Why Ricciardo and Renault is about more than money

Flags bearing the tricolour of France and the logos of the French Grand Prix flap and stretch taut in the stiff breeze blowing in off the Mediterranean.

High above the bustling Promenade des Anglais, one of the most famous and evocative seafronts in the nation, the sun is engaged in a protracted arm-wrestle with a particularly large and fluffy cumulus cloud whose bovine pace stands in stark contrast to the force of the breeze.

It is as if the very elements themselves are digging in their heels and saying... wait for it...!

Of Daniel Ricciardo there is no sign except for an excited knot of humanity rolling in from the borders of the French Grand Prix Roadshow Fan Village, attesting to his presence like a moving radar trace.

Surrounded by a throng of selfie-seeking supplicants waving phones, notebooks and pens, Daniel arrives - maybe. There's too many people to see past, but the vivid yellow cap and flashes of that 1000-watt grin suggest he's there.

Those on the other side of the barriers crane their necks and hold their gimbals and selfie sticks aloft in hope. Cyclists duck and weave around pedestrians with other things on their mind. Faces press up against the window panes of the elegant apartments overlooking the sea front. The azure, impassive Mediterranean continues to mind its own business, absent-mindedly lapping at the pebble beach.

Beneath an awning, two racing cars wait to stretch their legs.

Technicians swarm around a Renault RS.01, a gullwinged carbon-chassis GT3 whose Nissan GT-R-sourced V6 is prompted, as we look on, into a chattering start-up before settling into a gruff and menacing idle.

But the primary focus of attention is a yellow Formula 1 car whose pointy, stepped nose is a dead giveaway to its 2012 provenance. Back then it raced in black-and-gold Lotus branding during Enstone's time under GenII Capital ownership, and indeed this, an E20, was the last but one 'Team Enstone' car to win a grand prix.

Nearby a lady with a DSLR camera mounted to a substantial lens in one hand, and a large leather handbag enclosing a chihuahua tucked under her other arm, juggles her priorities. The dog regards F1 Racing with hauteur typical of the breed; fixing your correspondent with a gimlet eye not unlike the disapproving stare of Dame Maggie Smith in her role as the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey.

The peevish pooch continues to look askance as their owner toddles off to photograph Christian Estrosi, the Mayor of Nice, who is holding court by the E20.

The return of the French Grand Prix to the calendar has galvanised the latent passion for F1 in this part of the world and Estrosi, one of the prime movers behind the race's revival and its return to Paul Ricard, is clearly delighted to be at the centre of it.

That Renault, a car maker so quintessentially part of the French psyche that it's known simply as La Regie - 'the company' - should be keen to support the project is no surprise. And Ricciardo, though paid handsomely for the privilege of driving for Renault's F1 team, needs little prompting to grandstand for the crowds. He's utterly in his element as an entertainer.

"I don't really know," Dan says when F1 Racing asks him what he might otherwise have been doing on a sunny late-spring bank holiday.


"I'd probably take it easy... maybe a bike ride... I've been out on the mountain bike a couple of times with Wurzy [Alex Wurz, Grand Prix Drivers Association chairman]. I'm always up for a mountain bike ride - it takes you out of the city, off the main roads, gets you in a bit of nature..."

There's a beach here, albeit one composed of pebbles rather than sand, and indeed this entire sweeping stretch of the French Riviera - memorably summed up by one-time Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat resident Somerset Maugham as "a sunny place for shady people" - is a dramatic landscape of rocky nodes and steep, zig-zagging streets and paths.

Since hitting F1's big time with Red Bull in 2014 Daniel has, like many elite sportspeople and most if not all the F1 grid, made neighbouring Monaco his home.

As such, attending today's French GP roadshow and styling it up along the promenade in a couple of racing cars hardly represents an inconvenience - and he's perfectly used to the glad-handing demands of a major team after so many years under the Red Bull umbrella.

Still, given the peripatetic lifestyle of an F1 driver, 'home' is a fluid concept - indeed, we picked Daniel up this morning from one of many anonymous-looking apartment blocks in Fontvieille, a new district of Monaco that was part of the Mediterranean until the land was reclaimed from the sea in the 1960s. Sundry other racing drivers, sports stars and businessfolk live here, but you'd be hard pressed to spot them while cruising the streets.

"It - becoming an F1 driver - was never about money," Daniel muses.

"It was always about going fast and wanting to be the best. F1 in my head wasn't about the lifestyle, it was about these guys being the best in the world so I had to try to be there. It's pretty crazy and it still feels weird, but obviously in a good way.

"Coming from Oz, we're used to homes, back yards and space. That's one thing you don't get in Monaco. The apartment living is a bit of a change but, saying that, we [racing drivers] probably spend more nights in hotel rooms than anything else, and that's been my life for the past 10 years or so.

"I guess I'm not used to living in a home - as such - full-time any more. Yeah, if I were here 365 days a year I'd probably get a bit claustrophobic because I do need my space.

"Still, the coast is beautiful and the roads are amazing, so when the weather's nice... well, I'm an Australian and I need sunshine to function! When it's above 20 degrees it's a great place to be and to get out and train and whatever, and there's a good little network of people here.

"But the downside is that most of that network is racing drivers, and you get kind of bored talking about racing cars all the time, so it is nice to get out and mingle with people from different areas of life."

The key to Daniel's star factor - apart from the well-documented business of being quick, having an assured feel for tyre management and a deft touch when braking in extremis - is his genuinely unfiltered personality.

Antics such as the post-race 'shoey' marked him out as one of F1's free spirits, a throwback of sorts to the likes of Innes Ireland, Graham Hill and James Hunt, and a stark contrast to the buttoned-down corporatists and career drivers who pass through the sport while barely leaving a ripple on the surface of its history.

'Shooting the boot' on the podium was all well within the spirit of Red Bull, a team that wore its steely competitive streak lightly beneath a well-practiced veneer of extreme-sports marketing guff.

But how will such high-spirited antics play when it's a multi-national automotive corporation signing the cheques - especially one that's recently weathered a great deal of negative publicity unrelated to F1?

You might, cruelly, reflect on Renault's current place in the competitive order and conclude that both team and driver have other, more pressing issues to grapple with before the matter of what to do on the podium arrives on the agenda.

And there are plenty of cynics within the F1 paddock who have interpreted Dan's move to Renault - one done seemingly on the hoof in the middle of last year - as a means of cashing in on the aforementioned star quality.

At the time, it appeared to be at the very least an eccentric career move: transferring from a proven race-winning team to one which, while ambitious and well-funded and steeped in history, had already fallen short of several self-proclaimed waypoints on its road to recovery.

"Don't get me wrong, I do like exploiting many of the opportunities I've got now," says Daniel.

"It would be silly not to because it [being an F1 driver] is a privilege and an opportunity to do more with your life. Fortunately, I'm still very driven. Big picture for me is that I want to be the best, to be world champion.

"It's not about racing just to make enough to go and live somewhere nice. There's still a lot for me to achieve and that's always been first and foremost.

"It's been pretty cool for me to see the difference [between Red Bull and Renault] and I'm still learning about the brand. I certainly see how big it is and how much is involved, and there's a level of responsibility to do well, to keep the image in a good place.

"What we do on the racetrack obviously has massive ripple effects. I guess there's a pressure in that, but that's exciting and it makes me want to do well even more.

"Red Bull was a massive family, and you saw that particularly when you went to Austria - you knew some people grew up in it, and that was it, that was their life, and they were so loyal to it. And I see that in Renault as well.

"Sure, there's a responsibility that comes with it for me, but that's cool."

Daniel is whisked away to strut his stuff upon the stage: tyre-smoking passenger laps in the RS.01 for VIPs, each of whom depart the cockpit red-faced with the heat, but elated; and as many runs up and down the promenade as the E20's increasingly tormented Bridgestone rubber can handle.

The ear-splitting scream of the high-revving 2.4-litre V8 makes F1 Racing a touch nostalgic for the pre-turbo days, only to be brought crashing down to earth after committing that thought to social media along with a video of Daniel performing a rolling burn-out.

"Bloody hairdryers," responds one follower tartly. "Bring back the V12s..."

There's no pleasing some people. But there's much pleasing this crowd: they chant Daniel's name as he unbelts himself and leaps jubilantly from the cockpit onto the E20's nose.

Removing his helmet, he gesticulates energetically, conducting a series of Mexican waves that erupt from the gates of the fan village and travel down past the Le Meridien hotel.

Afterwards the crowd will disperse to the narrow side roads and pavement cafes of Nice, suffused with joy about F1 in general and the impending French Grand Prix in particular. For Daniel and the Renault demo crew, it's job done.