'Some Things You Just Have to Physically See' - Daniel Ricciardo on Daytona, Indy and an American Racing Itch That Won't Go Away

Daniel Ricciardo has spent more than a decade as Formula 1’s most American-coded export. A Perth-born, Italian-descended Australian who quotes Dale Earnhardt, drives a Raptor, and once spent twenty minutes wrestling Earnhardt Sr.’s 1984 Wrangler Chevrolet Monte Carlo around the Circuit of the Americas with a smile the F1 paddock had not seen in years.

What he had never done, until the back end of last year, was actually walk up to Daytona International Speedway and look at it. That changed late in 2025, and the visit reframed the conversation about what the next chapter of Ricciardo’s life in motorsport might quietly be building toward.

Daytona’s banking peaks at 31 degrees, a pitch so steep that walking up it is a routine rite of passage for anyone who first encounters the place in person. Ricciardo’s reaction is, almost word-for-word, the same reaction every veteran of the sport admits to having had on their own first walk up. It is also a reaction that sits awkwardly alongside Ricciardo’s well-documented fear of high-speed ovals, which he famously articulated in 2022 when asked about an IndyCar switch by saying, in unprintable terms, that ovals scared him.

That apparent contradiction; terror at the speeds, awe at the venues, is what makes the current moment in Ricciardo’s life genuinely interesting. He is no longer an active F1 driver. He is no longer obligated to publicly reject offers from other series to protect a contract. And he has, over the past 18 months, quietly stitched together a portfolio of Daytona visits, Indianapolis 500 plans, NASCAR-themed product drops, and a Ford global ambassadorship that all point toward the same compass bearing: the United States.

What Ricciardo has not done, at least not yet, is pull the trigger on a competitive return. Whether the visits are merely the bucket-list rituals of a retired racer or the early reconnaissance of something more concrete is the question hanging over every recent appearance, including the Daytona walk that left him stunned.

1. Daniel Ricciardo is OBSESSED with the Indy 500

In a recent interview, Ricciardo discussed both Daytona and his upcoming first trip to the Indianapolis 500. He said, “I went to Daytona for the first time end of last year. You know, I watched that race my whole life and I knew the banking would be cool and I just was like, ‘Man, some things you just have to see. You just have to physically see it.’ And I think that’s how I feel with the Indy 500.” He continued, “I just have an idea of what it will be like. I’ve been around racing my whole life, but there will still be things that are just going to blow me away. Maybe people have a perception that, ‘Well, he’s raced F1, so what does he care about Indy, or why is that going to be cool to him?’ It’s like, there’s so many kind of levels and variations of cool and wow. And like I said, me just walking up the banking of Daytona, I was like, ‘Holy!’ And so, you know, I’ve seen videos of you when you get the lead, get to the front in a 500—like the crowd goes nuts. I’m obviously, hopefully, I’ll get to experience that.”

2. From F1 Grid to Global Ambassador: Inside Daniel Ricciardo’s SHOCK Retirement and Massive Ford Deal

After being dropped by McLaren a year early in 2022, Ricciardo accepted a Red Bull third-driver role in 2023, returned to the grid mid-season as Nyck de Vries’s replacement at AlphaTauri, and held the seat into 2024 when the renamed RB team made him their lead driver. By the end of the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix, the writing was on the wall. Liam Lawson took the seat for the final six races, and Ricciardo’s F1 tenure ended without ceremony. He spent nearly twelve months in deliberate silence. No punditry chair, no ceremonial lap, no farewell tour. Then, ahead of the 2025 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, the venue of his last F1 victory, won for McLaren in 2021, Ricciardo issued a statement through Ford confirming his retirement and a new role as a Global Ford Racing Ambassador. The Ford deal is structurally significant for two reasons. First, it gives him a paid, public-facing motorsport identity that does not require him to race competitively. Second, Ford’s relationship with Red Bull, its 2026 F1 power-unit partnership, and its broader American racing footprint mean Ricciardo’s ambassadorship naturally extends into territory that touches NASCAR, IMSA and other US-based programs without committing him to any of them. It is, in other words, a soft-landing that keeps every door he might want to walk through unlocked. The career résumé that he brings to that role is substantial. Across 14 F1 seasons from 2011 to 2024, Ricciardo recorded 8 Grand Prix victories, including triumphs in Canada, Hungary and Belgium in his breakout 2014 season, plus wins in Malaysia (2016), Azerbaijan, Monaco and China (2017–18), and his final F1 win at Monza in 2021, and 32 podium finishes. The “Honey Badger” persona, the shoey celebrations, the late-braking signature into hairpins, all of it built him into one of the sport’s most marketable personalities, which is precisely why his post-F1 silence drew so much attention. Alongside the Ford deal sits Enchanté, the lifestyle brand Ricciardo founded in 2023.

3. NASCAR or Indy? Daniel Ricciardo’s Three Explosive Options That Could End His Oval Anxiety FOREVER

The plausible near-term pathway for Ricciardo runs through three distinct lanes, and each is already partially open. The first is pure spectator-and-ambassador: visit the iconic American races, post about them, support Ford’s various US racing properties, lend his name to Enchanté capsules timed around Speedweeks and the Month of May, and make the occasional television appearance. This is the path the Ford deal makes easiest, and it requires no helmet. The second is a one-off competitive cameo. The Trackhouse PROJECT91 mechanism is the obvious vector, especially for a road-course event like Watkins Glen, the Charlotte ROVAL or the Chicago Street Race, where Ricciardo’s road-racing pedigree would translate cleanly and where the oval-anxiety problem is bypassed entirely. A JR Motorsports start in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series at a road course would carry similar logic and the additional emotional weight of an Earnhardt-owned car, given Ricciardo’s lifelong identification with the family. The third is a Daytona 500 attempt. The structural barrier is real. The Daytona 500 has been characterized as having all 36 chartered entries filled by full-time drivers in recent seasons, which forces non-charter entries through a qualifying gauntlet. But the appetite from the team and sponsor side, as Pockrass argued, exists. What would have to change is Ricciardo’s own willingness to confront the oval question competitively, not just experientially. His May Indianapolis 500 trip, by contrast, is already locked in as a fan visit. Reports confirm he plans to attend the legendary race for the first time, marking, in his own words, a milestone he has been deferring for years. The fan culture around Indianapolis has already begun anticipating his presence in the paddock and at media events, and the possibility of a ceremonial lap has been openly discussed in coverage of the trip. What separates Ricciardo’s case from a generic retired-driver victory tour is the depth of the pre-existing identification. The No. 3 car number font, the Raptor purchase, the 2021 Earnhardt Sr. drive at COTA, the 2024 Tourism Western Australia interview, the Daytona walkabout, the Indy 500 plan, the Enchanté Daytona Thunder capsule, the Ford ambassadorship. These are not the breadcrumbs of a publicist. They are the breadcrumbs of a driver whose American racing fandom predates his F1 career and has outlasted it.

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