Every time I've met Daniel Ricciardo: Ranked
Some things are inevitable: Death, taxes, and Danny Ric
I'll admit it: I'm a recovering Daniel Ricciardo fan. From the moment I first started getting into the sport back in 2013, something about his goofy-ass smile and fun-loving persona appealed to me, back when I used to have to pray Toro Rosso would produce some of its own fun social media content. Naturally, when I started getting into the sport, I started stanning Ricciardo, hard — and finagled my way into meeting him a couple different times.
Let's rank those times.
SIX: Signing my flag at the USGP
Back in the good ol’ days (2014), when tickets for the US Grand Prix weekend hovered around $200 and where you had the Circuit of The Americas to yourself if you turned up for FP1 on Friday, you could also get autographs from your favorite drivers. Crazy, right?
To do so, you had to turn up at the gates early, then run to the amphitheater to secure one of a limited number of autograph wristbands — and you had to choose carefully. Each day, a handful of teams would come up for signings, and you could only grab an autograph from one or two of those teams. I can't remember the team I was going for on Saturday evening, but unfortunately, I couldn't finagle both that team and Red Bull.
No matter: Back then, you could also crowd around the amphitheater stage, and if you were lucky, drivers might complete their official autograph sessions on the stage, then come toss some hats into the crowd — or sign some more autographs.
I had a strategy. I had purchased a fucking massive Australian flag on Amazon and hand-painted it with a big number 3 and, I think, some quote about a honey badger. I knew that if I got a front-row seat in the pit for the autographs, I could wave that flag and get that coveted DR autograph.
And it worked. Danny Ric peeped that big-ass flag and lit up, and when he wrapped his official session, he made a point of signing my flag. It was very neat.
FIVE: Daniel Ricciardo served me dinner
Ironically, this is not the only time a Formula 1 driver served me food.
Between 2014 and 2018, I lived in Austin, TX for college, which meant I was on hand for all the build-up events for the USGP weekend. I'd invite a bunch of friends to come crash at my apartment, and we'd all keep a keen eye on social media to see if there were any fun announcements for meet-and-greets or press appearances.
And in 2015, Red Bull Racing posted a quick little tweet: If you want to meet Daniel Ricciardo, he's slinging kimchi fries at a Chi’lantro food truck at the intersection of 25th and Pearl.
Folks: I lived at 22nd and Pearl.
My friend Remy and I immediately made the three-block trek over to the food truck in question. Red Bull was filming a fun little culture spot for the race weekend, where Big Dan was putting together kimchi fries and serving them to fans. Mostly, we just wanted to hang out and watch.
But by that point, I knew Red Bull's then-PR guy (and I'll get to why in a second), so he was like, “Hey, why don't you guys hop up to the order window, and Daniel will serve you some kimchi fries on camera?”
So we hopped up to the order window, and Daniel Ricciardo served us some kimchi fries on camera — a moment forever immortalized on Red Bull's YouTube page:
It was a pretty brief interaction, but it was also one of those “is this real life?” moments that I don't think I'll ever forget.
FOUR: Interviewing Big D for RACEWKND
I've only interviewed Daniel Ricciardo once during my professional career, but it was a great conversation. I was contributing to a big ol magazine produced by a publication called RACEWKND dedicated to F1 in America, and part of the magazine involved quotes from drivers about what they liked about Austin, and about America in general.
Somehow, my editor-in-chief Magnus Greaves finagled an interview with Daniel Ricciardo to pad out the edition — and it was such a fun interview.
F1 driver interviews can be kind of a let-down if you're not an established presence in the paddock, which I wasn't at the time. You'll usually get 10 to 15 minutes for a quick chat during a media day, during which time you'd have to ask enough questions to write two stories — but getting anyone to answer anything could be a fucking misery. (I interviewed Max Verstappen early on in his career during a Mobil 1 media day; I could tell I was probably the 19th person he'd talked to that day, and as a result, the answer to almost all of my questions, including one about Texas BBQ, was “I don't know, I don't think about it.”)
So it was cool that we'd nabbed this interview, in part because it was done through DR's manager, so we had a little more freedom than we otherwise would have if we'd gone through his team at the time. Plus, we were chatting about NASCAR, America, and all the shit he loves about Austin. It was a really cool chat, and probably one of my favorite F1 driver interviews.
BUT WAIT: There's more!
During this interview, I was also able to confirm something that had been on my mind for years. Back in early October of 2016, I sat at a tattoo shop called True Blue on 7th St. in Austin for the rose tattoos that adorn my chest and shoulders. I loved the shop, I loved the work, and I was stoked that I'd managed to get a gorgeous tattoo from Cory Correia while he was doing an Austin residency.
Then, when F1 rolled into town a few weeks later, Daniel Ricciardo posted about getting a tattoo — one of his first — at none other than True Blue Tattoo on 7th St.
Did he confirm that he had in fact gotten his first tattoo at True Blue? Yes. Did it change my life in any meaningful way? No, not really. But it was nevertheless a fun moment of serendipity.
THREE: Winning the Red Bull contest in Silverstone
In 2014 and 2015, I was a fucking master of the Red Bull meet-and-greet contest.
Basically, every few races, Red Bull Racing would announce that it was hosting some kind of contest where fans were invited to create something — in this case, a meme — and therefore be entered into the running for a meet-and-greet with the drivers. In the summer of 2015, I traveled to a handful of races overseas, including the British Grand Prix, so when RBR announced that it was hosting a meet-and-greet contest at a cricket field(? I don't know what they're called) in Milton-Keynes, I was all over that.
I didn't have any pretensions of winning this one, mostly because if I recall correctly, I whipped up my meme in no fewer than 10 minutes while en route to the Canadian Grand Prix. I thought it was funny, and so I shipped it off into the ether.
Peep this bad boy:
Imagine my surprise a few weeks later when I discovered that I'd won.
I was traveling abroad with my bestie Remy, but they were working remotely from an office in London, so they weren't able to join me on my trip to the cricket pitch(? If that's what its called), so I invited an internet friend named Jody, booked a train ticket, and headed to the miserable little suburb that is Milton-Keynes.
And man, what a blast. We got to meet Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat, as well as David Croft and Natalie Pinkham, who were on site to film some kind of cricket-related TV spot. I'd come from Austria, where I had also attended the long-since-forgotten concept that is mid-season tire testing; we'd set up camp in the grandstands, and I proudly hung a brand new Daniel Ricciardo flag up for all to see.
I had him sign that flag in Milton-Keynes, and he was stoked that some weird little American was traveling around Europe with a honey badger flag. It was such a goofy experience.
TWO: The time Daniel Ricciardo saw my race car
I'll be honest in saying I'm not 100% sure on how this one happened, but: In 2016, I was in college, and I was part of my school's Formula SAE team. Because we were in Austin, we somehow ended up being invited to a pre-USGP event with Red Bull Racing, where we could go karting and try to set faster times than the drivers, and where we could bring our race car.
It was a ton of fun (I've got a whole Flickr album here if you want to peep it) — we got to meet the drivers and watch them make salsa and generally just have a blast eating very good food.
But Daniel Ricciardo also wanted to see our race car.
We'd been trying to figure out how to finagle the whole thing — if you know anything about F1, you know that their media schedules are jam packed with one activity after another; actually wrangling Ricciardo for a meaningful conversation was going to be a challenge.
But as he was being shuttled to his shuttle at the end of the night, he made a serious point of joining us to check out the car.
Maybe he was just trying to make us college kids feel good about ourselves, but he was super engaged — he asked a ton of questions about the design and build process, nodding along as we explained our logic in specific design choices.
(This is where I point out that I did not answer any of these questions, because I was an English major and in charge of posting on social media and sometimes writing marketing emails and taking photos. I did, however, get my machine shop certification and manufactured one (1) washer for the car.)
Honestly, it was such a cool experience. Big Dan seemed legitimately interested, and he made sure he chatted with us for several minutes, even as he was being ushered off to his next destination.
I'll be honest that I was already biased in the man's favor (he was my favorite driver at the time, after all), but his willingness to stick around made a really great impression on me. This was pretty much the only time I'd met him that wasn’t in a setting where he was specifically instructed to interact with fans or media, but he did anyway; Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly were also there that day, and we'd hoped they'd join us, too. But Ricciardo was the guy who actually made the effort.
ONE: Winning THE Red Bull contest in Austin
It's early October in 2014. I'm in my first semester at the University of Texas, about to attend my first-ever Formula 1 race in hopes of “getting it out of my system,” since I was still a very fresh motorsport fan. My mom had bought me two race day tickets as a graduation gift, and I'd invited my friend Remy (who I did not know at that point aside from being pals on Tumblr), as long as they'd buy general admission tickets for Friday and Saturday.
And then: Red Bull announced that it was hosting a contest. The prize? Meeting Daniel Ricciardo ahead of a Red Bull show-run in downtown Austin. I was all in.
For this contest, fans were instructed to create a Western-themed movie poster that would describe their day spent hanging out with the Red Bull Racing F1 crew. I'd learned how to do some minor photo editing because I spent a lot of my time in high school editing flower crowns onto François Cevert, so I felt pretty good about this. One of my other Tumblr friends, Catherine, decided she wanted to try entering the contest, too, and we made a pact that if either one of us won, we'd bring the other as our plus-one.
Fans were limited to one entry per email address, so I made like 10 email addresses and sent in a variety of different posters that I had worked very, very hard on. I didn't really expect to win — but then, not long after, I got an email from Red Bull Racing.
Congratulations, Elizabeth! You've won a meet-and-greet with Daniel Ricciardo!
My immediate reaction was to text Catherine the good news… and she told me she had won the contest, too! We quickly scrambled together some plus-ones (Remy flew in early, and our online friend Sabrina drove down from north Texas) and were ready to roll.
The day kicked off with a nice breakfast courtesy of Red Bull before we were brought to a hotel conference room to meet Daniel Ricciardo. When he walked in, the man beelined to a bowl of trail mix, which he held out to the group for our inspection.
“America is wild,” he said. “You guys put M&Ms in your cereal!”
No one had the heart to correct him.
We had a little chat, and he signed a bunch of stuff for us before we got some selfies. Then, we had a chance to sit in on a Red Bull press conference in the hotel before the show run kicked off — which was my very first time seeing a Formula 1 car in person! There are perhaps few better ways to do so than seeing one do donuts on the streets of the city you're living in. It was a frankly ridiculous introduction to Formula 1.
Is it any surprise that, as Remy and I debriefed in my apartment with some Indian food after the Grand Prix, we decided we definitely had to go to Europe the following summer — completely demolishing my plans to get F1 out of my system for good?
No. Not really.
Here's me in Austria for F1 the next summer:
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