BUXTON: He never won the title he deserved, but for an entire generation Daniel Ricciardo was why you fell in love with F1

And so, that’s it. Those final words in the Singapore media pen, choking back tears, were the last for Daniel Ricciardo as a Formula 1 driver.

While the writing had been on the wall for some time, the reality of a future without him as a central part of the sport is a tremendous loss.

This is usually the part in these kind of articles where we’d write down his statistics, as if to attempt to place him in the pantheon of the greats. Yet the reality is that his tallies make for a scant and paltry exhibition of his talents and the levels he might have achieved had fate and destiny dealt him a different hand.

The great tragedy in his story is that he never achieved the heights he deserved to. There are many in the paddock who remain adamant that Daniel Ricciardo was never more than a fast midfield journeyman, who took his chances when they came but was never destined for the top.

Personally, I’m not one of them. Having recently written a book about the history of the sport, I decided early on to collate a list of drivers I would include who had never won the title, but who had the hallmarks of the greats.

And so, alongside the likes of Sir Stirling Moss, Dan Gurney, Ronnie Peterson and Gilles Villeneuve, I included Daniel Ricciardo. Because in the 2010s, he was the one stand out racer who, to my mind, absolutely could and arguably should have had at least one world crown.

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His decisions to move first to Renault and then McLaren saw him at the wrong place at the wrong time, his best years flying past him in cars which in no way reflected the abilities of the man.

And as Red Bull, with Max Verstappen now their talisman, continued an ascent that would see them march to the top of the sport, it isn’t only Daniel’s fans but maybe even the man himself who will look back now and question what he could have achieved at the team had he simply stayed put.

Perhaps the bitterest irony of all is that the end of his time in the sport has come as a direct result of the quandary he created by leaving Red Bull in the first place, because more than half a decade later, they still haven’t been able to find anyone to replace him. Not even the man himself.

And it is the man himself that Formula 1 will miss. Because his influence on the sport extends far beyond the single digit win tally which could and should have been so much higher.

Daniel was part of a generation which saw one of the greatest changes in the history of the sport as a rapidly evolving media landscape at the outset of a digital revolution would change the very nature of how we absorb news and how we view those in the public eye.

Racing for what was already a marketing behemoth in Red Bull, he was at the heart of their drive into the new media, his effortless charm and singular wit making him a dream in front of the camera, just as his competitive star was shining its brightest.

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE - SEPTEMBER 19: Daniel Ricciardo of Australia and Visa Cash App RB walks in — Ricciardo became a popular figure with fans during his time in Formula 1

He reached through the screen of the television or smartphone, grabbing your attention in a way nobody else of his generation was able to. His brand was pure personality, allied to an electrifying on track ruthlessness born of daring and risk.

His early years hadn’t been plain sailing for the ever smiling youngster. Many years later Daniel would admit that his nice-guy personality had led to him being, in his own words, “bullied” on track.

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His rivals had assumed his charming and affable nature off track made him a soft touch. What they hadn’t accounted for was his long-term game plan.

Come 2014, Red Bull had seen the potential in his pace and consistency, but few expected to witness the driver that showed up that year. Suddenly, the nice guy was pulling off dummy overtakes, late lunges, and enthralling racecraft.

It caught everyone by surprise. Even his team mate Sebastian Vettel. By year’s end Ricciardo had his first three Grand Prix wins. His four-time world champion team mate, two places and 71 points behind him in the championship, had amassed none.

But it was when Netflix began its search for the storyline of the show we would come to know as Drive To Survive, that it found in Daniel Ricciardo its heart and North Star.

Daniel Ricciardo's best funny moments in Formula 1

Without him, it likely would never have been what it became. Nor, as a result, would the sport of Formula 1 today have found the legions of fans drawn to it, in large part through him.

For an entire generation of F1 fans, the estimated one third of today’s global audience who discovered Formula 1 through Netflix, Daniel Ricciardo was their gateway.

He set the tone for what racing drivers could and should be – someone who oozed charisma as a person, and who enthralled as a sportsman. He was a brand in his own right, something which before only Sir Lewis Hamilton had really been able to claim in his generation.

The Australian was conscious of the roles both sides of him played, once explaining to me in an interview how the “character” as he described it, that he created outside of the cockpit, accounted only for 20 per cent of the racer behind the wheel.

He had learnt through his early years in the sport that his most powerful asset was to continue in the role of the smiling assassin. And for that he was, and remains, adored.

Few in the history of the sport have so brilliantly perfected the art of being both likeable and ruthless. Someone who could, again in his words, “play with fire but get away with it.”

The irony is that for almost the entire tenure of the Netflix show, Ricciardo was never granted the platform to show what it was he did best. And that was to race.

MONZA, ITALY - SEPTEMBER 01: Daniel Ricciardo of Australia driving the (3) Visa Cash App RB VCARB — Ricciardo appeared less at ease with the current generation of F1 cars following the introduction of new regulations in 2022

There is an enormous part of me that wonders just how much the modern era of car has dulled the effectiveness of the racer we once knew as Daniel Ricciardo.

He’s never been the same man behind the wheel since the new regulations came in, just as the man we view as potentially the greatest of all time, Sir Lewis Hamilton, has at times looked a shadow of the all-conquering racer of old.

And if that win at Silverstone and Hamilton’s emotional reaction to it evidenced the hardships he had experienced, the questions he had raised about his own abilities and the need for validation which he, and his legendary status, required, I spare a huge thought for what these few years have done for Daniel and how much they have made him question the craft and diminish the confidence which used to come so naturally.

In today’s era, Formula 1, perhaps more than at any time in history, exists in the midst of the cult of personality. For Daniel, as the results failed to come and the questions started to fly, the brand he had created for himself of the ever happy, lovable joker was perhaps the one thing he had left.

But when even his smile started to wane, and as the realities of just how difficult this new spell was proving to be set in, there was less and less opportunity to be the goofball.

The hardships that existed behind the scenes, the toll that his new reality was taking on him and had done now for years, became too clear to ignore.

Daniel Ricciardo and RB part ways

He was brought back into the Red Bull family to see if the man who was right to replace Daniel Ricciardo had been Daniel Ricciardo all along.

But that fairytale, sadly, was not to be, the manner in which it has now ended serving as a tremendous disservice to the man that he is, and all he has given to the sport.

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“Is this really me and is this my personality?” he once asked me. “Simply, yes. But nobody will ever truly know, really deep down, what this sport means to me.”

The outpouring of love, genuine heartfelt love, from his rivals and racers around the world, teams he competed for and against, the media and the fans, I hope shows what he meant to the sport.

His racing days in Formula 1 may be over, but his enormous impact on the sport, how we view it and how an entire generation of racers speak to those who idolise them, have at its heart his personality, his influence. His soul.

Genuine, decent, human and real, he was also one of the most exhilarating racing drivers of his generation. Beyond the racecraft though, his greatest gift was how he made you feel.

For an entire generation, Daniel Ricciardo was why you fell in love with the thing that he loved the most. And why so many loved him back.