Daniel Ricciardo has revealed the origin behind the nickname ‘honey badger’, which he donned throughout his career in F1.<\/p>\n
Ricciardo joined the F1 grid midway through the 2011 campaign with the backmarker HRT team before spending two years at Toro Rosso.<\/p>\n
The Australian achieved a bulk of his F1 success at Red Bull from 2014 to 2018 where he fashioned himself into one of the most exciting drivers on the grid with his daring overtakes.<\/p>\n
During that time, he was frequently referred to as the ‘honey badger’, named after a mammal that famously showcases little fear against predators.<\/p>\n
Ricciardo stated the personality of the honey badger mirrored how he conducted himself behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
\u201cHoney badgers are cuddly and cute, super good-looking,\u201d Ricciardo laughed while speaking at Ray White\u2019s Connect conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when something takes what\u2019s theirs, they fight back, and I think that was sort of like my alter ego when I got behind the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ricciardo has not raced in F1 since parting ways with the Racing Bulls team after last year’s Singapore Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his early days as a racer and his journey to becoming a household F1 name, Ricciardo credited a former trainer for uncovering a method to bring out his \u201ckiller instinct\u201d while inside the car.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have had a competitor in me since when I was a kid; I was always competitive in everything I did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the killer instinct I needed to develop and work on extracting it out of myself. I\u2019m naturally more easy-going.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my first trainers at the time, Stu Smith, he really brought it out of me. I did have to work at it, but when I let it out it did feel nice \u2013 it\u2019s nice to be a badass sometimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would use too much energy trying to be tough all the time because it\u2019s not natural for me. I would see other drivers who had that killer instinct from morning to night and I wished I could be like them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people would see me laughing and joking, and they would see that as weakness and underestimate me. But I would put the helmet on and think, \u2018Okay, now it\u2019s time to be tough like the others\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Ricciardo has revealed the origin behind the nickname ‘honey badger’, which he donned throughout his career in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-90207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90207","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=90207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}