How Ricciardo became an F1 winner

Twelve months ago, Daniel Ricciardo was at a career crossroads. After a strong end to the previous season and some promising early performances in 2013, he endured poor Monaco and Canadian Grand Prix weekends, during which he was comfortably outperformed by Toro Rosso team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne. The timing of this mini-slump couldn't have been worse, and it might have changed the whole course of his life.

A week and a half later, on the eve of the British GP weekend, came the announcement that a vacancy would be opening up at Red Bull thanks to Mark Webber's switch to sportscars. Ricciardo had a shot, but things weren't going well.

He was highly regarded by Red Bull for his prodigious speed, but did he have the other qualities needed to convert that into consistent results? Did he have the grit, the determination, the ability to turn around a weekend that had started badly?

"Unfortunately, I've had a pretty poor run the last two races," admitted Ricciardo at Silverstone last June. "I haven't come off a strong run to give me the bragging rights to say that seat is mine."

He had work to do. After that race in Canada, Ricciardo worked with his engineers, trying to understand exactly what was going wrong. The pace was still there, and Ricciardo had made Q3 at Montreal before fading in the race amid tyre-management battles. But his and the team's approach needed to be sharpened up.

Ricciardo underperformed on race day in Montreal a year ago and finished only 15th © XPB

"Since Canada, I have spent a bit of time with the guys on my side of the garage and we've definitely had to assess a few things," said Ricciardo. "We've taken a bit of a different approach, not throwing things at the car and hoping it works. If we feel it's going to work, we do it, but let's not chase our tails too much..."

He qualified sixth for that British GP, a performance under pressure that bolstered his case for a shot at Red Bull, and that laid the foundations for one of the most popular maiden wins in Formula 1 history in Canada.

The process Ricciardo was going through was in understanding how to transform himself from a driver who had some great weekends and some patchy ones into someone Red Bull would have reason to believe could deliver every time he sat in the car. It wasn't a case of flicking a switch, but it was a watershed in adopting the mindset needed to become a potential champion.

The lesson Ricciardo learned after Canada last year was an apt one. He realised that sometimes you have to let a weekend come to you rather than try to force the issue. So it was appropriate that his Montreal weekend was a slow burner. Ricciardo did not hit the front until there were just over two laps remaining, blasting past the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg to the cheers of the crowd.

This wasn't quite the stunning late-race pass that would ideally accompany so momentous a victory. Realistically, the move was inevitable from the moment Ricciardo had moved into second place, thanks to both Mercedes losing their MGU-K due to overheating control electronics.

Prior to that, it had looked like business as usual for Mercedes. The only question was, in which driver's favour? Rosberg's stunning Q3 performance had denied Lewis Hamilton pole and, after holding onto the lead thanks to having the inside line for Turn 1 and forcing the fast-starting Hamilton into a brief excursion, the German had the edge.

But once Hamilton had passed Sebastian Vettel on lap 10, it was game on. He piled the pressure on Rosberg, who held firm but showed some signs of cracking until everything changed when both cars were hobbled, their problems setting in within a few seconds of each other.

Ricciardo's pass for the lead ended up being an easy one © LAT

First, Hamilton lost power at Turn 10 on lap 36, with Rosberg suffering the same fate at the first corner on the following laps. The Mercedes F1 W05 hybrid had become a plain F1 W05, propelled only by a conventional turbocharged 1.6-litre V6 engine.

The perfect way for Ricciardo to secure his first grand prix victory would be with a sensational, last-of-the-late-brakers move for the lead, but it was straightforward. Hamilton was long gone thanks to shot rear brakes, but Rosberg had, quite brilliantly, hung on at the front until Ricciardo breezed past.

While his DRS-assisted lead move was nothing special, it was what the Australian did to get himself into second position that makes the story of his race so compelling.

On Friday, he wasn't too comfortable with the car on a circuit that rewards absolute confidence, and was bitterly disappointed to end up sixth on the grid having lapped a mere 41 thousandths off third-placed team-mate Vettel, employing a typical Australian colloquialism to sum up the situation.

This was exactly the kind of situation in which Red Bull could not be certain Ricciardo would thrive when it took the decision to promote him. Yes, he was quick, but to pull off a top result in a race such as Sunday's in Canada, he needed to force the issue.

Early on, things were relatively straightforward. He ran sixth in the first stint and was fourth when he made his second and final pitstop. This was the phase of the race when Ricciardo ensured that, if it was going to be a Red Bull win, it wasn't going to be its four-times world champion who pulled it off.

Just prior to Vettel making his stop on lap 36, one before Ricciardo came in, Williams driver Valtteri Bottas pitted. Ricciardo was now directly behind Vettel on track, his disadvantage just over a second.

Vettel was the leading Red Bull for much of the weekend, but not when it counted © XPB

"Seb reported that he was in trouble with the tyres and was pushing us to look at strategy, so we went for the undercut to get him into a bit of clear air," explained team principal Christian Horner. "We pitted Dan a lap later and his in-lap was massively impressive. It was that in-lap that did the damage because the pitstops were within 0.2 seconds of each other."

The bare numbers tell the story. At the start of lap 36, Ricciardo was 1.212s behind Vettel. Both cars spent much the same amount of time in the pitlane (Ricciardo gained only 66 thousandths here), yet car #3 was just ahead of car #1 once back on track.

The Ricciardo in-lap Horner refers to was a mighty 0.896s faster than Vettel's. This was textbook stuff from Ricciardo, who was patient when in a queue of cars during the second stint, then nailed it to stunning effect when he really needed to. It was Michael Schumacher-esque.

Once the remaining pitstops had been completed, Ricciardo was set in third place behind only Rosberg and Sergio Perez. Felipe Massa had run ahead of him but, after leading briefly before making his second stop, the Williams dropped down the order and had to fight his way back into the top five.

Had Massa not lost time with a slow first stop, caused by the front-left wheelgun failing, he might well have been ahead of Ricciardo at this point and in with a shout of his first win since 2008, but it wasn't to be.

Instead, Ricciardo was in the box seat. But he was parked under the rear wing of Perez's one-stopping Force India. With the ailing Rosberg hanging grimly onto the lead, shorn of 160bhp of ERS power, Perez had become an impenetrable rolling roadblock.

"The really decisive moment for him was his move around the outside of Perez," said Horner. "That is what won the race today. You could see even with DRS open and everything we had, against the Mercedes-powered car with its DRS closed we could not make the pass. Dan was opportunistic."

His move around the outside of Turn 1 was bold and he did take liberties with the track limits, just keeping enough of the car within bounds for it to be legal.

A sublime pass on Perez was key © XPB

Given how late Ricciardo went on to pass Rosberg, it was essential that he made the move at this point, with Perez battling braking problems. Shortly afterwards, Perez lost another place to Vettel thanks to having to reset an ERS-related electrical system that cost him pace for a lap.

The Ricciardo of 12 months ago might not have been able to put together such a well-measured race. But the improved, more experienced, grand prix-winning Ricciardo knew exactly what to do. He saw the opportunity and seized it in style.

"It's still a bit surreal," said Ricciardo. "But it's just really cool. We weren't leading the whole race, so it's not that I had time to understand that I was going to win - it all happened in the last few laps.

"We had a good fight with Perez and we were really struggling to pass them. They had a really strong car down the straight and it was doing a good job through the corners as well to keep me behind. But out of the last chicane I got a really good run on him and made the move stick. I was close to overshooting it, dropped a couple of wheels in the grass, but it was fine."

What is most impressive now about Ricciardo is that, good as he is, he still doesn't seem the finished article. Just seven races into his career with a topline team, he has proved that he can go toe to toe with Vettel and win, that he can turn prodigious qualifying pace into forceful race drives and, most importantly, that he's not out of place in this company.

The confidence to make an aggressive move on Perez, to attack on well-worn rubber on an in-lap, and to play the long run during a race all came together to earn Ricciardo this victory. Yes, it was reliant on the Mercedes hitting trouble, but there's no disgrace in that, given the pace advantage of the Silver Arrows.

Ricciardo has made himself at home at Red Bull © LAT

"The more time I spend here, the more comfortable I feel here in F1 and the environment," said Ricciardo. "In any sport, a lot of it comes down to belief. If you truly believe in something then you tend to make it work."

The confidence Ricciardo increasingly feels in himself is also shared by the team. Technical chief Adrian Newey cites Ricciardo's calmness during races as particularly impressive. This has been at the heart of the Australian's remarkable first season at Red Bull.

He went into the season determined not to allow himself to settle into a subordinate role to Vettel and has avoided that through good old-fashioned on-track performance. The jury is still out on how he compares to Vettel, because a seven-race sample set is not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions, but with every passing race he looks more and more convincing.

"The way he has driven, the way he has made his passing moves when he has needed to this year [are impressive]," said Horner. "He has driven faultlessly all season and he has grabbed the opportunity today. It's a very special day in his life and career."

A year is a very long time in F1. In just 12 months, Ricciardo has gone from a midfield driver with a reputation for some startling qualifying laps - but who many doubted was worthy of consideration for a Red Bull seat - into an established, frontrunning grand prix driver. The question now is, how far can he go?

In the short term, more wins will be difficult. It seems fanciful to believe Mercedes will offer many more open goals as it did in Canada, and the Renault engine propelling the Red Bull remains at a disadvantage even though further upgrades were introduced at the weekend. But what Ricciardo can do is continue to outperform his team-mate. If he does that, in time more victories will follow.

On the podium, Ricciardo was questioned for the television audience by Jean Alesi, who had scored his first grand prix win in Canada back in 1995.

That turned out to be Alesi's sole F1 triumph. Given the way in which Ricciardo's Red Bull career has started, it seems unlikely that he'll remain a one-hit wonder for long.