Ricciardo was born on 1 July 1989 in Perth, Western Australia, to Italian-Australian parents. His father, Giuseppe "Joe" Ricciardo, was born in Ficarra (Messina) and relocated to Australia at age seven; his mother, Grace Pulitanò, was born in Australia to parents originally from Casignana (Calabria). He has a sister, Michelle. Growing up in Duncraig, his earliest motorsport memories were of his father racing at the nearby Barbagallo Raceway in Wanneroo. Raised Catholic, he attended Newman College and started karting at the age of nine.
Ricciardo started karting at nine as a member of the Tiger Kart Club, entering numerous events. In 2005 he contested the Western Australian Formula Ford championship in a fifteen-year-old Van Diemen, finishing eighth, and late that year took a leased thirteen-year-old Van Diemen to Sandown Raceway for the national Formula Ford series, where the aging car was uncompetitive. He was more successful in karts, being crowned Australian champion; his prizes included a pass to the 2006 Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park, where the then-16-year-old chatted unnoticed with Italian driver Jarno Trulli. After finishing sixth in 2007 Formula Renault 2.0 Italia, he was selected for the Red Bull Junior Team.
Midway through 2008 he made his Formula Three debut at the Nürburgring with SG Formula's Formula 3 Euro Series team, qualifying eighth and finishing sixth in the first race. He moved to the British Formula 3 Championship for 2009 with Carlin Motorsport, also contesting the Macau Grand Prix with the team.
In the Formula Renault 3.5 Series he was signed by Tech 1 for 2010, partnering Brendon Hartley. He took pole for both races of the season opener in Alcañiz and led the standings, then added wins at Monte Carlo, the Hungaroring, and the Hockenheimring, taking six poles in twelve races. A barrel-roll crash with Jon Lancaster at Silverstone ended one race won by teammate Jean-Éric Vergne, and braking issues cost him a likely win to Esteban Guerrieri. Going into the finale three points behind Mikhail Aleshin, Ricciardo took pole, won, and set fastest lap to draw level, but was passed by Aleshin in the second race and lost the title by only two points. In 2011 he raced for ISR Racing before his HRT call-up.
Ricciardo made his Formula One track debut testing for Red Bull Racing at the Jerez young drivers' test starting 1 December 2009, clocking the fastest time by over a second. He dominated the 2010 Yas Marina young drivers' test, 1.3 seconds faster than Sebastian Vettel's qualifying lap, and was confirmed as Toro Rosso's test and reserve driver for 2011, taking first practice at each round.
On 30 June 2011 he was loaned to Hispania Racing (HRT), replacing Narain Karthikeyan for the final eleven races and partnering Vitantonio Liuzzi. He made his Grand Prix debut at the British Grand Prix, qualifying and finishing last. Over eleven races his best qualifying was 21st and best finishes 18th, leaving him 27th in the championship; Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko called him "full of potential".
Promoted to a full-time Toro Rosso seat for 2012 alongside rookie Vergne, Ricciardo scored his first points by passing Vergne on the last lap for ninth at the Australian Grand Prix. After a barren mid-season he closed strongly with three consecutive points finishes, ending 18th with 10 points to Vergne's 16. In 2013, targeting a Red Bull seat, he scored a best-yet seventh at the Chinese Grand Prix, qualified a career-best fifth at the British Grand Prix, and again finished seventh in Italy after holding off Romain Grosjean, ending 14th with 20 points ahead of Vergne. He out-qualified Vergne at 30 of 39 races and in September was chosen to succeed the retiring Mark Webber at Red Bull Racing, with Adrian Newey calling him the "most promising" of the junior roster.
Partnering reigning four-time champion Vettel, Ricciardo qualified second and finished second at his first race for Red Bull but was disqualified for a fuel-flow breach. He took his first podium at the Spanish Grand Prix and another at Monaco, then took his maiden Formula One victory at the Canadian Grand Prix, becoming the fourth Australian to win in Formula One alongside Jack Brabham, Alan Jones, and Webber. He added back-to-back wins in Hungary — passing Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso late — and Belgium after the Mercedes drivers collided. He finished third in the championship with three wins and five other podiums, scoring 238 points to Vettel's 167 as the only non-Mercedes race winner of 2014, and won the Laureus World Sports Award for Breakthrough of the Year.
Partnered by Daniil Kvyat after Vettel left for Ferrari, Ricciardo endured an uncompetitive RB11 that Newey said had "no obvious light at the end of the tunnel". He took his first 2015 podium at the Hungarian Grand Prix and a second at Singapore, finishing eighth with 92 points to Kvyat's 95; Red Bull failed to win for the first time since 2008, though Ricciardo out-qualified Kvyat at twelve of nineteen races.
The RB12 was more competitive. Ricciardo gained 18-year-old Max Verstappen as teammate at the Spanish Grand Prix after Kvyat's demotion. He took his first pole at the Monaco Grand Prix and led in the wet before a near-40-second pit stop dropped him to second, leaving him upset. He won the Malaysian Grand Prix — his first victory in over two years — after misfortune for Nico Rosberg, Vettel, and Hamilton, and sealed third in the championship with 256 points, a win, seven further podiums, and his first pole. He debuted his "shoey" celebration at the German Grand Prix.
After mechanical retirements early on, Ricciardo began a run of five consecutive podiums from the Spanish Grand Prix. At the Azerbaijan Grand Prix he recovered from 19th, including a three-car overtake, to win his fifth Formula One race after a Vettel penalty and a Hamilton headrest problem. He returned to the podium at Belgium and finished fifth overall with 200 points to Verstappen's 168 despite out-qualifying Verstappen at only seven of twenty races, Kimi Räikkönen taking fourth from him at the finale.
Ricciardo won the Chinese Grand Prix commandingly, overtaking five cars in eight laps after a safety-car stop. He and Verstappen collided contesting fourth at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, both retiring and being ordered to apologise at the factory. He took his second career pole at the Monaco Grand Prix and won despite losing two gears and his MGU-K, calling it "redemption". A run of mechanical failures followed; after a hydraulics failure from pole at Mexico he said his car was "cursed". He finished sixth with 170 points to Verstappen's 249 and eight retirements in twenty-one races, and in August announced his departure from Red Bull to join Renault for 2019.
Partnering Nico Hülkenberg in 2019, Ricciardo retired from the first two races and reversed into Kvyat at Azerbaijan for a third retirement in four races. Renault's best result since 2016 came at the Italian Grand Prix, where he finished fourth. He ended ninth in the championship with 54 points to Hülkenberg's 37, having been disqualified from a sixth-place finish in Japan after both Renaults were found to have used illegal driver aids.
For 2020 — delayed to July by the COVID-19 pandemic — Hülkenberg was replaced by Esteban Ocon, and it was announced Ricciardo would join McLaren for 2021. He scored points at all eleven of the season's remaining races after early setbacks. He took his first podium with Renault — and Renault's first since the 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix — at the Eifel Grand Prix, and a second at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. He finished his final Renault season fifth in the championship with 119 points to Ocon's 62, out-qualifying Ocon at fifteen of seventeen races; Karun Chandhok said he had "rediscovered his form from the early Red Bull years".
Partnering Lando Norris in 2021, Ricciardo struggled to adapt to the MCL35M and trailed his teammate, calling his form the "sad reality". At the Italian Grand Prix he started on the front row, overtook Verstappen at the first turn, and held off Norris to take his eighth Grand Prix victory — his first in over three years and McLaren's first since the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix. He finished eighth in the championship with 115 points to Norris's 160.
In 2022 he missed the final pre-season test day after a positive COVID-19 test. Performances did not meet expectations; in August it was announced his contract had been terminated and he would be replaced by Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri, who had signed with McLaren in early July. His best result was fifth at the Singapore Grand Prix. He finished 11th with 37 points to Norris's 122, out-qualified by Norris at twenty of twenty-two races, and stated he would not be on the grid for 2023 but aimed to return to a race seat in 2024.
Ricciardo re-joined Red Bull as their "third driver" for 2023, doing simulator, testing, and commercial work. After a Pirelli tyre test in the Red Bull RB19 at Silverstone on 11 July, it was announced he would return to a race seat with AlphaTauri, replacing Nyck de Vries — his return to the team for which he last raced in 2013 — with the move characterised as an audition for Sergio Pérez's seat. He broke a metacarpal in seven places after hitting the wall at the Dutch Grand Prix and was replaced for four races by Liam Lawson. He scored his first AlphaTauri points with seventh at the Mexico City Grand Prix, ending 17th with six of the team's 25 points over seven appearances.
Retained for 2024 by the rebranded RB alongside Yuki Tsunoda, Ricciardo had an incident-marked start, scored points at the Canadian, Austrian, and Belgian Grands Prix, and qualified and finished fourth in the Miami sprint. Despite summer-break speculation no driver changes were made; but after the Singapore Grand Prix, where he set the fastest lap on the penultimate lap and appeared emotional, his departure was confirmed with Lawson replacing him from the United States Grand Prix. He ended 17th with twelve points to Tsunoda's 22 through Singapore, and said he was proud of his career.
Ricciardo is known for an aggressive style and a late-braking approach to engineering overtakes, preferring to carry more speed through corners by making them more of a 'U' shape with a little rear instability on entry. Regarded as one of the most prominent names in Formula One for his laid-back nature and smile, his profile grew with the reality show Drive to Survive, in which he was called "the face of the show". He is referred to as "the honey badger" after the animal he called "the most fearless in the animal kingdom". On 8 February 2015 he became the fastest Formula One driver to lap the Top Gear test track, beating Lewis Hamilton with a time of 1:42.2.
Ricciardo pronounces his surname "Ricardo" rather than the Italian way, attributing this to how it was pronounced growing up in Australia. A childhood fan of NASCAR Cup Series driver Dale Earnhardt, he adopted the number 3 in his honour. He supports the West Coast Eagles, is a UFC fan, follows the Buffalo Bills, and supports the Melbourne Stars, as childhood friend and cricketer Marcus Stoinis represents them. He is in a relationship with Heidi Berger, daughter of ten-time Formula One Grand Prix winner Gerhard Berger. In 2019 he founded the Daniel Ricciardo Series, a kart racing series providing affordable owner–driver karting for drivers aged 7–16. He retired from motor racing in September 2025, aged 36, to become a global ambassador for Ford Racing.
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