{"id":581938,"date":"2026-04-03T02:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T02:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/581938\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T02:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T02:20:11","slug":"daniel-ricciardo-grateful-for-red-bull-sacking-comments-ford-drive-podcast-rb-what-is-daniel-ricciardo-doing-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/581938\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Ricciardo ‘grateful’ for Red Bull sacking comments, Ford Drive podcast, RB, What is Daniel Ricciardo doing now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Ricciardo<\/a> has used a rare interview to reveal he is “grateful” he was sacked from F1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old made the revelation in an appearance on Ford chief executive Jim Farley’s Drive podcast.<\/p>\n

Ricciardo has kept a relatively low profile since his final F1 appearance at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix<\/a>. He said he had been considering giving the game away for a year before the call was made for him.<\/p>\n

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\"Daniel<\/p>\n

Daniel Ricciardo during his last weekend in F1 at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Sacked by McLaren at the end of 2022, Ricciardo was on the sidelines for the first half of 2023 before earning a recall to the Racing Bulls team \u2013 then RB \u2013 for the Hungarian Grand Prix replacing the struggling Nyck de Vries.<\/p>\n

During practice at Zandvoort, Ricciardo ironically followed Oscar Piastri, who had replaced him at McLaren, into the wall at turn three. The “silly” crash was enough to break his hand, and he missed the next six races.<\/p>\n

“I was like ‘well, I’ve never really hurt myself racing all these years, and I have a silly crash and I was like, OK, is this now a bit of a sign? Should I just quit while I’m ahead,” he said.<\/p>\n

But the West Australian still felt he had “unfinished business” in the sport, and decided to “push through it”.<\/p>\n

\"18th<\/p>\n

Ricciardo finished 18th but set the fastest lap in his last race.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“I lasted another year in F1 and then … ultimately got let go. That was the reality at the time.<\/p>\n

“I think once that happened, I’d had been let go twice in the last two years. And I was like, ‘look, it had taken a lot out of me, I’d put a lot of my soul into it’.”<\/p>\n

But despite the brutal nature of how the decision was made – without fanfare, without a proper farewell, and via press release four days later – Ricciardo said he was glad the call was taken out of his hands.<\/p>\n

“I did feel pretty exhausted by it. In reflection, I was grateful that they made the decision for me because I think it would have been hard to say ‘I’m done’.<\/p>\n

“I think I knew I was probably done because I knew it was harder for me to perform at the level I could.<\/p>\n

“For whatever reason, I lost a little bit of something and it’s OK to admit it.”<\/p>\n

Ricciardo endured a tumultuous career in F1 following his departure from Red Bull at the end of 2018. After two years at Renault, Ricciardo departed for another two years at McLaren alongside Lando Norris.<\/p>\n

Although he led Norris home in a sensational 1-2 in the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, Ricciardo admitted his second year at the team \u2013 the first year of the ground effects aero regulations \u2013 was particularly difficult.<\/p>\n

He was ultimately sacked, replaced by Piastri. He spent six months on the sidelines before returning to the sport in Hungary.<\/p>\n

Ricciardo switched off from racing for much of 2025. He said he has zero interest in making a return to the F1 grid.<\/p>\n

“There’s people that love you and will still tell you that you’re great and you can do it, but as much as you love them as well, you need to just close the door and make that decision on your own and be really honest with yourself,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Look, if I would have got to the end of last year, I think I would have still had a lot of these thoughts and had the conversation with myself because I knew it was becoming harder for me, and I had to dig really deep to pull out a result that I was proud of.<\/p>\n

“You always want to believe everyone’s looking out for you – and they probably still are – but they don’t know what it’s like to be you and in your situation.<\/p>\n

“Last year, my retirement year, I gave myself a lot of time to just reflect on my career, to be at peace with it.”<\/p>\n

Ricciardo is now a Ford Racing global ambassador, and has reunited with Max Verstappen on several occasions to drive various bits of Ford machinery.<\/p>\n

He also continues to work on his Enchante fashion brand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Ricciardo has used a rare interview to reveal he is “grateful” he was sacked from F1. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-581938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}