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This is an updated version of our interview originally published in the November issue of TopGear Australia magazine.

Five years ago, Daniel Ricciardo was a bubbly Perth kid, chasing girls and digging holes, and known to his mates as "Disco Dan". His life was a busy blur of parties, getting up to mischief and, according to an old interview that will haunt him forever, "doing fourth-gear drifts in mum's car".
But while it sounds like the life of any ol' teenager, Ricciardo was definitely not ordinary. In any machine on four wheels, Ricciardo flaunted an alien-like talent for going fast. Digging holes and drifting his mum's car was never a life that was going to last.
Ricciardo was being pulled to Europe with the gravity of a black hole - a vacuum he wasn't resisting, for in Ricciardo's belly burned an enthusiasm for just one thing: Formula One.