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Ricciardo feared he had lost it: ‘It felt like things weren’t working’
- GPblog.com
Although injured, Daniel Ricciardo has been one of AlphaTauri's regular drivers for some time now. He started the season as Red Bull Racing's third driver. In a candid interview with Goodwood.com, the Australian looks back on his first days back at his old team. At the time, Ricciardo was uncertain about his performance, and even nervous about how he would be received at Red Bull.
"I wasn't sure how I was going to be received, whether people would be rolling their eyes and saying I was the kid that left them five years ago. You never really know, but it was a lot nicer than I thought," he explained.
That nervousness came mainly from doubts about his own qualities as a driver. The eight-time Grand Prix winner feared he had lost his techniques and strengths during the difficult years at McLaren: "I genuinely do feel that I lost some of my technique, some of my strengths," said Ricciardo. "It felt like when things weren't working I had to throw them away, and then I'd try some other stuff but that wouldn't work, then my confidence would go down."
Self-insight helps
The first test on the simulator was a wake-up moment for the Australian. This test was arduous, but did provide an important moment of self-insight: "I had thoughts that maybe I just couldn't do it anymore. Period! A lot of stuff got lost along the way, and when I got back into the Red Bull sim, I realised I was not a very confident person. In a way that was a relief for me, to see that I wasn't operating at the level I thought. It kind of justified some of my performances."
Confidence came back
It was not until the second test that The Honey Badger regained some confidence in himself. "With the driving, it took a little while for me to unplug a few things. I would say the second time in the sim, I then started to improve and I felt my confidence coming back." Ricciardo's new, and long-time, race engineer Simon Rennie was closely involved in the Australian Formula One driver's psychological recovery: "I would see Simon smiling at me, and we would start to joke a little bit, so I was like, 'Okay, I can do this'."
Daniel Ricciardo is having an eventful year immediately on his return to Formula 1. Starting at the Hungarian Grand Prix, he replaced Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri, but broke his hand during free practice at the Dutch Grand Prix, and was then replaced by Liam Lawson himself. It is still uncertain when Ricciardo will be back in the car himself.
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