“I was with Max Verstappen longer as a partner”– Daniel Ricciardo confesses he prefers his Red Bull teammate over Lando Norris

Tanish Chachra | 25/06/2022
"I was with Max Verstappen longer as a partner"– Daniel Ricciardo confesses he prefers his Red Bull teammate over Lando Norris

Daniel Ricciardo admits that he prefers Max Verstappen over his current teammate Lando Norris while participating in a Youtube video.

The McLaren superstar Daniel Ricciardo in his lengthy F1 career has partnered with multiple talented drivers. But he has definitely vibed the most with Max Verstappen and Lando Norris.

But Norris feels that his Australian teammate prefers the 2021 world champion over him. In a Youtube video, the 22-year-old F1 driver said that he likes Verstappen more because of the sketch Ricciardo drew of him.

In response, Ricciardo probably jokingly affirmed the accusation. But he said that there’s still time for the Briton to overtake the Red Bull superstar.

“Like I said, he prefers Max [Verstappen] over me,” said Norris. “I was with Max longer, as a like a partner, as a teammate,” Ricciardo responded.

“Maybe there’s time to earn ‘LN’ over my forehead,” he added. As the nature of the conversation above shows that it was all light-hearted in nature, and Ricciardo-Norris do actually go well together.

Also read: When Top Gun Maverick star Tom Cruise crashed the Red Bull Formula One Car

Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen were best of friends

Ricciardo and Verstappen’s time together at Red Bull is often painted as something negative. Especially among the fans, whose first information for F1 was Netflix’s Drive to Survive. A partnership doomed with envy and clash between two ambitious drivers.

The two were paired together when Ricciardo was at his peak and a prodigy Verstappen was placed by Red Bull to make him the youngest world champion.

Therefore, there were indeed a few competitive tussles. But off the track, the two bonded well with each other and hardly said anything negative about each other.

Ricciardo’s exit from Red Bull was not Verstappen motivated, but his desire to be the main man in the team. Thus, it shouldn’t be painted as something that was caused by a rift between two drivers.

Even after leaving Red Bull, Ricciardo and Verstappen go well with each other. Had the Milton-Keynes-based team given fewer reliability issues to the drivers in the three years they were together, Red Bull could have achieved more with such a powerful partnership.

Also read: Adrian Newey reflects back on his accident and his possible “career suicide”

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Daniel Ricciardo Lando Norris Max Verstappen McLaren Red Bull

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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