Red Bull Motorsports
F1
Mind Over Matter: Daniel Ricciardo
How the man with the biggest smile in Formula One transforms into the snarling ‘Honey Badger’.
Keep an eye on Daniel Ricciardo over a race weekend, and 90 percent of the time, he’s smiling, joking and looking like a guy who’s loving every minute of life in Formula One.
But in the lead up to the race you'll usually find that the Australian's face has taken on a steely look. The headphones are on and the heavy metal is pumping. As he returns to the Canadian Grand Prix, scene of his first F1 victory, we discover how the happy-go-lucky Ricciardo morphs into his famed alter ego: the lean, mean overtaking machine that is the Honey Badger.
Cirebox's take on the Hungarian Grand Prix back in 2014 still rings true
© Cirebox
It’s thanks to this Honey Badger state thatthe Infiniti Red Bull Racing driver managed three wins last season, wins so good they even drew praise from rival Fernando Alonso – a man not known for sweet-talking his opposition.
So how does Daniel wake the Honey Badger? We sat down with him to find out...
Daniel, how do you get yourself into the zone? Definitely an hour before the race, I like to have my own space, my own time. At the most, I’ll have my trainer Stuart there with me. Listening to music is my way of getting into it. As the race gets closer, my intensity increases. From a stretch, I’ll go into an actual warm-up, the heart rate gets higher and higher and that’s how I get pumped up.
I don’t have a mental coach or anything like that telling me to visualise this or do that. Myself and Stu have gone through that a bit over the years and we understand it, so we may have discussions over the weekend, but deep psychology I don’t really know much about.
Are you aware of other people on the grid? You know who’s around you. When I get to my grid spot, I do the procedures with the clutch bite-point and I make sure all that’s done. And then I’ll look in the mirror and check when the last car is coming up to the grid, so then I know I’ve got 10 more seconds, or whatever. That’s normally my countdown. Then I grab first gear and that’s when the heart rate starts to come up a bit more – but you’ve got to try and control your breathing because that’s when you’ve got to be relaxed, to make sure your reaction is good.
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Daniel is one of the best at overtaking in F1
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Does an overtake really get the blood flowing? Yeah. If you’re coming up to someone, your mind’s changing into an attacking approach and then you immediately start to think ‘Where am I gonna get him? How am I gonna prepare myself the best way to make sure I get him at that point? What line am I going to take? What gear am I going to use to try and get me closer to him?’
Another scenario where the intensity goes up is pitting. On an in-lap, I’m thinking ‘How am I gonna make some time here? Should I go really aggressive into the pit box or should I be a bit more conservative to make sure the mechanics do a good stop?’
Game face well and truly on..
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
An in-the-zone Ricciardo about to do battle
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Monaco lets drivers put it on the line
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Is calmness or aggression better when you’re in the cockpit? I think it’s good to feel aggressive if you’re going to be aggressive when you overtake. I don’t think you want to be too calm when you try to pass someone – you want to have a bit of fire up you. In the pit stop, once we’ve entered the pit lane and put the pit limiter on it’s pretty relaxed. And then going out of the pit as well, that’s a time where we can gather our thoughts. But for overtaking, you want to be a bit more intense.
What about when there’s less grip when it’s greasy or raining – what happens to your mindset then? I think there’s two approaches, and it depends how much time you’ve got. If it’s one lap in qualifying, then you have to risk it. You have to be willing to crash, I guess. But if you’ve got 20 minutes left in the session or whatever, then you’d probably take a more conservative approach where you build up, build up, build up.
Daniel celebrating his win at Spa last year
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
In the wet, "You have to be willing to crash"
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Carlos gets some advice from Daniel Ricciardo
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
If you’ve crashed, does it play on your mind when you get back into the car? The only time it will play on your mind is if you don’t understand why it happened. If I’ve crashed by myself and I don’t know why, then it will play on my mind. But 99.99 percent of the time, we understand the mistake and it’s easy to move on from that. If you crash from braking too late or turning in too early, which then makes you clip the kerb and hit the wall, there’s nothing to be afraid of, because you know what you did and why. You just don’t do it again!
Is there a sense of guilt when you crash? I think when you crash you always feel a bit guilty. But I think when you crash because you were exploring a higher limit, that’s a good thing. But if you crash from, say, a lack of concentration, then you definitely feel guilty.
Was it harder to deal with crashes when you were growing up? As a kid, it was probably harder, because especially in karting or Formula Ford, a lot of the time if I crashed it was Dad’s money that was paying for the repairs! Dad would obviously try and make me feel better and say stuff like “Don’t worry, I’ll just work harder next weekend!” But yeah, it’s nice to know that the team will take care of those things… although I probably crash less now. I think I crashed more when my dad was paying for it – poor bastard!
