Verstappen as a teammate: "He didn't really care about anything"

In 2018 it turned out that Ricciardo did not have it easy within the team. The Australian chose to join the Renault F1 team. The switch involved a huge amount of money for the benefit of the Honey Badger. He was blamed for leaving for the money but there were also calls that he was afraid of teammate Verstappen.

The fear for the Dutchman didn't seem to be completely out of the blue. Red Bull built the entire team around the young race winner and even six-time world champion Lewis Hamilton mentioned several times the Dutchman to be a competitive driver.

Verstappen benchmark

Although Ricciardo was the more experienced driver, the younger Verstappen was a sort of benchmark for the Australian because of his aggressive driving style and nonchalant attitude. This is what Ricciardo thinks in the podcast The Howie Games:

"I think it had a lot to do with his age. Sometimes he was a bit immature, but that also had its advantages. He didn't care that he annoyed people or that he took a lot of risks. Actually, he didn't care about anything."

Ricciardo sounds a bit surprised but continues: "He was just like, 'I'm going there to race this car as fast as I can'. He probably just didn't understand the additional responsibility. It was all or nothing with him and that was cool because I could work towards it."

The Renault driver is critical of himself and concludes: "Sometimes in comparison I was just too nice to the car myself. We did push each other to the limit tough."