Daniel Ricciardo has experienced the highest of highs in F1 racing, but he has also plummeted to the lowest of lows – admitting ahead of the Australian F1 Grand Prix that his struggles robbed him of his passion for the sport.

Throughout his career, Ricciardo has achieved eight Grand Prix victories and 32 podium finishes, marking him as one of the sport’s better competitors.

But those results have become hard to come by in recent years, with podium finishes drying up during stints at Renault from 2019-2020 and a troubled partnership with McLaren from 2021-2022.

When Ricciardo split from McLaren, he had no team to go to and faced a major career crossroads.

When former teammate Sebastian Vettel was given his retirement send off, Ricciardo was at an incredibly low ebb.

‘Seb got the big goodbye he completely deserved, but I didn’t know at that stage if 2022 was the end or not for me too,’ Ricciardo told The Age.

‘At that moment it wasn’t something I cared too much about, mostly because I didn’t like the way my career had ended if that was it.’

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Ricciardo admitted he hit a career crossroads with McLaren in 2022 and he began to fall out of love with the sport

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The Aussie enjoyed a strong start to his F1 career but quickly faced a harsh reality with his failed moves to Renault and Mclaren

The uncertainty began to grind on Ricciardo. Publicly he would flash his trademark smile and say he wasn’t concerned about the future, but as the poor results with McLaren stacked up, his love of the sport was bleeding out.

‘From that mid-point of 2022 when I basically didn’t have a job and was unsure what I was going to do, I was almost wishing the races away, wanting the season to be done with,’ he admitted.

‘I found it hard to be very present in that time. I had to fight to actually enjoy the job.

‘Coming back last year, I found that I wasn’t thinking about anything else because I was truly happy doing what I was doing.

‘I was in love with the sport again, with driving and competing. In 2022, I struggled with that and just wanted it to be over.’

To find his mojo, Ricciardo had to go back to his roots and spend significant time back at his family farm in Perth, Western Australia.

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Ricciardo (pictured with Australian cricket star Marcus Stoinis recently) enjoys coming back home to Western Australia where he can rediscover his focus and drive

It was there he managed to get rid of the ‘clutter’ in his life, refocus and prepare for his comeback with Red Bull’s sister team AlphaTauri – now rebranded as RB.

‘It’s had a long-lasting impact. I got my energy and my excitement back by pushing a few things to the side, cutting out a lot of clutter,’ Ricciardo said of his time back home.

‘I wanted to be able to fall back in love with training again, but to train and to train well, you need to get some time back in your life to do that properly.

‘You can’t do a million other things, because you have no window to train, and then maybe you’re not as strong or as healthy or as fresh as you should be, and it spirals.

‘I wanted to get that feeling back again, to bring out the old me. Racing and training are my priorities right now, and all of the other stuff is secondary.’

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Ricciardo comes into the Australian F1 Grand Prix enjoying the benefits that experience brings – but struggling badly with his pace

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While it has been a slow start to the season, Ricciardo is hoping for a big showing at his home Grand Prix in Melbourne

Re-energised, Ricciardo enters the Australian F1 Grand Prix driving an improved RB vehicle with the hope of finishing his career with the Red Bull main team.

While the results haven’t come yet, with finishes of 13th and 16th so far this season, he has adopted a new way of thinking that he believes will carry him a long way in the twilight of his career.

‘I’ve been in F1 a long time, driven a lot of cars, seen a lot of things. My knowledge … I probably underestimated that,’ he said.

‘The team was struggling a bit at the time, and I could see that my experience was helping. The way the team responded to what I had to say, the questions they asked … I grew to really enjoy that aspect of it.

‘You realise with age that you have the power to change how a garage feels, how a team responds.

‘There’s hundreds of people that work with these teams, but you’re one of two people who the world watches to see how the team performs.

‘We don’t just drive the car, we have the ability to alter the atmosphere in the room and that’s something I’m definitely more aware of.’