Daniel Ricciardo is living the life in Formula One

IT’S not all glamour but Daniel Ricciardo wouldn’t have it any other way as he pursues his childhood dream.

Daniel Ricciardo driving along North Congress Avenue backdropped by the Texas Capitol building in Austin Texas, as the city prepares for the US Grand Prix.

DANIEL Ricciardo shifts in his seat. He’s wearing shorts. On his left thigh is an extravagant tattoo. He adjusts the shorts as though the ink work might be embarrassing and then he thinks long and hard about the apparent no-brainer that he’s become the walking and talking embodiment of an individual living the dream.

“People keep telling me that,” Ricciardo says before turning unexpectedly circumspect. “I’m living the dream because I’ve become a Formula One driver. That was ­always my goal in life so when you achieve that, you’ve started living your dream. I agree with that part.

“But you’ve got to understand what the dream really is. When you say it like that — living the dream — people just think about the good stuff. It sounds like I spend the whole year going to parties and walking along red carpets and travelling and having a beer next to the hotel pool. I’m living the dream — but the dream isn’t what everyone thinks it is.”

What is it? “My dream is working hard and trying to perform under pressure,” he says. “People see the glamour on the weekends but we’re not the ones living too glamorously. There’s a lot of effort going into this.

“The travel can be a killer. It can be exhausting. You’re not getting on a plane to go on holidays. You’re going there to work. There’s the jet lag that follows you everywhere. You’ve got to really work hard on not getting sick. You’re not getting much home time and you really start to miss it.

“You start to crave some stability in your life because you don’t ­really have any at all. I’ll probably be home in WA for three weeks this whole year … Three weeks for Christmas and then I’m off again.”

What, you’re homesick? Right now? “Yeah,” he says.

“I do get like that. I’ve been away from home for nearly seven years now. I don’t think you ever grow out of it. You just learn to deal with it better. If I could race and live at home, I definitely would. But it’s not an option. Perth is a long way from the rest of the world. There’s definitely times when you think about your family and how far away they are and you’re thinking, this is living the dream? Really?

“Look, I know it is. It’s a great life and I’d never take it for granted. I’m in a really privileged position. I’m not complaining about anything at all. But my idea of living the dream is different to what most people think the dream probably is. My dream is to work.”

Ricciardo’s field trips take him to the most glorious F1 bureaus on the planet. He gets a seat in business class. The $US1 million ($1.14m) pay cheque might be ele­vated to $US20m now Sebastian Vettel is racking off to Ferrari. His five-star hotels deserve 15 stars. Hate to play devil’s advocate, buster, but it all sounds suspiciously glamorous.

Ricciardo spreads his arms wide to take in the panoramic view of Red Bull’s cramped hospitality tent. “Look where we are,” he says. “You can’t tell me this is too glamorous. When you’re inside like this, you probably see a different side of it. We live in such a bubble that it’s hard to know what’s happening outside of here.

“We call it our little travelling circus. Everyone is here together and we live in this bubble together and we go around the world together. It’s a very closed environment. It doesn’t feel big at all and I don’t take much notice of anything else outside it. I’m just trying to do the job I’m paid to do. Anything else, I just roll with it and try to enjoy it.

“The fame thing doesn’t interest me because I don’t do it for that. I don’t do this to be stopped on the streets. I do this because I love getting behind the wheel of a car and driving fast. That’s all it is.”

World title. Fancy one?

“I don’t want to sound cocky but you have to back yourself, right?” he says. “You have to believe you’re as good as anyone else out here. I believe that in my heart. To be the Formula One world champion — that’s the ultimate ambition. It’s why I’m here. For however long all of this lasts, because I know it’s not going to last forever, I’ll want the world championship pretty bad.

“Everyone has something that’s their Everest. (This) is my Everest. That’s my idea of my pinnacle. If I ever do get there, I think I’ll be able to lead a pretty happy life from then on.”

Ricciardo’s disqualification from the Australian Grand Prix came before the travelling circus took him to Malaysia, Bahrain and China without a repeat of the podium finish. It was not until the Spanish Grand Prix, nearly two months later, that he snuck into third place behind Mercedes-Benz’s Batman-and-Robin duo of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. And then! Ricciardo won the Canadian Grand Prix. And then! He won the Hungarian Grand Prix. And then! He went back-to-back by winning the Belgian Grand Prix. Ricciardo was dominating Batman and Robin despite driving a comparative rust bucket. The hottest driver in the world for a while there was Ricciardo.

He’s surprisingly stern during our chat. It’s a welcome development. He’s no grinning fool. “I work hard at this,” he says. “I’m more of an animal than people probably think. In everyday life, in all the generic stuff we do, I guess I’m pretty happy-go-lucky. I really do enjoy what I’m doing. I’m not putting any of it on.

“But there’s the serious side to this. When it comes to the business side and the racing side, I take all of this very seriously. You have to. It’s like the white line fever we talk about with footy players back home. I think I can probably be joking around with the mechanics one second but as soon as I get into the car, that’s when you need to go a bit animal.”

Take us into the cockpit at 300 clicks an hour. G-Forces whomping through your system.

The risk of doing an Ayrton Senna, heaven forbid. Three-hundred-and-­twenty clicks an hour. Three-thirty. G-Forces up to five times his body weight.

“It’s intense but there’s a sense of freedom in there,” he says. “Everyone talks about the adren­alin rush and that’s absolutely right but for me, there’s this big feeling of freedom.

“You’re just concentrating on what’s in front of you. It’s all instinct. There’s not much thinking. That’s a nice feeling.

“Something just sort of happens when you’re in the cockpit. You need that switch where the real intensity hits you hard. I don’t need to be intense when I’m having a coffee in the morning. I don’t need to be intense when I’m sitting down for an interview. You can’t be too intense in your everyday life. It will do your head in. But when the time comes to get down to business, I’ll be as full-on as the next guy. I wouldn’t survive in ­Formula One without that.”

Three-sixty clicks an hour. “The rush is huge,” he says. “You pin your ears back and go. These cars are fast, but I wish they could go faster. It’s like when you’re a kid and you start riding a bicycle. You want to go as fast as you can. You want that sense of speed and adrenalin but you want that little bit of risk in what you’re doing. When you nail the perfect lap, when you’ve hit every turn at speed and you’ve nailed every one of them … that’s a real feeling of strength and power.”

Red Bull’s demountable feels like an office cafeteria with a whole lot of industrious employees. From the outside looking in, it’s such an enormous world. Sitting on the inside, the operation feels small and insular. The watertight schedules and routines. The non-negotiable requirement to achieve. There’s a storm of hype around Ricciardo in Australia but bugger-all fanfare in the eye of the storm.

“Am I famous?” he asks. “Maybe because I don’t live in Australia, and maybe because I don’t spend much time there, I don’t get a sense of how much interest there is. You pick up on it, of course. It’s F1. But I’m so far away for most of the year that it doesn’t really sink in.

“I’ll be home again in December and in Melbourne in March so I might see a different side to it then. Am I famous? It’s a strange one because I don’t feel famous. I don’t really want to be famous. But I don’t want to be not famous either, if that makes sense. If people support you, that’s great. You just do what you do. I’ve got this theory that one day when I’m retired, I’ll look back at all this and think, how the hell did all that happen?”

Ricciardo gets to his feet. The tattoo reveals itself. What’s that, slugger? He buries his face in his hands. “Oh no!” he says. He’s crimson with embarrassment. “It’s the first week I’ve worn shorts in a while. It’s probably been a year since I’ve worn them at a race. The tattoo is, well, it’s just something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

“I had it done about a year ago. I’m sorry, but it’s private. The meaning is a bit private. It’s definitely not something I’m ashamed of but I just don’t want to talk about it. Is that OK? I hope that’s OK. You’ve got to keep something to yourself, eh?”