‘Is it worth the risk?’ Ricciardo’s Netflix farewell reveals moment that ended his F1 career

Daniel Ricciardo is racing for his career. It’s wet, slippery and deadly dangerous at the British Grand Prix. He asks himself, ‘Is it worth the risk?’ In other words, is this sport worth dying for?

Daniel Ricciardo of RB prepares for the final F1 race of his career, the Singapore Grand Prix, at Marina Bay street circuit on September 22, 2024. Picture: Getty Images

Sipping a stiff drink to “cleanse the palette” and bare his tortured soul after being sacked by Red Bull, Daniel Ricciardo has revealed the sensitive reason behind the uncharacteristically tame performance that virtually ended his Formula 1 career at last year’s British Grand Prix.

In a nutshell? Ricciardo was unsure if F1 was still worth risking his life for.

The seventh season of Netflix’s mega-popular Drive To Survive will be released on Friday.

McLaren F1 driver Oscar Piastri.

We’ve had a sneak peek. Melbourne’s Oscar Piastri is portrayed as something of a stone-cold killer, in the sporting sense, quietly and ­efficiently capable of winning multiple world titles.

The 23-year-old will be the poster boy at next week’s Australian Grand Prix, of course, front and centre, front and back page, while the charismatic, crowd-pleasing Ricciardo is absent.

How the wheel has turned. Ricciardo replaced Mark Webber at Red Bull in 2014 as Australia’s great hope at Albert Park. Now ­Piastri succeeds Ricciardo in trying to be the first homegrown winner since Alan Jones in 1980.

When Christian Horner is asked in the documentary who he’d rather sign out of McLaren’s Piastri and Lando Norris, Horner doesn’t blink before saying, “Oscar”. Of all the next big things in F1 … Piastri may be the biggest.

An emotional Ricciardo concedes: “It’s over.” He admits he baulked at going hell for leather when auditioning at Silverstone to replace Sergio Perez as Max Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate. Compromised by heavy rain and a deadly track, slippery as anything when wet, the normally gung-ho Ricciardo drives cautiously before being overtaken by Haas’s Kevin Magnussen and telling his garage, “Sorry, this is all I’ve got.”

Daniel Ricciardo climbs into an F1 cockpit for the final time in Singapore in September 2024. Picture: Getty Images

Ricciardo finishes a humdrum 13th at the British GP, if anything can be humdrum at 300km/h, in the wet, and Red Bull eventually teamed New Zealand dynamo Liam Lawson with Verstappen for this year. The 35-year-old Ricciardo was squeezed out of Formula 1 altogether when 20-year-old Frenchman Isack Hadjar was preferred for the developmental Racing Bulls team.

In the episode Elbows Out, Ricciardo knows the importance of Silverstone to his future prospects. “Every race has to be everything I’ve got,” he says. “I do love it. Maybe I’m a sicko but the pressure of being told these could be the most important races of my ­career, that excites me. If people doubt you, then you want to go and prove them wrong.”

He doesn’t. Ricciardo’s supernova personality has made him a star of the Netflix series but that role, too, is over. In his final interview, after being told he’s been sacked, with his palette-cleansing beverage in a shot glass, he says of the outing that triggered his demise: “In a race like Silverstone, when it starts to rain, you’re having a scare once a lap.

“It’s kind of terrifying. I know I should take risks but I’m also like, ‘OK, if I crash, that doesn’t do me any favours’.”

Ricciardo must drive at Silverstone like the devil may care. He treads carefully after asking himself a question he never contemplated in the bravado of his 20s.

“Silverstone did not go so good,” he says. “Those tricky conditions, I don’t know, I guess I don’t want to admit to it. I do believe I’m still willing to put it all on the edge but maybe I ask the question now, where as a 22-year-old or 25-year-old you probably don’t ask the question.”

Which question? He looks ready to cry. Or laugh uproariously. One of the two. “I don’t know if I want to say it,” he says. “Because it’s too vulnerable. Um, yeah, like, ultimately, is it worth the risk? It just opens you up for the weakness.”

Daniel Ricciardo prepares for a Red Bull test drive at Silverstone on July 11, 2023. Picture: Getty Images

Ricciardo is really asking himself … is it worth jeopardising life and limb? It’s clear he’s favourite to join Verstappen before Silverstone. Sooner rather than later, he’s out the door. After telling Ricciardo he’s done and dusted, Horner says: “Daniel, he’s a great guy. It was a very difficult conversation to have. I think if Daniel had been banging on the door and putting in some big results, then that would have been a way easier decision. With Daniel, is that fire still burning bright inside him? Liam Lawson, there’s petrol on the fire. I think we’re better looking ahead than perhaps behind.”

Ricciardo’s stellar F1 career landed eight GP victories and 32 podiums. He always believed he had a world title in him. Five golden years at Red Bull from 2014-18 left him third, eighth, third, five and sixth in the championship. Moving to Renault and McLaren might have been the daftest things he ever did. He hoped as fervently as the Netflix scriptwriters that his career would go full circle and he’d return to Red Bull. Not to be.

In his last stint in the inter­viewee’s chair, he raises a glass and says, “I don’t know if you know this, or don’t know this, but I don’t have a race to prepare for. So, cleanse the palette! This is it.”

Still neither laughing nor crying, he adds: “I never thought I would have this career. I never thought I would be here. That’s the truth. Yes, my dream was to be world champion and there were years along the way when I genuinely felt like it was going to happen. I got close. That’s OK.

“If I was world champion sitting here today, does it change how I feel or how I view myself? I don’t think so. Maybe my ego would be big. We don’t want that. So, I have no regrets.”