Daniel Ricciardo celebrating on the podium at the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix in Red Bull Racing overalls

Daniel Ricciardo: 8 F1 Wins, 32 Podiums, and the Biggest Smile on the Grid

October 15, 2026

Oct 15, 2026 · 7 min read·

Daniel Ricciardo: 8 F1 Wins, 32 Podiums, and the Biggest Smile on the Grid

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Formula 1 Driver Spotlight - where we pull one driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the Honey Badger.

Daniel Ricciardo celebrating on the podium at the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix in Red Bull Racing overalls next to Max Verstappen — Daniel Ricciardo on the podium at the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen on his right and Mark Webber on the microphone. (Photo: Morio, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The Short Version

Daniel Ricciardo started 257 grand prix across 14 seasons and won eight of them, with 32 podiums, three poles and 1,329 career points. He is the only teammate who ever beat Sebastian Vettel over a full season at Red Bull, and he did it in 2014 against a man who had won the previous four world championships. He never finished higher than third in a title fight, and he never drove a car that was the fastest on the grid. What he did instead was win races nobody expected him to win, usually by outbraking somebody who thought the corner was closed.

From Perth to the Back of the Grid

Daniel Joseph Ricciardo was born on July 1, 1989, in Perth, Western Australia, about as far from a European racing paddock as it is possible to be and still be on the planet. His father Giuseppe came from Ficarra in Sicily, his mother Grace was born in Australia to a family from Calabria, and Daniel grew up in the Perth suburb of Duncraig. He won the Formula Renault 2.0 Western European Cup in 2008 and the British Formula 3 championship in 2009, then finished runner-up in Formula Renault 3.5 in 2010.

His Formula 1 debut was not glamorous. Red Bull parked him at HRT midway through 2011, in a car so slow it was regularly lapped twice. He scored nothing in 11 races. Two seasons at Toro Rosso followed, 30 points total, and then in 2014 Red Bull promoted him into the seat next to the reigning four-time world champion. Most of the paddock assumed they knew how that would end.

The Year He Beat Vettel

It did not end that way. Ricciardo finished second on the road at his home race in Melbourne in his first start for the team, then lost the result when the stewards excluded him for exceeding the 100 kilograms per hour fuel flow limit. Red Bull appealed and lost. He shook it off and won in Canada, Hungary and Belgium, the only three races in 2014 that a Mercedes did not win.

The final tally was 238 points to 167 in his favor, third in the championship against Vettel's fifth, three wins to none. Vettel left for Ferrari at the end of the year. No other teammate has ever outscored him across a full Red Bull season.

Daniel Ricciardo driving the yellow and black number 3 Renault R.S.19 at speed during the 2019 Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka — Ricciardo in the number 3 Renault R.S.19 at Suzuka during the 2019 Japanese Grand Prix, his first season after leaving Red Bull. (Photo: Takayuki Suzuki, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Monaco, Twice

Monaco gave Ricciardo the worst day of his career and then handed him the best one. In 2016 he put the Red Bull on pole and led comfortably until his team called him in for a stop and the tires were not there. He sat in the pit box watching the race go by, came out behind Lewis Hamilton and finished second. His radio message afterward was not printable.

Two years later he was back on pole at the same track. On lap 28 his MGU-K failed, costing him roughly 25 percent of his engine power and two of his eight gears. He had 50 laps left, Vettel's Ferrari in his mirrors and a deficit worth about two and a half seconds a lap. He drove the whole thing on six gears and brake-and-throttle management and won anyway. Christian Horner called it unbelievable. It is still one of the most complete defensive drives of the hybrid era.

Monza 2021, and the Last Win

Ricciardo left Red Bull for Renault in 2019, then moved to McLaren in 2021. His first season there was rough and Lando Norris outqualified him most weekends. Then came Monza. Ricciardo passed Max Verstappen into the first chicane at the start, held the lead through a pit sequence, and when Verstappen and Hamilton took each other out at the Rettifilo he simply drove away. Norris followed him home for a McLaren one-two, the team's first win since Jenson Button at Brazil in 2012.

That was win number eight, and it turned out to be the last one. He lost his McLaren seat after 2022, spent part of 2023 as a Red Bull reserve, came back with AlphaTauri mid-season and stayed into 2024 with the team rebranded as RB. The pace never fully returned. His 257th and final grand prix was Singapore in September 2024, where he took the fastest lap on the last tour and knew it was over before the team told him.

The Numbers

Daniel Ricciardo's Formula 1 career by the numbers. Graphic by Happy Hour Racing. Stats via the official F1 record and the Ergast Formula 1 database.

The Man Off the Track

The grin was never an act, and neither was the edge underneath it. Ricciardo picked up the nickname "the Honey Badger" because the animal looks harmless and is anything but, which is exactly how his late braking felt to the drivers he was passing. He invented the "shoey" on the podium at the 2016 German Grand Prix, pouring champagne into his own race boot and drinking it, and then kept doing it for the next eight years while sponsors quietly winced.

Away from the circuit he is a Perth kid who never really left. He still talks about Duncraig and the Australian Grand Prix the way other drivers talk about Monaco, he runs his own clothing label called Enchante, and he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2022. He has a sister, Michelle, and he has always kept his private life genuinely private, which is rarer in this paddock than it sounds.

What He Is Doing Now

On September 5, 2025, almost a year after Singapore, Ricciardo confirmed he was finished as a racing driver and took a job as global ambassador for Ford Racing. His line was simple: "While my racing days are behind me, my love for anything with wheels will always remain high." He has stayed close to the sport through 2026 without any sign of a comeback, and Ford's technical partnership with Red Bull means his old team's name is never far away.

Danny Ric has a new role. The eight-time Grand Prix winner is joining the Ford Racing division as a Global Ambassador. #F1
- Formula 1 (@F1) September 5, 2025

Fun Stats

He took three pole positions in 257 starts, and two of them were at Monaco. The 2018 one he converted into a win on six gears.
He drove for seven different constructors: HRT, Toro Rosso, Red Bull, Renault, McLaren, AlphaTauri and RB.
His first win and his last win were seven years and three months apart, Canada in June 2014 to Monza in September 2021.
He scored zero points in his entire 2011 rookie season and 238 points three years later.
Of his eight wins, seven came with Red Bull and one with McLaren. He never won for Renault, Toro Rosso, AlphaTauri or RB.

The Bottom Line

Daniel Ricciardo never got the car that would have made him a world champion, and he is honest enough to say so. What he got instead was a reputation as the best overtaker of his generation and a record of beating people the paddock said he could not beat. Eight wins is not a huge number. Winning Monaco with a quarter of your power gone, and outscoring a four-time champion in his own team, is how you get remembered anyway.