Daniel Ricciardo lived the F1 dream. What should he do next?

With the news that Daniel Ricciardo has been dropped by RB, the 35-year-old’s F1 career finally appears to be at an end. This makes us very sad.

Sad because at his peak, the loveable Aussie was F1’s brightest spark in an otherwise bleak V6 hybrid era dominated by Mercedes winning relentlessly.

Promoted from the junior team to Red Bull Racing in 2014, the youngster was a revelation, bringing home three race wins that season and blowing away four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, who duly scuttled off to Ferrari.

Ricciardo became top dog at Red Bull and the podiums kept coming (as well as the occasional win), but the team never built a championship-contending car in his five years there. He clearly had the talent for a title push.

Things started to change when Max Verstappen arrived in 2016: the teenager won the Spanish GP on his debut with the team, and then slowly caught and passed his more experienced teammate thereafter as Red Bull threw its weight behind the Dutchman.

Ricciardo could see which way the wind was blowing, and so accepted a huge offer to jump ship to Renault in 2019. It didn’t last: after little more than a year with the team, he announced he was moving on to McLaren, and that’s when things began to unravel.

Despite his pedigree, Ricciardo was routinely outperformed by teammate Lando Norris, and McLaren got so fed up with him that he was ditched at the end of 2022; a year before the end of his contract. Mid-way through 2023 he found his way back onto the grid with RB, but there too he was second best to Yuki Tsunoda: with no prospect of being promoted back to Red Bull again, Ricciardo has been cut loose. In all likelihood for good.

If this is to be it, DR has a lot to be proud of: 258 race starts, eight F1 victories, 32 podiums and a legacy of making F1 fun. Go well Daniel, we’ll miss you.

With F1 now in the past, the next question is… what should he do with his future? There’ll surely be no shortage of offers as Ricciardo contemplates a career change. Here are TG’s top 10 suggestions…

Don’t underestimate the impact the 2020 Covid season had on Ricciardo: with travel restrictions in place, he couldn’t see his family in Perth for nearly a year. Ugh. So to make up for that lost time, why not head home and race domestically for a bit? Chuffing great V8s, no track limits pedantry; the Supercars Championship is the perfect fit.

You can’t spend your racing career known as ‘the Honey Badger’ and not do your bit for the species, can you? As far as we know the Honey Badger isn’t actually endangered, but a sanctuary to treat, nurture and return poorly ones to the wild can’t do any harm. Unless you’re one of the animals it feeds on, perhaps.

Famed for his derring-do on the brakes, Ricciardo is surely the most qualified person in the world to push pads ‘n’ calipers to their absolute limit. And possibly beyond. For supercars and hypercars alike, his feedback could revolutionise stopping power; for the rest of us, it could make everyday cars that bit safer. C’mon Danny, imagine the lap times and accident rates that could be slashed.

You can’t not like Ricciardo’s broad, Cheshire-cat-shaming grin. It’s impossible. And you can’t rock a smile like that without a fine set of pearly whites to go with it. Therefore a future beckons as an ambassador for a major toothpaste brand. Colgate, Aquafresh, Sensodyne… let the bidding war commence.

Lots of F1 pundits make their living with strong opinions. It’s what gets people talking. We wouldn’t say Ricciardo is known for having a razor-sharp tongue, so why not come at it from a different angle and just be the funniest F1 co-host ever to brandish a microphone? Use that wit and charm to inject a bit of life into debates about tyres. The ratings would be huge.

Hear us out. Having adopted the shoey as his trademark celebration at the German GP in 2016, the act of drinking champagne from a sweaty boot is now synonymous with the Aussie. So own the empire. Ricciardo could design and make his own line of shoes, produce his own bubbly, then sit back and watch the profits roll in. Give it a few years and he’ll be buying his own F1 team.

There’ve been any number of times over the years where Ricciardo has gone into great detail about his love for pizza. So how’s this for a unique business idea: a new pizza chain that’ll deliver to your door in record time. With mopeds using F1 technology. And pit stop-style restaurant service that’ll see you plated up by a team of waiters in two seconds flat. The fastest fast food in the world.

14 years. That’s how long Ricciardo spent in F1. Think of how many thousands of interviews that amounts to. All those questions about whether it’d be better to do a one- or two-stop. Blimey. Anyway, all that time spent learning how to inject character into the most boring of subjects has teed Ricciardo up nicely for a life inspiring corporate types at after dinner gigs. A self-help audiobook will closely follow, of course.

Not all F1 drivers are into their cars, but DR was always one who was. He bought his own Valkyrie, for crying out loud. With that in mind, it’s high time he put his name to his very own dealership. Whaddya reckon, something full of utes or a forecourt full of second-hand supercars? If he puts one of his old F1 cars on display and finds a suitable location in the middle of Perth, the footfall will be immense.

Sod it, the man’s made a fortune: what’s the point in working at all? After nearly a decade and a half jetting from racetrack to racetrack with semi-permanent jet lag - all while, er, “trippin’ major nutsack” - Ricciardo’s earned a bit of a break. Go ride bikes, be a tourist, watch every West Coast Eagles match, and dine out with friends forever more. Best of luck for the future, Daniel.