Daniel Ricciardo’s departure from the Formula 1 grid has been hard on all of us. But Danny appears to be the most affected, and he simply cannot accept the current terms of his career as a reserve driver at Red Bull. And, while Daniel Ricciardo believes the break is a blessing in disguise, allowing him to reevaluate his career and explore new opportunities, the Australian appears to be in denial.

And this was very clearly evident from one of the statements that he made on the latest episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Talking about how driving an F1 car is no cakewalk, In one of the YouTube Videos of the show, Daniel can be heard saying, “No one actually can say if you want to go, oh, I want to drive an F1 car tomorrow, like. You can’t. It’s there’s 20 of us that do it in the world. It’s not very accessible. So it’s 20. 20 drivers on the grid. Which is wild in itself, I feel.”

Counting himself as one of the 20 drivers on the grid, the Australian committed a hilarious and yet aching mistake for his fans.

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These words immediately caught the fans’ attention, prompting them to claim the driver’s denial as their own, since they won’t be seeing the honey badger race in 2023. Nonetheless, seeing Ricciardo as young as ever, after four years since Drive to Survive came out, has fans smiling alongside him in his pain during a difficult period in his career.

Daniel Ricciardo gives his thoughts on Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive

Daniel had always been excited about the Las Vegas GP, which he’d be missing out on. But the thing that made this race possible in the first place is Netflix’s Drive to Survive.

On The Late Show, Daniel expressed his thoughts on DTS, “I think it’s the Drive to Survive series on Netflix which has kind of blown up. I think that’s put F1 on the map worldwide. They’re about to go into season five which is pretty wild.”

He added, “I knew the States…I feel it was inevitable to blow up here because you do sports so well and it was just, I would say, a matter of time but I feel like it accelerated through this Drive to Survive show.”

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Drive to Survive contributed massively to the driver’s popularity in the US. All in all, the show was an instant hit, and Ricciardo won a lot of hearts for his appearance in Season 1.