German GP | Ricciardo on out-of-the-car personality
Daniel Ricciardo, a man well-know both for in and out of track attitude, talks about the overall weight and influence of having such a personality on a racing career.
"I fortunately didn't have to chase too hard for sponsorships in the early stages of my racing career -states the Renault driver- We've had family friends back to Australia that helped and also Red Bull came after just one year of me racing in Europe and then they took care of everything. I think therefore that personality was not a key factor for me.
Now that I got into Formula 1, for sure it helps in attracting sponsors and some fanancial income from outside sources than your racing contract, so from this point of view it's important to built an out-of-the-car personality. Still I think results will do most of the talking.
Lewis [Hamilton] has built something beyond racing but if it works it's also because he's a five time world champion. Same with Lando [Norris] who's also delivering well. I think that if Lando would have had a terrible season resultwise, maybe his sense of humor wouldn't be travelling as well. Maybe then people would tell him to focus more on the racing than on his Instagram. At the end of the day, I think it really goes hand in hand. If you're having good results for sure you can capitalise on that and put yourself in the spotlight."
About his very first motorbike run Daniel is sure that it won't have been his last one: "It was my first time riding a bike on a track. When I was young my mother didn't allow me because she has afraid of its danger. Now that I've grown up I had this chance thanks to Sete Gibernau. It was little less than 100cc, nothing crazy, but enough to learn how to move your body and how to slide. It feels weird to bend and move on the bike, even if I was one meter off the gound! Just can't imagine what, for example, Marc Marquez is capable of, putting his elbow on the tarmac! Bike riding is complitely different from car racing, but in the end what they have in common it's speed. It's still motorsport, therefore I loved it. For sure I'm going to do that again as soon as I can."
