Daniel Ricciardo said he never asked himself what might happen if he still drove with Max Verstappen at Red Bull this season.
Ricciardo joined Red Bull in 2014 and was Verstappen’s teammate from mid-2016 until his move to Renault at the end of 2018.
Verstappen won the championship at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday, Red Bull’s first F1 title since 2013.
Speaking to ESPN on Friday night on the eve of that race Ricciardo, who now races for McLaren, said: “Looking at this year’s Max, I don’t 100 per cent feel jealous, envious or weird with him either or team.
“Strange, I would be very, very happy for them!”
Ricciardo was Verstappen’s most competitive teammate at Red Bull, racing alongside Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon and Sergio Perez in the years since.
The Australian said he stopped thinking about that chapter in his career some time ago.
“I don’t have any [regrets]. People were probably thinking “I wonder what Daniel thinks this year, is he fighting for the championship?”.
“Until now I haven’t really thought about it. I think it’s hard to answer in a… the easiest way to say it is, I actually did, and not in a negative way. , I have separated myself from it.
“After finishing the book with Red Bull, I really tried to put all my heart into the sequel. I really didn’t have anything too extreme, like, what could’ve happened, what should’ve been. do.”
Ricciardo, who claimed McLaren’s first race victory since 2012 at the Italian Grand Prix in September, said a key part of his decision in 2018 was making sure he could live with it. himself if Red Bull goes on to win the championship after he leaves.
“I remember in the decision-making process, I even said to myself, ‘can I live with myself if, in 2019, Red Bull wins the championship? How will that make me feel? ?”
“So I’ve dealt with those. And now we’re obviously a couple of years away from that. I certainly don’t have any… I’m not really psychic. or whatever you want to call it, but I do think everything happens for a reason.
“From there, I didn’t really feel like if I had stayed maybe things would have been different. I didn’t really feel that. I didn’t think like ‘what could have happened, now I would have been able to. being a double world champion’, or whatever. I used to think so when I was younger but I feel like it’s clearly my decision, I’ve given it a lot of thought and I have to move on with it. that. “
He added: “This isn’t even for that particular situation, but my dad told me something when I was a kid. He said ‘if you look too far, you’re going to hurt your neck’.” It’s true, once you make a decision and once you make a decision that you’ve thought about long and hard, I think it’s important that you get on with it.”
