Ricciardo says life after F1 feels more real

Daniel Ricciardo says life since his Formula 1 exit after the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix feels “a bit more real,” with time away from the paddock making him realize just how unnatural the sport’s rhythm had become.

Speaking on Conor Daly’s Speed Street podcast, the eight-time grand prix winner said only after stepping out of the championship’s constant cycle did he fully grasp the intensity he had normalized across 13 seasons. Ricciardo described himself as having lived in an “F1 bubble” for so long that the pace stopped feeling unusual, even though his days had been “regulated to the minute, every day, all the time.”

That change in perspective matters because Ricciardo’s departure was not the gradual winding down many established drivers get. His Formula 1 career ended after Singapore in 2024, when Racing Bulls replaced him with Liam Lawson, leaving him to process not just the end of a long stint in the paddock but also the abruptness of it.

Ricciardo said the distance from that environment has made ordinary parts of life feel significant again. He told the podcast he is enjoying “the slower pace in life” and “the fact that I can sometimes be in one place,” a simple contrast to the constant movement that defines modern Formula 1. He said being able to spend “a real amount of time in Australia, with family, with friends” has brought back things he had long missed while racing full-time.

For Ricciardo, the point was not only that Formula 1 was busy, but that the schedule had distorted even the time that was supposed to feel personal. He said visits home during his career often became exercises in compression rather than real breaks. Christmas trips back to Australia, he explained, meant trying to do “100 things at once” because time was so limited.

That rush, he said, changed the texture of life itself. When everything had to be squeezed into short windows, “it doesn’t really feel real,” Ricciardo said, adding that it had become “almost like a movie.” His current routine, by contrast, feels more grounded precisely because it is less managed and less frantic.

He also said those absences from normal life had stayed with him more deeply than he appreciated at the time. Ricciardo said he had “always missed” simple things, including being around friends and family in an unstructured way, rather than returning home with a packed list of obligations before leaving again.

Even so, the shift away from Formula 1 has not turned into a complete separation from the sport. Ricciardo said he initially needed distance because the way his career ended “hurt,” and there was a period when he did not follow Formula 1 much at all. Over time, though, he said he has started watching regularly again and has been able to rebuild what he described as a healthier relationship with racing.

That leaves Ricciardo in a different place from the one he occupied at the end of his driving career: no longer living inside Formula 1’s minute-by-minute demands, but still close enough to the sport to reconnect with it on his own terms after an ending that forced him to confront what that life had cost.