“I was getting beat up” – How Daniel Ricciardo burned out on ‘humiliating’ F1 return

Novembro 13, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

As Daniel Ricciardo joined the Beyond The Grid podcast last month, he sounded more grounded, almost wiser. Two years away from Formula 1’s limelight have provided the Australian with the time he required for introspection, allowing him to view his final years in the championship from a new angle.

Those final years were a struggle. After losing his McLaren seat, Ricciardo returned to his old Faenza team with a view to make a Red Bull comeback – to no avail. He never found his long-lost performance again, having previously experienced a bruising time in Woking. His shock Italian Grand Prix victory hardly distracts from the fact that, other than that, he never finished on the podium in his final 70 races.

While his F1 adventure did not wind up on his own terms – with Red Bull deciding that youngster Liam Lawson was the way to go for the second RB seat – Ricciardo has grown aware, even persuading himself that he wasn’t ready to retire, that he no longer was in the right state of mind for racing.

“By that point, I was done getting knocked down; I was, I guess, getting beat up,” he said of his state of mind at his last race, the 2024 Singapore GP.

“I was still hungry and wanting to try to prove something – mainly to myself – but there were moments where I was done, and I think also in denial, back to that protective shield that we may put up at times: ‘I can do this, I’m strong, I’ll get through this, I’m good enough, blah blah blah’. There were definitely times that I was like, ‘Ugh, I don’t love this anymore, I don’t really want to be here’. Sleep it off, sleep it off, you’ll get there and you’ll be fine and then maybe have one good race or one moment you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got the fire back’.

Daniel Ricciardo, RB F1 Team VCARB 01

Photo by: Erik Junius

“I still wanted the fairy tale, of course; I wanted to get back with Red Bull Racing and all of that, and I would have loved to have been team-mates with Max again and tried to race at the front again. But I knew deep down I was getting more burned out by it all. I think, because of a lot of factors, it wasn’t as easy for me anymore to perform and compete at the level that I once did. And you see some guys that are still doing it at a high level, that are older than me, so it’s different for everyone.

“There was just a lot of pain, process, a lot of things that just were happening and had happened over the years, that I think just built up, and it was just very hard for me to shut all that out and do it.”

Overwhelmed by his emotions, Ricciardo isn’t certain he could have made the arguably healthy decision to pull the plug himself.

“The fear I had is, in hindsight and learning how content I am not having that anymore, what if they kept extending contracts for me, would I keep doing it, was I ever going to turn the tap off? I know I wanted to at times,” he admitted. “I can tell you right now, Monaco 2022 after the race, I’m sitting in my apartment, talking to my team, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore, I’m done’. I’ve had this conversation more than once over the years – Silverstone 2015 was another time.”

Ricciardo qualified a lowly 14th and finished 13th in the 2022 Monaco GP with McLaren, at the track where he had won four years prior. In the 2015 British GP, he was just 10th on the grid after his ninth-fastest time was deleted for a track-limits infringement, collided with Romain Grosjean at the start, and struggled in the lower pack until he was struck by an electrical failure.

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren

Photo by: ACM / Philippe Magoni

“You have people around you that tell you, ‘You’re great, you can still do it’, and you end up also believing a lot of these voices – I know they don’t mean harm, but you don’t really get a chance to have your own thoughts much, and I think that would have probably just continued and maybe I would still be racing – and that’s also a scary thought,” the 37-year-old added.

“I still don’t like how it ended, but there’s also a part of me which is grateful they pulled the trigger, because I wouldn’t want to be doing it now.”

Still, Ricciardo struggled with what he described as a sense of failure and humiliation as his career ended abruptly and he mourned his dream of a world title.

“You start racing at such a young age, and over the years you build, I guess, a ruthlessness – but that also is inward as well,” he explained. “You can be very harsh on yourself and expect a lot from yourself. So I think, let’s say, failing – that was my view of it, failing, not performing to the level I needed to at the time, or not being able to finish out the season, or whatever – it’s then a sense of humiliation. I failed, and I didn’t do what I once could.

“Trying to deal with that, those next few months, I understood it as I was just hiding from the humiliation. People saw me out in public, I was, ‘Ha ha ha, I’m having a good time’, having a drink or whatever, and I was just hiding from what I really felt deep inside, which was a lot of pain and sadness. ‘It’s gone. I was once this kid that was hoping to fight for a world title and winning races; it’s gone’.”