Daniel Ricciardo has revealed the phone call from Red Bull’s Helmut Marko that launched him into Formula One, as he prepares for his 200th race this weekend.
The Australian was a test and reserve driver for Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri) in 2011, when he found himself parachuted into the struggling HRT team mid-season.
While fellow Australian Mark Webber was at the sharp end of the grid that season with Red Bull, Ricciardo’s debut came in the slowest car in the field.
When the pair lined for Ricciardo’s first race at Silverstone, they bookended the field, with Webber on pole, and Ricciardo 24th and last.
“I wouldn’t say it was the most exciting weekend from a race results point of view or anything, but I guess it’s where this 200 Grand Prix journey started,” Ricciardo said on the In The Fast Lane podcast.
The Australian said he had initially expected his chance would come at Toro Rosso, where Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari had failed to impress.
“The circumstances were crazy, I was a Toro Rosso reserve driver that year and I knew there were some talks about were they going to keep the current Toro Rosso line-up for the whole season?” he explained.
“So I was like: ‘if I’m going to get a chance halfway through the year it’s going to be in a Toro Rosso’.
“And then, I guess probably one good result later from one of the guys there and it was like: ‘oh, no we are going to keep them, but we still want to put Daniel in F1’.”
That meant Red Bull paid HRT to give Ricciardo a drive for the second half of the year, although he admitted he knew very little about the team, other than the fact they were usually bringing up the rear.
Australian fans will know Marko as the Red Bull motorsport advisor who often seemed to be at odds with both Webber and Ricciardo, but at this stage of his career the 22-year-old Ricciardo was happy to hear from Marko.
“It was wild, but I do remember being in the house I was living in England, and my parents were there, and I saw Dr Marko on the phone and I was like: ‘this is going to be interesting’,” Ricciardo recalled.
“I walked into the living room, he told me, and I walked back into the kitchen where my parents were, and my mum knew straight away, as a mother knows, they just know that look when something is up.
“So she was like ‘what’s up?’ [I said] ‘I’m racing F1 next weekend!”
Ricciardo admitted it was a whirlwind experience in the lead-up to the Silverstone race, where he finished 19th and last, three laps behind the winner, Fernando Alonso, with Sebastian Vettel and Webber making up the podium.
“The seat fit, trying to learn the team, and then I think it was wet as well so we were qualifying in the rain, it was a lot,” Ricciardo conceded.
“I don’t think I had driven on Pirelli’s yet either, so it was my first time on Pirelli’s, which were very different from the Bridgestone’s I had tried.
“There was a lot going on, but hey, what an experience.”
The Australian will be on the grid for the 200th time this weekend at the Belgian Grand Prix.
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