After a shocking turn of events, Daniel Ricciardo is back in the F1 grid. The Australian driver won’t have to wait till the 2024 F1 season as the Red Bull hierarchy decided to remove Nyck De Vries and put Ricciardo in his place at the now vacant AlphaTauri seat. However, in a surprising twist, Ricciardo will not only compete against Yuki Tsunoda at the Faenza-based outfit but also against his former right hand Michael Italiano.
Italiano was Ricciardo’s former performance coach, who was seen with him in Red Bull and Renault too. When Ricciardo lost out on his McLaren seat at the end of the 2022 season, Italiano returned to the Red Bull fraternity, joining AlphaTauri. There, he started working closely with Tsunoda.
Now, as the Honey Badger has returned to the grid, the two will come face-to-face with each other, even though they are on the same team. Italiano’s focus will be on helping Tsunoda as much as possible, whereas for Ricciardo, beating the Japanese driver is vital.
Daniel Ricciardo and Michael Italiano, a brotherhood in F1
Italiano was Ricciardo’s performance coach during his time in Red Bull, Renault and then McLaren too. He first started working with the 34-year-old in 2018, and parted ways when McLaren sacked him last year. Even though Ricciardo stepped away from F1 momentarily, Italiano wanted to remain at the highest level. He joined AlphaTauri, where he began training Tsunoda/.
During their days together, Ricciardo often credited a lot of his success to the hard work his former trainer made him go through. From his Red Bull exit to his tumultuous McLaren days, Ricciardo has always had the support of his former performance coach.
However, now Italiano has to work with Tsunoda, who has a completely different personality. Additionally, the work he does with him is a lot different, because ofhis relative young age. Talking about this, he said as per Australian media News.com: Yuki is a lot younger than Daniel. He’s 22. [23 now] So he’s still figuring himself out in Formula 1.”
Michael Italiano went on to explain how the Japanese driver adjusted to the European lifestyle after moving from Japan at such a young age. He also added how he was excited to take up the opportunity of mentoring and strengthening a potential future F1 star.
Ricciardo’s shocking entry to F1
The entire F1 world was excited about Ricciardo’s test in Silverstone last week. However, not many people foresaw him getting back to F1 after just an hour of running. His performances were so good that after just sixty minutes, Christian Horner gave Helmut Marko the heads up to bring Ricciardo back.
With the Perth-born driver crossing the first hurdle of his big return successfully, he still has a long way to go before he finds himself at the top of F1 again. If the Aussie driver can manage to get the better of Tsunoda at AlphaTauri, chances are he can even be given a shot at being Max Verstappen’s teammate once again.
Following his re-entry into the sport, Daniel Ricciardo is naturally delighted. And also at the same time, he is hopeful that he will be able to keep up with the expectations. Also, he insists that his McLaren nightmare won’t be repeated.
