‘Daniel is a true professional’ Oscar Piastri grants more respect to Daniel Ricciardo after a much-awaited phone call
Oscar Piastri and Daniel Ricciardo
Oscar Piastri, the 2021 Formula 2 champion will be getting his chance to drive in Formula 1 after some much-awaited efforts. He will be driving for McLaren after running around the doors of court fighting himself out of Alpine. Though he managed to dig himself out of that ‘hole’ and took over Daniel Ricciardo’s seat for the 2023 season.
Daniel Ricciardo has not had a particularly great time over the last two seasons with barely a single podium, but even some of that was done to circumstance. He is now being replaced by Oscar Piastri, a worthy contestant for the McLaren seat. Though people would assume a bad relationship between the two Aussies, it’s quite the opposite Ricciardo called Piastri wishing him the best for the future.
Oscar Piastri opens up about the phone call as he got higher respect for Ricciardo after it: “I was planning on getting in touch myself but with the timing of things, he was obviously at a race and quite frankly I didn’t actually know if he wanted to hear from me.” He added: “A true professional, Daniel is. My respect for him was already extremely high and it’s only got higher in the way he’s responded.”
Oscar Piastri talks about the mutual respect with Daniel Ricciardo
Oscar Piastri was planning to get in touch with Daniel as he revealed, but Ricciardo himself called up his compatriot to wish him the best ahead. Oscar concluded the talk with Ricciardo having no hard feelings for anyone and also termed himself to do a reasonable job if he reached the level of Daniel in his car.
“Knowing there were no hard feelings, really helped me quite a lot. So that was good, to get in touch. That was a nice moment.” Piastri said, discussing his feelings about the phone call.
Ricciardo is an eight-time race winner and has achieved a lot of acclaim for his performances. Piastri mentioned him as a level he would love to reach: “It’s a bit of a sliding doors moment but I think if I can get close to emulating what success he’s had on the track and also the character he is off the track, I think I’ll be doing a reasonable job.” as per PlanetF1.
Daniel Ricciardo has been struggling with the car, once again, and he is certainly not high on confidence. His teammate, Lando Norris, however, is flying high once again and beating him comfortably, and leading the ‘best of the rest’ group. But because of the Australian’s disappointing performance, McLaren have fallen to fifth in the championship.
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Soham Raj Jain
(480 Articles Published)