that has kept the fire burning, and it’s always perversely reassuring that when an injustice is visited upon an Australian Formula One driver our homegrown fans and press rush to the side of our wronged hero.
But there’s more to this slow burn than mere fanaticism.
It was hard for the Formula One world to watch Ricciardo’s plugged-in smile suffer a power surge, even if temporarily, on the Monaco podium. Whereas we’re used to Lewis Hamilton actively acting out his emotions, Ricciardo has never felt the need to pursue any such agenda. The emotion post-race was raw.
“I don’t even want to talk about the race, to be honest,” he told Martin Brundle. “Two weekends in a row I‘ve been screwed now. It sucks. It hurts.”
It was an unsurprising reaction given not only the result but also what was at times an uncharacteristically frustrated drive as the Australian attempted to retake the lead from Hamilton – so much so that his engineer was forced to intervene via team radio to cool him down.
Though the smile slowly found its way back onto his face, Ricciardo continued to fume, even dropping what this humble writer considers to be the much underappreciated and underreported quip, “I was sitting there like a spare dick at a wedding,” to NBC’s Will Buxton to describe his afternoon. It will at least be reproduced here for posterity.
But still the loss ached. Monaco Grand Prix wins don’t grow on trees, and the sheer driving force on display from the cockpit of the #3 Red Bull Racing car demanded recognition for its mastery of Monte Carlo. It ate away at him.
“Part of the frustrating thing is that I really do believe, and I’ve believed it for a long time – I don’t want to say it, because it’s arrogant – but I believe a lot in my ability, let’s just say that. And I should be getting more rewarded,” he told Sky Sports.
“I’m 27 very soon and I don’t even have anything close to a world title, and I believe I should have something like that very soon … it’s getting a little bit long in the tooth.”
The age – 27 years old on July 1 – and races entered, which in Canada will total 95, are surprising for a driver still considered a rising star, and this is worth considering.
There is a propensity inside the Red Bull machine to be drawn towards what is shiny and new. It is intrinsic to the energetic, hyperactive brand – always looking to what comes next, never standing still – and arguably this is what suits it well to Formula One.
But this tendency also has a less attractive side – and Mark Webber found it.
“Technically everything’s been very good,” the F1-turned-WEC driver told the Brazilian paddock in 2010. “[But] of course when young, new chargers come onto the block, that’s where the emotion is.”
Though Webber never held a grudge for what he described as a human-nature response to then Red Bull young gun Sebastian Vettel, the manifestation of this feeling – notably the front wing switch at Silverstone in 2010 and the multi 21 affair at the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix – eroded the cohesion inside the team.
Daniel’s situation is somewhat different – for one he’s a product of the Red Bull Junior Team, unlike Webber, and therefore has been backed long-term by the company. But at 27 he’s been paired with Max Verstappen, a teenager of such apparently prodigious talent that Red Bull has twice upended its own driver programme to accommodate him, and that’s before we consider the overt references by team personnel to his similarities to Vettel.
Verstappen’s presence at Toro Rosso almost completely overshadowed Carlos Sainz’s own impressive rookie season in 2015. Though the Dutchman deserved to just shade his teammate, the sheer volume of coverage for Verstappen would have you think he decimated the Spaniard.
Claims Red Bull Racing is sabotaging Ricciardo’s races are rubbish, and it is far too early to claim even a more subtle Webber-Vettel-esque emotional favouritism is tilting the tables away from him. But every day his frustrations with the team continue to simmer is another day he risks allowing Red Bull’s attention to drift elsewhere.
For Formula One, for Australian fans, and for racing fans around the world – not to mention the frankly ridiculous bookmakers that refund bets because they don’t understand how team sport works – we need that not to happen.
Follow @MichaelLamonato on Twitter.
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