Daniel Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo (born 1 July 1989 in Perth, Western Australia) is an Australian racing driver. He won the British Formula Three Championship in 2009.

Career

Ricciardo started karting at the age of nine and entered numerous karting events since. In 2005, he entered the Western Australian Formula Ford championship driving a 15-year-old Van Diemen, finishing eighth by season's end.[1] Towards the end of the season Ricciardo took a leased 13-year-old Van Diemen across to Sandown Raceway in Melbourne to compete at the national Formula Ford series but his ageing car was uncompetitive as he finished sixteenth, seventeenth and retired during the weekend's three races.[2] The following year, however, he won a scholarship into the Formula BMW Asian championship with Eurasia Motorsport. During his début season, Ricciardo took two victories (both at Bira) and also achieved a pole position at Zhuhai. He finished third in the Drivers' Championship with 231 points, 59 points behind the champion Earl Bamber.

In August that year, he was given an outing with Motaworld Racing to race one of their Formula BMW cars at the eighth meeting of the British championship. Despite retiring from the first race, Ricciardo recovered to finish eighth in the second race and took three championship points in his only entry in the British championship. At the end of the year, he entered the Formula BMW World Final with Fortec Motorsport where he finished in fifth position, fourteen seconds off winner Christian Vietoris.


Formula Renault

2007 saw the Australian switch categories to Formula Renault with Rp Motorsport, entering the European and Italian championships of the category, although mainly focused on the latter series as he entered fourteen races to the four entries he took in the European championship. He finished the year seventh in the Italian series with 196 points and scoring a single podium at Valencia but failed to score a point in his handful of starts in the European races.

The Australian stayed in Formula Renault for a second year in 2008, entering the European and Western European championships. By the end of the year, the young driver took his first European title in the Western European Cup and finished second in the Eurocup to Finn Valtteri Bottas.

Formula Three

During the mid–part of the 2008 season, Ricciardo made his Formula Three début at the Nürburgring, entering SG Formula's Formula Three Euroseries team. Despite only a short amount of experience in the car the Australian qualified in eighth for the first race which later converted into sixth in the race after James Jakes and Christian Vietoris stalled on the grid.[3]

Ricciardo moved to the British Formula Three Championship for the 2009 season driving for Carlin Motorsport.[4] He also made his debut in the 3.5-litre World Series by Renault championship, racing alongside Charles Pic at Tech 1 Racing for the rounds at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve in Portugal. He retired from the first race, before finishing fifteenth in the second. When he returned to Formula Three, he extended his championship lead to 45 points before returning to the Portuguese circuit. A win and a third in the British-registered cars, gave him an unassailable 64-point lead over Renger van der Zande with just 42 available. This meant that Ricciardo became the first Australian driver since David Brabham in 1989 to win the British F3 title. Just like Brabham, Ricciardo won the title in a car powered by a Volkswagen engine. Ricciardo finished the season on a high, taking both pole positions for the final round of the series, at Brands Hatch. He won the first race by fifteen seconds, and finished fourth (third in British-registered cars as Marcus Ericsson was running in the Invitational Class) in the season-ending race. His championship winning margin was 87 points as Walter Grubmüller overhauled his team-mate van der Zande, who was absent from the weekend due to a conflicting Euroseries race in Barcelona.

Ricciardo continued his partnership with Carlin, by heading to the Macau Grand Prix with the team.[5] Ricciardo quickly gathered pace at the circuit, being second fastest (and fastest rookie) behind Marcus Ericsson in first qualifying, before winding up in fifth place in second qualifying, setting the grid for the qualifying race. Following a sixth place in the qualifying race, Ricciardo was forced to retire on the first lap of the main race after hitting a wall at San Francisco. He continued with a puncture up the hill before hitting the wall at the Solitude Esses, and caused a circuit-blocking incident, which also took out seven of his rivals.


Formula Renault 3.5 Series

On 30 October 2009, Ricciardo was signed by Tech 1 to compete in the 2010 season.[6] He had competed with the team at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve in Portugal in 2009, and will be team-mate to Brendon Hartley, another driver who drove for Tech 1 over th