“If It Is His Last One…”: Even Daniel Ricciardo’s Family Was Ready To Accept the End of His Career in 2022

Daniel Ricciardo has once again shed light about his two-year stint with McLaren which ended with him parting ways with the team at the end of the 2022 season. The Australian compared his time at the Woking-based outfit to that of a “washing machine” and explained how he needed to leave the team to recuperate himself. Since it was evident that the Honey Badger was struggling with McLaren, even his family sensed that the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix could indeed be the 34-year-old’s last race in F1.

While speaking with GQ magazine about why his family felt it necessary to attend the 2022 Abu Dhabi GP in particular, Ricciardo said, “It’s a direct flight from Perth. It’s not super uncommon for my family to come. But I think there was probably a little part in them coming to that one as well, which was, ‘If it is his last one, let’s all be here and try to enjoy it.” 

Ricciardo may have returned to F1 in midseason last year, but things seemed bleak for him after the 2022 campaign. After underperforming in 2021 compared to McLaren teammate Lando Norris, the Australian’s performances in 2022 were even worse.

In 2021, Ricciardo scored 115 points compared to Norris’ 160. However, come 2022, Ricciardo only managed 37 compared to the Briton’s 122. These poor results might have been the reason why Ricciardo had an inkling that McLaren may not want to continue their partnership with him.

Speaking about the same, the 34-year-old said, “It was tough, but it wasn’t so much that ‘Oh my gosh. I accepted my results weren’t good enough, so it was more just trying to understand why.”

Daniel Ricciardo discusses how his challenging 2022 season caused him to lose confidence

From the start of the 2022 season, Daniel Ricciardo’s struggles seemed evident. After the first ten races of the season, Ricciardo just finished higher than P12 on one occasion. Since the highest he finished was only fifth (in Singapore), it hurt his confidence. As a result of the same, Ricciardo felt that he was facing an uphill battle during his time at McLaren.

He proceeded as far as to disclose the precise instance when this realization came to him. While elaborating on it, the former McLaren driver said, “If I was still qualifying behind Lando [Norris, his McLaren teammate], but maybe only two-tenths [of a second] behind him instead of five-tenths, that was now seen as a good job.”