“I was crying”: Ricciardo recalls Earnhardt’s death, 20 years on

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In the round-up: Daniel Ricciardo recalls how he was affected by the death of NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt on this day 20 years ago.

What they say

Dale Earnhardt, Indianapolis, 1995
Earnhardt, pictured in 1995, died 20 years ago today
Ricciardo took inspiration from Earnhardt when he chose number three as his permanent career number. The McLaren driver was 11 when the seven-times NASCAR champion Earnhardt died on the final lap of the Daytona 500.

The 18th of February I think is the 20th year. I remember vividly the race 20 years ago, my reaction to the news. I was crying.

I called my friend at the time, Stephen, we raced go-karts together and he was also a big Earnhardt fan. I called him as soon as I saw the news and we just basically cried on the phone together.

He was a hero, for sure. In 2014 when I took on the number three and I also had it in the back of my mind to take on ‘The Intimidator’. And obviously my version of that was the ‘Honey Badger’. But I thought it was really my year to make a bit of a statement, to be the guy that was not afraid to put on a big move, to race hard. I didn’t feel I’d quite had that yet and that first year with Red Bull was my chance to really make that statement and to earn that reputation. So for sure, part of that was on the back of Earnhardt and how he inspired me.

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Comment of the day

Three years on, is Ricciardo’s decision to leave Red Bull looking like the right move?

Ricciardo saw the writing on the wall and chose to get out whilst his price was still high, who can blame him, its not like Red Bull have had a championship car since he left

had he stayed with Max, he might be a couple of tenths off in qualifying and competitive in a lot of races but Red Bull being Red Bull would have dropped him for someone like Albon thinking he wasn’t performing.

Albon would have still be 0.5 seconds off Verstappen and Horner would have realised he has just fired a much better driver and that would have ruined Ricciardo’s career.

I hate to say this as a massive Ricciardo fan, but Verstappen is faster, no doubt about it. And Ricciardo is a top five driver in my opinion, but why hang around in an under-performing car, in a team moving away from you. Take a chance. Who knows how McLaren will do this year, he could still win a championship before Verstappen, I don’t think that would have happened at Red Bull.
AJ

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30 comments on ““I was crying”: Ricciardo recalls Earnhardt’s death, 20 years on”

  1. I can’t tell if giving current F1 drivers an opinion on track upgrades is a bad idea, or if they were completely ignored.
    The changes to Albert Park will only make the ‘race’ even less interesting.
    Removing heavy braking zones and replacing them with medium/high speed corners is the last thing these cars need.

    1. @S I’m happy about skipping T9 and T10 to make the lap more flowing. I also wouldn’t mind using slighter turning angles for T11-T12.

      1. I can get on board with slightly tightening 11/12 as it is a pretty easy section with current downforce levels – but the 9/10 bit will just be boring. Like 11/12 only even less challenging.
        I’d have tightened 9/10 even further rather than bypass it. Make it a place where they can make mistakes or be penalised for pushing to hard.

        1. 9/10 is a chicane and you want to make it even tighter? You must be a fan of the Barcelona chicane as well then.

          I love the idea of seeing cars blasting through the new 9/10 section and am supporting Jere’s idea of making 11/12 faster as well (run of may be critical). This would make the circuit more challenging in the exciting way.

          If the 2021 version doesn’t work as intended they could give T6 a bigger radius to increase approaching speeds to a reinstalled 9/10 chicane to allow better passing opportunities. In that case they should even more open up 11/12 for a fast approach to 13.

          1. If F1 were a time-trial format, then I’d probably agree.
            But it isn’t.

            No, I don’t like the Barcelona chicane, because it doesn’t really create any opportunities.
            I don’t mind Sochi’s turn 2 chicane, however, as that can. Same with Suzuka’s final chicane.
            It’s very much more about how a chicane works with the track sections around it, than the tightness of the chicane itself.
            Monza has two similarly tight little chicanes, and people hardly ever complain about them…

  2. Y’know, if I never read another line about Mazepin, it would still be too soon. Maybe we can just utterly ignore him until he goes away.

    1. You’ll need to be ignoring a lot of news for maybe the next ten years or so. Nikita will be a permanent feature on the grid for a relatively long time unless his father has money problems.

      1. And he will be heavily featured too, as hate objects seems to generate as much clicks as anybody. This is motorsport after all.

    2. Sadly we don’t.

  3. COTD is spot on.

    In mid-2018, Ricciardo’s decision to leave Red Bull made total sense. The team was going away from him, there was very low probability of winning championships and hence, there was no downside to leaving Red Bull.

    However, I don’t understand his Mclaren decision based on 3 main parameters:

    1) Did Ferrari reject him or he rejected Ferrari? Or there was never any contact between the two (highly unlikely, but who knows). He would have provided a better youth vs experience balance to Ferrari compared to Sainz and he is probably faster than Sainz too (in both races and qualifying). The only downside could be Ricciardo is costlier, but how is that important to Ferrari!

    2) Even if Ferrari didn’t pan out, why leave a works team for a customer team? The only way the Mclaren move yields him a championship is if Mercedes exits its works team and provides equal engines to all its customer teams (Ineos, Mclaren, Racing Point, Williams). And that is a long shot.

    3) And this Mclaren move for 3 years? He is going to be 34.5 years by the time this contract ends in 2023. Will he still have top teams lining up for him then?

    1. 1. Dont know. 2. Renault is a political toxic environment without any recent achievements. 3. You assume he is going places or win titles. Maybe that ship has sailed and he is just cruising to retirement

    2. if Mercedes exits its works team and provides equal engines to all its customer teams (Ineos, Mclaren, Racing Point, Williams). And that is a long shot

      It’s literally already part of the rules – same PU and software/modes for works and customer teams.

    3. there was no downside to leaving Red Bull

      I disagree, there were lots of repercussions to leaving Red Bull, the most obvious is missing out on podium places. Renault didn’t give Daniel the car he wanted in 2019 because he finished 9th on the WDC table, so it was hardly surprising he would want to sign with a new team for the 2021 season. Maybe Renault could have made him have second thoughts if they’d given him a better car, but with just two podium places last season (compare that to Max’s 11 podiums), I doubt Daniel had any regrets about signing with McLaren.

    4. I think Ricciardo lost the Ferrari seat by moving to Renault when there was not room for him at Mercedes or Ferrari in 2018. I have always thought it pretty likely he decided to leave Red Bull first, tried to get into Bottas’ or Kimi’s seat, failed on both accounts as Merc wasn’t looking for a challenger to HAM, and Ferrari had the star of the future Leclerc in waiting and then had nowhere left to go. It was either stay at Red Bull even though he had already decided not to do that, or go to another team. In swoops Renault with the fat paycheck and maybe some (ultimately empty) promises of future success and off he went.

      But what happened, a Ferrari seat opened up, and Ferrari looked at the field and saw a Carlos Sainz who by all accounts was outperforming Ricciardo at McLaren, was heaps cheaper to employ, and doesn’t come with the expectation of being the number one driver.

      Had Ricciardo not signed at Renault and moved to McLaren, maybe that would be him, who knows? Had he stayed at Red Bull and won more races and got more pole positions rather than driving in the midfield? I think he would’ve been much harder to pass up on than going for Sainz. It’s hard to call, but I do think with hindsight, he made the wrong moves if the end goal was a seat at Ferrari or Mercedes.

    5. Yeah the Ferrari thing is mysterious, but maybe it’s motivated by the same factors that made him leave Red Bull and even Renault where there was a chance his reputation would take a deadly hit as Leclerc is obviously a rare talent. Beating Norris at McLaren and doing the occasional podiums and everyone starts thinking just how good he is.

  4. He also was making more money at Renault, so it really doesn’t make any sense to leave them.
    Maybe it’s a 2+1 years contract and he can jump ship (again) if the 2022 car is a mess?

  5. I agree and disagree with the comment of the day but the reality is that the drivers can’t be directly compared anymore. I have seen people saying that Ver was “dominating” Ricc in their final span of time together but my memory is different I recall Ricc and Ver both takings wins and poles and Ricc stealing pole in a last lap attempt from Ver. Ver has developed strongly, of that there is no doubt but It’s not like Ricc looks mediocre now. For me Ricc is in the top 3 drivers on the grid

  6. Red Bull being Red Bull, they would have kept Ricciardo (they kept Webber).
    And a Max/Ric partnership would have had a fair chance at a WCC championship (or even two) by driving a bigger wig between the Merc drivers and taking away the strategic freedom they enjoyed over the past two years (two cars fighting one).

    We can argue forever if it was the right choice, but it was 100% Ricciardo’s decision and had nothing to do with the team.

    1. Agree.
      I was surprised by his decision to leave Red Bull. I would have stayed on for a year to see what the Honda deal would bring and then leave if it didn’t work out. More surprising even was his move to Renault, given how uncompetitive that team and unreliable their powertrains had been.

      Then while Daniel took 2 wins in 2018, those were his only podium finishes, and he might have won neither if Max had not been so impatient in the race in China and more cautious in FP3 in Monaco. He did have a fair amount of bad luck, but he did not look as sharp as before either. If that was due to distraction over his upcoming move to Renault, I wonder what he could have achieved that year if he had decided to stay.

  7. The annual Historic event doesn’t count towards any championship like F1 and FE, so considering the circumstances, scrapping it altogether and only keeping the other two for this year mightn’t be a bad idea. The Monaco GP would have a higher chance of happening if the build-up process commenced later.

    Skipping T9-T10 is easy as there’s already an existing road that cuts those two corners. This change will, in effect, create an uninterrupted flat-out run from T6-T7 to T11. Re T11-T12, I suggest using the left-hand side of the T11 curb and the right-hand side of the T12 curb instead for slighter turning angles.
    No changes to T1-T2 after all, and T13 doesn’t look any different in the image, but we’ll find out later how the alterations to that corner will impact racing.
    I wonder how much skipping T9 and 10 will shave off lap time? I reckon, at least three seconds, maybe even five or six. This and using the full road width at T11-T12 combined would lower the lap time by maybe ten seconds

    1. Seven to ten seconds.

  8. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
    18th February 2021, 9:20

    I really think Ricciardo’s efforts against Verstappen are under appreciated. He had the measure 2016 and 2017 overall and then 2018 Ricciardo was dominating Max (remember Monaco). Baku seemed to change everything, it was Turkey 2010 and Red Bull nailed their colours to Max as they did with Seb many years prior. The relationship was gone and it all turned sour. As the season progressed Danny fell away and clearly held resentment against the team as well as an horrific run of reliability issues.

    Overall moments like Brazil and Silverstone 2016 show Max is extremely special along with his age it’s understandable why Red Bull put all their eggs in his basket, but Danny Ric is a solid top 5 driver and always maximises opportunities and has had some magic moments as well. I really don’t think it’s as clear cut as to who came out on top over their time together at Red Bull as people make out.

    1. You are right, RIC is a solid driver. And who knows? Maybe he’ll do a Button when there’s a major shift in regulations

      1. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
        18th February 2021, 15:34

        I say it as a fan of both Max and Danny, I found it hard picking the better.

        Just to reaffirm this is prior to Spain shortly before it all turned sour:
        https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/11363892/daniel-ricciardo-v-max-verstappen-two-years-as-red-bull-team-mates

  9. Couldn’t disagree more with cotd.
    Especially, the assumption that Horner and co didnt, wouldnt and couldnt recognize Riccairdo’s talent or speed, is nothing more than unfounded underbelly talk, and it suprises me that its made it cotd.

  10. Verstappen had a clear raw pace advantage over Ricciardo by 2017 and completely dominant in 2018. The fact Ricciardo got the poles is a statistical quirk because head to head Verstappen dominated Ricciardo in qualifying.

    In races Verstappen had more bad luck, got caught up in more incidents. As you would expect though from someone who was a teenager still learning.

    Verstappen showed without a doubt he had a much higher ceiling than Ricciardo and really started to completely dominant Ricciardo in 2018.

    Ricciardo ran from a fight like Horner said.

  11. I agree with CoTD, apart from that Redbull would drop Ricciardo. I think Ricciardo would have continued to make a good account of himself, and even if he was a tenth or two away from Verstappen’s pace, RB would have recognised that he was their best option for that seat. The Baku incident probably highlighted to him that even if he were to match Verstappen, he wouldn’t have the team’s full backing as they saw Max as the future. F1 is a fickle business and in the event of Max increasingly getting the better of him, Ricciardo’s stock would have started to drop as he became seen more and more as a second driver, rather than championship contender.

    I think the move to Renault was better for his career in terms of maintaining his reputation and long term value as a top driver. He maintains that to this day and if one of the teams he gambles on happens to provide a championship contender, he will be in much better shape against nearly any other teammate than against Max, especially when Daniel now is more likely to have the team’s full backing (or at least neutrality).

  12. Also, I’m kind of suspect that a 11 year old boy in Australia had a keen interest in stock car oval racing, he and his friend were big Earnhardt fans, and was in tears over Earnhardt’s death.

    He vividly recalls the race? It would have been at 3 in the morning in Australia.

    I’m sure he would have watched replays of the crash and as someone involved in motor racing it would have reminded him of the dangers, but I have a hard time believing he was in tears because he was such a big fan Earnhardt fan.

    Maybe crying because it scared him being reminded of the dangers hearing it in the news.

    The idea that two young boys in Australia had such a keen interest in stock car racing and were such Earnhardt fans they were crying strikes me as bizarre. Sorry, I shouldn’t doubt someone like that. Even if true it’s kind of strange. I mean of all the forms of motorsport, and this is 2001 before wikipedia, etc you have to develop and cultivate an interest that would take years to truly understand and appreciate such a niche form of motor racing for anyone outside of the US.

    1. Well, I knew stock car racing existed and I knew the very basics of Nascar and what the car and tracks looked like when I was 7 growing up in Moscow, having little to none interest in racing all in all.

      Considering Australia has strong stock car racing culture it doesn’t strike me as far out

    2. I think you are underestimating the similarities between the Australian and American cultures in general, but specifically in terms of the automotive world.

      For example, there are many striking parallels between Supercars and NASCAR (Ford v. Chevy/Holden, Daytona & Bathurst, “Win Sunday, Sell Monday”). Australia is one of the few countries outside of North America with professional and amateur drag racing. Also, there was a time in the late 80s where NASCAR ran exhibition races in Australia and also backed a local “AUSCAR” series. Heck, they even built a clockwise clone of Charlotte Motor Speedway in Melbourne called the Calder Thunderdome. NASCAR even ran a few support events for the Bathurst 1000 and a 2x Supercars champion used to raced in the NASCAR Cup series for 7 years. There is most certainty a history and interest for stock car racing in Australia.

      I was an 11 year old American kid in 2001 and was a huge fan of Australian V8 Supercars. I did not become an elite F1 racing driver 20 years later. It dose not surprise me in the slightest than an Australian kid who actually DID grow up to become pro race driver might have been a Dale Earnhardt fan as a child. Plus, the internet existed in 2001, people knew what existed in other countries and tape delayed “live broadcasts” were not uncommon for international sports.

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