Daniel Ricciardo heads to Abu Dhabi ready to “f**k 2020 right off” after revealing he had a Covid-19 scare earlier this year.
On the track, it has been a pretty strong season for the Australian, claiming two podiums and still having an outside chance of fourth in the Drivers’ Championship, with a 13-point deficit to Sergio Perez ahead of the season finale.
And ahead of what will be his final race for Renault before switching to McLaren in 2021, Ricciardo’s goal is clear.
“It’s also my last race with the team and I want to end it on a high and leave knowing we gave everything to the very end,” he said.
“One to go. Let’s close out 2020 strong as it has been and f**k this year right off.”
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That mood rather sums up the planet after a year dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In F1, the virus caused the start of the season to be delayed from March until July, with a hastily arranged 17-race calendar mostly without fans in presence.
Drivers and the rest of the paddock have also had to ‘bubble’ throughout the year, but cases have still been found including to both Racing Point drivers and most recently Lewis Hamilton.
Speaking to the media via Zoom earlier this week, however, Ricciardo revealed he may have joined that list of drivers to miss a race too following the Tuscan GP in September.
“I did wake up one morning with a false-positive test, so I had a scare at 6am one morning,” he said via Formula1.com
“It wasn’t a false positive, [it was] inconclusive. Still scared me though! Then trying to figure out, okay we’ve got to get tested again, and there was a bit of panic and that wasn’t fun.
“Obviously, I was fine in the end but that obviously was something I hadn’t gone through before and then you start playing games in your head like ‘do I feel a little..’ and ‘maybe I do have it and just’, but that was a bit of panic one morning.
“As the season went on I became more and more disciplined with isolating or just taking care of myself, especially after Checo [Perez] got it and I was like ‘Okay so this isn’t a joke’.
“I was being very careful so I was quite surprised [by the result of the test]. Obviously, in the end, I didn’t have it but I was scratching my head.”