Ricciardo Nominates his Toughest Teammate

Published 09/22/2017, 7:51 AM EDT

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Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo has admitted that his current teammate Max Verstappen is his toughest teammate yet. At the Singapore GP, Channel 4 sat down with Ricciardo for an interview. Channel 4’s Steve Jones said “Would you agree that Max Verstappen is the most challenging teammate in Formula 1?” The Australian replied, “I don’t want to take anything away from Seb – he is and was and still is a great driver – but I believe Max is the toughest teammate. Hopefully he says the same for me!”

via Imago

Verstappen is one of the gutsiest drivers in Formula One. Dan found that out the hard way in Hungary 2017. The two of them collided and Ricciardo came of worse in the incident. “The marshal was pulling me off the track, I was like ‘don’t touch me’, I really wanted to wait for Max to drive past. In the heat of the moment I may have said some things… but I still feel that I handled myself all right. We’ve moved on. Obviously I was upset but that was out of my control, so what more can I do? He apologised like a man, that was important. We had a private sit down, pretty much like we are now but without the cameras, and we spoke so that was important.”

Dan said that he was willing to wait for that elusive championship and bide his time until the opportune moment. He said “When I do get podiums, or even Monza when I got up to fourth place, for me that makes me happy. It’s not the ultimate goal of what I want but in the present moment I’m getting everything out of what I can so it’s making me happy enough.”

Ricciardo is currently 4th in the 2017 drivers’ standings with 162 points. He also has 7 podiums so far this season including a win at Azerbaijan.

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Dhruv George

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Dhruv George is a senior Formula One and NASCAR analyst for EssentiallySports, having authored nearly 12000 articles spanning different sports like F1, NASCAR, Tennis, NFL, and eSports. He graduated with a PG Diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications. Dhruv has also conducted interviews with F1 driver Pierre Gasly and Moto2 rider Tony Arbolino.
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