Those Who Wait (Formula 1 - Daniel Ricciardo)

8... 40 years

It was always good to spend a few days in the simulator, a place I used to call my office. And so I'd ventured back to MK to use it in preparation for the Spanish Grand Prix. However, it was hard to switch off the development brain I had been tuned into using for the past few years and I found myself relaying my thoughts to the engineer frequently: far more frequently than I needed to be.

After a few days in the UK with the simulator, it was back on a flight to Barcelona. Every single day since we'd been reunited, Jen had been determined to push me harder and harder in the gym. In Monaco this usually included a bike ride as well as a visit to the local gym, while in the UK she'd stuck to the muddy circuit we'd run along while living in MK. Its safe to say, that I was greatly looking forward to reaching Spain and being able to focus my training on the race ahead and toning it down a little to keep me from becoming too tired. 

However, Spain was a completely different experience to Bahrain. My presence in the race wasn't as unexpected and this meant that there was so much more press attention on me. Red Bull had now assigned me a press officer, and the simple walk from the garage to the motorhome now reminded me of a boxer walking through the crowd to the ring. It was completely insane.

The build-up to the race had been quite heavily focused on a date 40 years prior, when Lella Lombardi had become the first female driver to claim points in a Grand Prix. She was still the current holder of the highest placed female to date, with a 6th Place at the Spanish Grand Prix in 1975. Behind both her and her Italian compatriot Maria Teresa de Filippis, I was only the 3rd female driver to qualify for and start a Grand Prix. This meant that the whole way up to qualifying I had been trying my very hardest to avoid the press as much as possible.

*

Both free practice and qualifying came and went in the blink of an eye, with myself out-qualifying Dan for the first time. This had been very unexpected but gave us an 8th and 10th on the grid, the usual suspects of Mercedes locking out the front row.

Race day had then approached with my routine now beginning to take shape. Most drivers liked getting pumped up before the race and for me it was no different. With Eminem and Linkin Park blasting through my headphones, I started off with skipping before moving onto an exercise with Jen, which included her throwing tennis balls at me as fast as possible and me catching them.

I was then striding into the garage and climbing into the car, following all of the pre-race protocols and heading on the outlap to the grid. It was from my position there, that the weekend would take shape.

*

As we came in from the formation lap and lined up on the grid, I trained my eyes on the red lights that had began to light up ahead. With 5 lights on, the first clutch had been disengaged and I found the bite point of the second.

Lights out and the clutch was off, foot straight on the accelerator. Checking my mirrors and glancing left and right I knew I'd been a little too slow. I could see Dan straight behind me, ducking out and taking his chance to overtake. But I stuck to my line into the first corner and kept myself out of trouble, a few cars becoming dangerously close to each other as they usually did just after a start.

By the end of lap 1 I'd dropped from 8th to 13th, losing most of those places during the start. That was something I needed to work on for sure. I now stared at the back of Alonso's Mclaren as I drove around the track I'd ingrained in my mind whilst on the simulator a few days prior.

Lap 11 and I was still in 13th place, not managing to find my way past Alonso and needing a new game plan to get further up the field.

"Ok these tyres are running out on me, I need to push and its just not possible," I said through the radio, my ears automatically filled with Gianpiero's voice.