The biggest casualty of the era Mercedes, one of those uncrowned F1 champions who got out of a winning car to get away from the Clan Verstappen and returned to victory, at Monza 2021, by the longest road, with McLaren. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, 32 years old) was interviewing a few days ago with the famous presenter Ellen DeGeneres (100M followers on Instagram), now she does it with AS in the Hermanos RodrÃguez paddock.
—The Netflix episode that summarizes your year is going to be entertaining…
—Yes… 2018 was difficult from Monaco, but the start of 2021 was even more complicated. Coming out of all that and having Monza happen makes that victory even more special for me. I had to wait a long time for this. Without being too dramatic, I would say that I had the worst bad moments to find myself after the best good moments.
-What was the problem?
—This year I discovered some of my strengths. In the past I was driving for sensations and I was fast, but now I have realized what my advantages were because I couldn’t use them in the car. I’m talking about cornering techniques that didn’t work for me here. What made me fast was the reason I suffered. And on the contrary, to Lando (Norris) he was doing very well. He’s a good driver, but he could also exploit areas where I was getting lost.
“When did you recover?”
“It was gradual.” It took longer than I would have liked. As you ride more, little by little you lose your old ways and take on new habits. At the same time, if you drive every weekend you get into a routine that is not good. The August break was good for me, as if it were reverse psychology. I rested, I took my time and on the way back everything was natural. It’s weird, maybe it’s my thing or it happens to more pilots. I am very sensitive with the car and maybe too sensitive when things go wrong.
“Did you ever think that you had stopped being fast?”
“There were days, no doubt, when… not that I thought I wasn’t fast anymore, but I didn’t have the answers. When you are a little slower you see that you lose tenths in one corner or another and you do not lack confidence, but there were situations this year in which I did not understand why. You question everything, will I be committed? Deep down I knew that yes, I am not scared, but of course you ask yourself questions because you need answers.
“From the outside, it seems like he’s always having fun …”
—I always have a positive attitude when I come to the races because it is another opportunity. But in some of those bad races, instead of going to bed on Sunday and forgetting Monday, the bitter feeling lasted longer than usual. I used my positive attitude as motivation once I got over the sad moments. I realized that I wanted to continue. In those days you think: ‘okay, I hate this sport’. But what I feel afterwards reminds me how much I like it. I’m not even close to wanting to quit.
“Were you worried about not living up to expectations?”
-It’s hard. I don’t want to sound selfish, but no one was bothered more than me. Andreas (Seidl) It wouldn’t make me feel worse, but it’s not the environment I wanted. I have always achieved good results, I have never been that pilot who is in the shit. And it sucks, you want return the favour, he (Andreas) you had faith in me and you want to give it back. For the money? They pay us well, of course, and when you are not up to it you feel bad. You want it to be worth it and for the team to recoup every penny spent. That also plays a role, for sure. Fortunately, Monza paid all the debts (laughs). Even when you go to the factory, it is much easier to enter after a good race. If not, you always feel a part of the responsibility. I’m not saying that you screwed up their weekend, but I am saying that you haven’t helped their grand prize to be good.
“He says the victory at Monza makes up for everything.” Do you really think about it, a race solves a season?
-Yes. I don’t mean to say I don’t need to win again, but it does make all the bad days of the year worth it. It shows the team that not only do I still have what it takes to win races, but I can also get myself out of the hole. If I had more difficult careers now, I know they would be more patient with me. And they have been. Andreas can expect more from me, but I never had a hard talk with him.
– Winning with McLaren in the Mercedes and Red Bull championship, is it better?
—It’s amazing, you are the outsider. Esteban (Or with) he won with the Alpine, and I don’t want to detract from it, but there were more circumstances in that race. At Monza, Max and Lewis had their incident, but we were already in the front then and I think I would have managed to keep them both behind in the second stint. Winning on equal terms makes it more special. It was a real victory, it was not luck.
“Why is McLaren the right bet for next year?”
“McLaren is a good bet, whether it’s next year or two years from now.” A team cannot always win, at some point there will be a changing of the guard and maybe we will see it this year with Red Bull and Mercedes. To be successful you need the right people and I think Andreas is one of the guys that can generate a winning team. There are still things that we lack in Woking, but I see the tools that we have and it is impressive. With a wind tunnel, it will be impressive.
“Do you regret leaving Red Bull?”
-No. For several reasons. If i had stayed (in 2019), I don’t think it was still there this year. The move to Renault did not alter my future at Red Bull. I don’t know if I would have grown much more there. Other factors contributed to my leaving, I knew Simon (Rennie, his career engineer then) he would leave, and we had a very good relationship. To clarify, from the heart, in secret, I will be very happy if they win the World Cup. I don’t think about what it could have been because I wasn’t going to be there in 2021, I know more people at Red Bull than I do at Mercedes. I made a decision in 2018, but after Monza I had messages from Helmut Marko or Dietrich Mateschitz. I owe most of my career to Red Bull.
“How do you remember your time with Max?”
-It was fun. There were accidents between the two of us, but there were never secrets between our work environments. I remember not wanting to give him a slipstream in Austria once, we were very competitive, but all of this made us faster. I never doubted that I had the same car, but sometimes I did not feel that the point of view was the same and it made me insecure.
“What is Max like as a pilot?”
—I remember his first training session with Red Bull in Barcelona, ​​he came out of the garage and he was up to speed. He is not afraid. Even if he will not win this year, it is inevitable that he will be world champion in the future. In the race he goes for all the holes, I see similarities between his style and mine. If it is better than me? Until I retire, I will always think that I am the best. So when I stop, it will be because I don’t feel that way anymore. Is he the second best? Probably yes.