Daniel Ricciardo’s parents were once advised not to invest $350,000 in the Honey Badger’s F1 dream

While Daniel Ricciardo was not a son of a millionaire, he does come from a well-to-do family that financed his journey into Formula 1.

Joe Ricciardo, father of the Honeybadger once revealed that it took $350,000 to finance the Australian’s dream of driving in F1. But not a lot of people were in support of this investment.

When Ricciardo presented the idea of him moving to Europe to pursue his F1 dream in front of his parents, they were left with a big decision to make.

Speaking in Netflix’s Drive to Survive documentary, Ricciardo’s mother, Grace revealed that a lot of family friends had tried to convince them not to spend that kind of money on Ricciardo.

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The Honeybadger’s championship dream

It has been about a decade since the Honey Badger made his debut in F1 with HRT. Ever since then, the Australian has scored 8 Grand Prix wins and 32 podiums.

Ricciardo was chasing his F1 title with Red Bull but due to multiple reasons within the team and the introduction of Helmut Marko’s child prodigy Max Verstappen, Ricciardo left the Milton-Keynes-based team for Renault.

There was quite a fierce competition between Verstappen and Ricciardo during their time as teammates with the pair colliding on multiple occasions.

While Ricciardo’s dream of the F1 title remained up for grabs, Verstappen went ahead and clinched 2 championship titles with the Red Bull team.

Daniel Ricciardo hoping for a second chance

Ricciardo’s first year with the French team went pretty badly, his second stint in 2020 saw the Australian finish P5 in the championship.

But right then, he decided to move to McLaren. The British team struggled with its pace and Ricciardo struggled with the confidence in the car.

His two seasons with McLaren were filled with struggles and getting outperformed by his own teammate except for the shocking victory he scored at the Italian GP in 2021.

Following his disappointing run, the McLaren F1 team and Ricciardo mutually decided to agree on an early termination of his contract earlier this year amidst a lot of chaos on the paddock.

As he found himself out of an F1 seat in 2023, the Honey Badger decided to take a break and signed a deal with Red Bull as their third driver. However, he has mentioned on multiple occasions that he wants to get back in an F1 seat by 2024.

So, whether or not his move to Red Bull going to help him in achieving that still remains to be seen.

Suppose, it does and he gets himself a seat with Red Bull replacing Sergio Perez, he will be reunited with his former rival Verstappen, who has now entered the list of elites in the sport.

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