Christian Horner on Ricciardo’s Return: Hungarian GP Preview

Daniel Ricciardo (0:06)

For anyone who thought I left, I never left. That's another podium.

SPEAKER_3 (0:28)

Ricciardo somehow finds a gap there, and he squeezed through Daniel Ricciardo to take the lead.

Daniel Ricciardo (0:37)

And for anyone who thought I left, I never left. Just moved aside for a while.

Tom Clarkson (0:45)

He's back in Formula One at a circuit he's won at in the past. Welcome everybody to F1 Nation, which this week is unofficially rebranding as DR Nation, because Daniel Ricciardo is gonna be back on the grid in Hungary.

Daniel Ricciardo (1:01)

It's good, it's really good. You know, I enjoyed, you know, this, call it six months, six months off, and I think it was really good for me. But yeah, the more kind of races I started to attend, the more sim I started to do, certainly getting the bug back, so to speak, and then jumping into the car a few days ago, I was like, oh yeah, it all felt very normal. It was one of those ones, like the very first lap, I was like, oh, this is fast.

And then within a few, it's all, yeah, just, it's like, okay, I want to go faster now. So it was good, it's really good.

Tom Clarkson (1:37)

You can hear more from Daniel on f1.com and on the F1 YouTube channel.

But we're going to be getting the inside story on all of this from Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner very soon. But for now, it's me, Tom Clarkson, two-time Hungarian Grand Prix winner, so close to being a three-time Hungarian Grand Prix winner, Damon Hill and Pedro de la Rosa, who finished second at the Hungaroring back in 2006 Guys, Ricciardo is back. What do you think?

Damon Hill (2:09)

First, I want to hear Pedro say, for those of you who thought I'd left, I never left. He's back. Pedro de la Rosa, where have you been, Pedro?

Pedro de la Rosa (2:18)

I'm back.

I'm back, Damon at F1 Nation, I'm back.

I have mixed feelings really about this return. I mean, obviously extremely happy for Daniel. I think it's fantastic really to go come back, especially because it hasn't been that long that he was racing. So, and nowadays becoming a test driver, a reserve driver. If you stay there too long, you will never come back ever again because there's no testing. So it's good for, great for him. Then on the other side, I feel sorry for Nyck because I've been in his position. I know when a team fires you halfway through the season or some races to the end, and it doesn't really, it's just quite tough. One thing is to terminate a contract when the season is over. The other very different is when you're still going through. But this is part of Formula One. It's part of the story, but all in all, it's a great for Daniel.

Damon Hill (3:09)

Yeah, I don't think anybody feels negative about Daniel Ricciardo coming back. I mean, he's such a personality.

He's worked on that side of things. I mean, it's his natural kind of vivacious kind of self and his massive smile. I mean, I can remember the first time I came across Daniel Ricciardo was when I was president of the FIA. That's a Freudian slip, isn't it?

SPEAKER_3 (3:30)

President of the PRDC.

Damon Hill (3:34)

And we were giving out awards and he was in Formula Three. And this guy jumps up on the stage and he's got this smile, a size of three feet wide across. And I thought, well, he seems to be enjoying life.

And of course, he's had his ups and downs with performance. I mean, he smashed Sebastian Vettel when he was at Red Bull and then went to, where did he go next? I can't remember, Renault, wasn't it? And then he went back to McLaren and it kind of never came together. Now he has been away. I mean, he did leave, that's the truth of it. But he's got his mojo back for getting in a car. And now this opportunity has come up through, we're going to talk to Christian, I hope, about how that all happened.

Because for someone to get into Formula One, someone else has to leave. So there's a whole story there which we'll go into. Because there are losers in this, which is Nyck De Vries, it was given his chance and now he's been given his P45.

Tom Clarkson (4:27)

I'm fascinated by the timing of it. Why not wait until the summer break at the very least, give Nyck two more races? Quite why it has to be now seems to me, well, let's hope Christian Horner can give us a few pointers on that. But 10 races for Nyck De Vries, best finish of 12th in Monaco. He out-qualified his teammate, Yuki Sonoda twice in Miami and Spain.