Ricciardo: Winning not going to dictate second phase of my career

Ricciardo was handed another chance in F1 by Red Bull and AlphaTauri, replacing Nyck de Vries at the latter, the former giving him refuge as a reserve driver after McLaren replaced him with Oscar Piastri.

It was an underwhelming return to be honest, as in his third race at Zandvoort, he crashed in Zandvoort and broke his hand which kept him out of he car until Austin; while in terms of performance, he did not blow teammate Yuki Tsunoda away.

However, the Honey Badger did deliver a strong performance in Mexico City where he qualified fourth and raced to seventh, a weekend that gave him the rejuvenated feeling he wanted since his return.

"A weekend like Mexico, that's a weekend where I felt everything I needed to feel again," Ricciardo said, quoted by Formula 1's Official Website.

"Obviously the team was very happy, everyone was happy, and those things help kind of everything moving forward.

"To put the car in a position where people don't expect to see that car, that's stuff that excites you, and the fourth [in Mexico] felt like a pole, because it felt like the AlphaTauri this year had no [right] to be on the second row of the grid.

"It just didn't ever look like that, so that sort of stuff gets me excited, definitely gets the butterflies going inside me. And if that can happen, it could obviously open up doors later on to fight for wins again," he explained.

However, Ricciardo insists he wants to have more fun in his second F1 career, he added: "As much as I want to win again, it's really because I believe I can.

"But I'm not going to dictate this second phase of my career just on that; dictate my happiness, dictate how I classify success in this second phase.

"To win again would be a bonus [but] I feel like I'm not carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, and it's kind of nice," the 34-year-old from Perth, concluded.

With Ricciardo confirmed at AlphaTauri for 2024, his eyes are set on 2025, as Sergio Perez's Red Bull contract will be expiring, the Aussie hoping to to replace him.