“He said he’d ordered me waffles”: Daniel Ricciardo shares what Christian Horner told him before the start of Australian GP

Daniel Ricciardo joked that Christian Horner told him that he ordered waffles for him as they spoke on the grid before the 2024 Australian GP. Speaking to Laura Winter and Jack Doohan on the F1 TV post-race show, the Australian claimed that the Briton came over to give him words of encouragement before the race.

Horner was seen walking to the back of the grid to talk to Daniel Ricciardo, who started the race in the final spot. The former Red Bull driver reckons that the British team principal walked over to show him confidence prior to the race. He revealed that he is in a very different place in terms of confidence with McLaren and his former boss tried to support him and discourage him from feeling dejected.

Gutted after the deleted lap time in qualifying, Daniel Ricciardo dropped to the bottom of the grid after getting knocked out of Q2. His deleted lap was worth a top 10 spot on the grid, and starting at the back in the 18th was a painful pill to swallow. Outperformed by his teammate Yuki Tsunoda in both the race and qualifying, the 34-year-old managed to surge up the grid to finish 12th. However, an incident-filled race in Australia with penalties promoted the Japanese driver to seventh. The honey badger reckons he isn’t in a phase of self-doubt and low confidence like the past, but is focused on turning around the performance.

When asked about the conversation he and Horner had, Daniel Ricciardo joked saying:

“He said he'd ordered me waffles uh so he was just going to keep them warm for me.”

On a more serious note, the Australian added:

“He just wished wish me well and and just told me to keep my head down and not be discouraged. I think this is a very, I think for, obviously I know how I feel and maybe not everyone does, but it's a very different situation to McLaren. I think especially in 2022 I was running on very little confidence. I was kind of confused with the car and I didn't really understand it. It was, that was completely different thing you know.”

“This isn't that. It's we're certainly not achieving what we thought we would be, but it's not through just being lost or losing confidence or anything. So we know we can do it. I thought it would have happened this weekend unfortunately it didn't. But we're not going to start letting the noise creep in just say stay true to the course and it'll turn around.”

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Daniel Ricciardo believes in moving forward from struggles in the Australian GP

Daniel Ricciardo believes that he had a good pace in the final stint of his race which helped him surge through the grid. He felt that it has been a slower start to his 2024 season than expected but prefers to take positives from the race and move forward. His race pace almost matched that of Tsunoda and it is a matter of him nailing the perfect setup with his car to turn around his performance.

Asked about his race by Laura Winters on F1 TV’s post-race show, Daniel Ricciardo said:

“It was, yeah I think, I don't know, sometimes it's hard to process the race straight after, sometimes I have a really good recollection, sometimes I don't. I remember the first hard, we had quite a bit of front grading so I struggled with that set, and then the second hard so the time we finished. the race on, once I got past Ocon, we had a few laps of clear air.”

“I think the pace then was good relative for kind of our competitiveness. I think we had some good good moments. So some pros to take, still some things to try to get on top of. And yeah, we'll go from there. It's been a slower start to the season than I certainly expected and would have liked. But yeah, we'll keep chipping away and try to keep moving forward.”

Yuki Tsunoda has now scored six points in the race while Daniel Ricciardo has yet to score his first points. Along with the likes of Lewis Hamilton, he has had a slower start to the season than expected. The RB driver has been working with his team to understand his qualifying pace deficit and improvise on the same. RB have propelled themselves to sixth place in the standings, eclipsing Haas, who scored their first points last weekend.