After his early retirement from McLaren, Daniel Ricciardo returned to Red Bull at the beginning of this year. Ricciardo admits it was not an easy return, one that left him with strong self-doubt.
In the meantime, there is even talk of a return as a full-fledged racing driver in Formula 1, although currently interrupted by a fracture in his hand after a crash, but when we go back more than half a year in time, Daniel Ricciardo has doubts, a lot of doubts .
Speaking to the ‘Talking Bull’ podcast, Ricciardo admits he had serious doubts about himself when he returned to Red Bull and especially when he did his first laps in the F1 simulator there. Earlier, team boss Christian Horner also admitted that it showed that Ricciardo was a completely different driver than when he left Red Bull years ago.
“My results were clearly not what people expect from me, nor what I expect,” said Ricciardo. “To then get out of the sport, to have some time off in the summer and realize I wouldn’t be racing this year, that helped.”
“To then step back into it, people realized that I had lost something in me, I also realized that.”
“The first day I was still unsure, I still had habits from last year when I was still racing, so it took some time to make a new start.”
However, Ricciardo delved extensively into the F1 simulator and together with Simon Rennie, his former engineer at Red Bull from 2014 to 2018, Ricciardo gradually managed to turn the situation around.
“It wasn’t right in the simulator right away,” Simon Rennie reflects on Ricciardo’s return. “He felt a bit empty and doubted himself a bit.”
“Then we had a good day in the simulator, the feeling got better and we clicked. Confidence grew like a snowball rolling and at the end of the day you feel: ‘He’s back!’ It was again the normal Ricciardo we knew from the past.”