Daniel Ricciardo: F1 Career, Wins, and Reserve Role (2024)

Plenty of Formula 1 fans still scan the timing screens for Daniel Ricciardo’s name, even now that he no longer holds a full-time race seat. It’s easy to see why: the Australian collected 8 wins and 32 podiums during his career, then was replaced at RB after the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix.

F1 Wins: 8 ·
Podiums: 32 ·
Pole Positions: 3 ·
Age: 35 (born July 1, 1989) ·
Current Role: Reserve driver for Red Bull Racing

Eleven facts, one pattern: the numbers that built Ricciardo’s reputation are now locked into the record books, while his team status keeps moving.

What does Daniel Ricciardo do for a living now?

Ricciardo’s final race appearance came at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, and days later RB confirmed his exit. What he does now is quieter: he’s back in Red Bull’s reserve-driver program — the same role he held in 2023 before RB called him back to the grid.

That position keeps him inside Formula 1 without a race-weekend schedule. The job consists of simulator development, promotional events, and staying sharp in case a seat opens mid-season.

His role as a reserve driver for Red Bull

• Reserve driver is the F1 version of a bench seat: fully ready to race, but only in the car if a regular driver is unavailable.
• Ricciardo held this exact role in 2023, then stepped into a race seat with RB for the 2024 season.

The 2024 detail that matters: he drove for RB Honda RBPT and finished 17th in the drivers’ championship. Not a disaster, but not the comeback he was hoping to sell teams on.

The pattern: the reserve role pays less, exposes him less, and leaves his reputation in the hands of other drivers’ misfortunes.

Ricciardo has made no secret of wanting another shot. Whether a seat appears depends less on his pace — the 8 wins still answer that question — and more on team politics through 2025 and beyond.

How many F1 races has Daniel Ricciardo won?

Eight — and the margin for debate is roughly zero. Formula 1’s official records, ESPN’s stats hub, and Wikipedia’s career tables all settle on the same count. The more interesting question is where those wins came from: seven belong to his Red Bull years, and one belongs to a McLaren season when the team had already stopped believing in him.

List of his 8 Grand Prix victories

• First win: 2014 Canadian Grand Prix, driving for Red Bull.
• Final win: 2021 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, driving for McLaren.
• Seven wins came between 2014 and 2018, all with Red Bull; the eighth came after he joined McLaren.

The distance between those two wins tells the story of his career. The 2014 victories announced him as a future champion; the 2021 Monza win felt like a farewell flash — the old Ricciardo appearing just long enough to remind everyone what they were missing.

Podiums and other achievements

• 32 podium finishes and 3 pole positions, per his official career record.
• 258 race outings and 1,329 career points by the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix.
• One of only a handful of Australian drivers with multiple F1 race wins.

The podium count is even more lopsided than the win count. The trophies cluster in the Red Bull years, when Ricciardo was racing wheel-to-wheel with Max Verstappen and occasionally coming out on top. After 2018, the hardware nearly stops.

That imbalance explains the nostalgia. Fans aren’t remembering a steady career; they’re remembering a five-year window when Ricciardo looked destined for a title — and every season since has been a slow walk away from that ceiling.

Why did Ricciardo leave F1?

He didn’t so much leave Formula 1 as lose his seat — twice. The first time was at McLaren at the end of 2022, after two seasons that never clicked. The second was at RB in September 2024, when the team chose Liam Lawson to finish the season.

Struggles at McLaren

• McLaren signed Ricciardo for 2021 expecting proven race-winning pace; the 2021 Italian Grand Prix victory briefly delivered it.
• By the end of 2022, McLaren and Ricciardo agreed to part ways.

The 2022 season bottomed out: no wins, no podiums, and a car that never suited Ricciardo’s late-braking, corner-entry style. When a driver and a team don’t fit, both sides start looking for the door — and this time, they found it quickly.

His 2024 season at RB followed an uncomfortable parallel. ESPN’s season table records 18 starts and 12 points. For a driver brought in to add star power, that production was not enough to protect the seat.

Decision to step back as a reserve driver

• After McLaren, Ricciardo chose a Red Bull reserve role for 2023 instead of taking a lesser full-time seat.
• That reserve stint turned back into a race seat when RB needed a change in 2023 — and the same cycle repeated, in reverse, in 2024.

The 2024 exit closes that loop. The comeback seat lasted one full season, and then the team picked youth over experience again. Lawson is the new name in the car; Ricciardo is the name in the headlines.

What this means: a beloved driver is only beloved while the results give teams an excuse to keep him. Ricciardo’s 12-point 2024 season removed that excuse.

Did Ricciardo regret leaving Red Bull?

No — at least not publicly. Ricciardo has consistently described his 2018 decision to leave Red Bull for Renault as a personal reset rather than a career mistake.

The decision to join Renault

• Ricciardo left Red Bull after the 2018 season and signed with Renault for 2019 and 2020.
• The move swapped a race-winning car for a factory-team project in the middle of construction.

The timing made it a shock. He was leaving a winning seat at 29, in his prime, for a team that hadn’t yet proven it could fight at the front. That’s exactly why the question has followed him for years, and why every interview about “what if” keeps getting asked.

His comments in interviews

• Ricciardo has said he needed a new challenge rather than another season in a familiar seat.
• He has never publicly blamed Red Bull or Max Verstappen for his departure.

Whether the Renault move was wise is another matter. Two seasons later he had no wins, no pole positions, and a reputation that had slid from “future champion” to “available driver.”

The pattern: he left a winning team to feel like the driver he wanted to be. He got the freedom he asked for — and gave up most of his podiums in the process.

Is Max Verstappen still friends with Daniel Ricciardo?

Yes. The friendship survived the 2018 split, the years apart, and the odd situation where Ricciardo returned to the Red Bull orbit as a reserve driver while Verstappen was winning titles at the front.

Their friendship during Red Bull years

• Verstappen and Ricciardo were Red Bull teammates from 2016 to 2018.
• Their on-camera banter became one of the most marketable dynamics on the grid.

The dynamic could have curdled when Ricciardo left. In most sports, the departing teammate becomes a rival; instead, the two kept joking about each other in public, and the warmth stayed visible.

Current relationship

• Verstappen has spoken positively about Ricciardo since, describing him as a friend.
• The respect appears to run both ways, which is rare in a paddock where drivers usually keep polite distance.

The friendship also has practical value. If a Red Bull seat opens, having Verstappen’s endorsement in your corner doesn’t hurt — and few reserve drivers on the grid have that kind of ally inside a title-winning team.

The upshot: the Verstappen friendship is one of the few assets from Ricciardo’s Red Bull years that hasn’t depreciated. It also makes the reserve role feel less like exile and more like strategy.

Who is the most liked F1 driver right now?

Fan surveys swing, but Ricciardo consistently lands in the top tier of “most popular driver” discussions — even in a season where he scored 12 points. That disconnect is the whole story of his late-career appeal.

Ricciardo’s popularity

• The “shoey” — drinking from his own race boot after big results — turned a good driver into a global personality.
• His willingness to laugh at himself, lose gracefully, and hype up teammates kept him marketable through the downturn.

The paradox is that popularity metrics don’t care about his 2024 results. Fans vote for connection, and Ricciardo’s self-deprecating humor is consistent in a sport that often feels pre-packaged.

Other fan favorites like Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton

• Lando Norris, his former McLaren teammate, now carries much of the “fun” vote with his humor and huge personal following.
• Lewis Hamilton commands a different kind of popularity: records, global icon status, and cultural weight beyond race results.

Norris and Hamilton are genuinely popular, but their fan bases lean on momentum or legacy. Ricciardo’s popularity is closer to affection: fans root for him the way they root for the fun friend who shows up late to the party and still makes it better. That’s a currency teams understand even when the standings don’t reflect it.

The pattern: being liked made Ricciardo’s career longer than a strict reading of his results would predict. Teams kept signing him because fans and sponsors kept showing up.

Ricciardo’s career eras compared

Five eras, one pattern: the first Red Bull chapter produced nearly every trophy, and each move since has traded race results for a different kind of significance.

What this means: two different careers live in this table. The first one — Red Bull’s heir apparent — ended in 2018. The second one — a beloved, occasionally brilliant journeyman — has been running since.

Career timeline

Compressed to one list, Ricciardo’s path reads like a classic arc: fast rise, hard fall, slow drift.

• 2011: F1 debut with HRT at Silverstone (2011 F1 season Wikipedia).
• 2012-2013: Racing with Toro Rosso (Formula 1 driver profile).
• 2014-2018: Red Bull Racing — 7 wins; left after the 2018 season (Wikipedia career summary).
• 2019-2020: Renault F1 Team — two seasons, no wins (Reuters).
• 2021-2022: McLaren — final win at Monza in 2021 (2021 Italian GP Wikipedia).
• 2023-2024: Red Bull reserve role, then a return to the grid with RB Honda RBPT in 2024 (Honda official F1 profile).

His final race appearance in 2024 was the Singapore Grand Prix, where he finished 18th and set the fastest lap after a late pit stop for fresh tires.

The pattern: every move since 2018 has kept the same shape — leave a top team, search for a new identity, watch the results drop. The 2024 exit was just the latest loop in that orbit.

What’s confirmed — and what’s not

Ricciardo coverage swings between nostalgia and speculation. Here’s the clean split.

What this means: the confirmed facts are enough to define a great career, and the open questions are short enough to keep 2025 interesting.

Ricciardo and Verstappen, in their own words

Two quotes capture the side of Ricciardo that statistics miss.

“I don’t regret it. I needed a new challenge.”

— Daniel Ricciardo, on leaving Red Bull for Renault

The second half of that quote is the part fans still argue about. Did he need the challenge, or did he need to be the clear number one? Ricciardo’s answer has never changed over the years.

“We still talk a lot. He’s a great guy.”

— Max Verstappen, on his friendship with Ricciardo

Verstappen’s words carry real weight now. When a team principal weighs loyalty against potential, a public endorsement from the fastest driver on the grid is not nothing.

The upshot: in a sport of polished answers, Ricciardo’s honesty reads as freshness — and it’s why fans keep defending him long after the statistics stopped doing it themselves.

The bigger picture

Ricciardo leaves the 2024 grid with a record that justifies the nostalgia — 8 wins, 32 podiums, 3 pole positions — and a final act that was more human than heroic. For F1 fans waiting on a 2025 comeback, the choice is clear: enjoy the spectacle of Ricciardo in a support role while it lasts, or accept that the sport has already started writing its next chapter without him.

Frequently asked questions