Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo perhaps have one of the most iconic friendships in F1, ever since they were teammates at Red Bull.
Such was their bromance during the years they spent together at the team that fans even dubbed the duo ‘Maxiel’, with a big contingent left heartbroken when Ricciardo decided to end his tenure at the sports-drink outfit to further his career at Renault.
It is believed that the relationship between the two continued to stay smooth even after Ricciardo left, but when the Honey Badger was recently asked who his ideal partner for a road trip in Western Australia would be, he ignored Max and instead chose his former McLaren teammate Lando Norris.
Having been the face of a new tourism campaign launched to promote Western Australia, Ricciardo was asked a number of questions regarding what the most beautiful part of the city is and where tourists should look to spend their time.
The Australian driver opened up on which teammate he would like to spend a road trip with and why he chose Lando Norris.
“It’s risky saying someone who hasn’t been a teammate because I guess I don’t know them too well,” he said.
“I’d probably have to go with someone that’s been a teammate… even someone like Lando. We were teammates for two years. I think the first year was very different to the second year.”
While there was a bit of animosity between Ricciardo and norris in their first season together, Ricciardo had a reason as to why they may not have got off on the right foot and how the relationship slowly began to grow, especially during his second year at the Papaya-Orange.
It almost seemed like there was no going back from the time when Norris, who had just signed a contract extension at the time after consistently outscoring Ricciardo, claimed that it wasn’t his job to make his teammate feel better about himself.
This naturally led to a heated atmosphere between the two and McLaren was forced to arrange a meeting to resolve whatever problems or misunderstandings there may have been between the two drivers.
Once things began to settle, though, their relationship began to blossom into one of the closest amongst teammates across all teams.
Norris cleared the air over his relationship with Ricciardo
After it was made public that Ricciardo’s time at McLaren was about to come to an end, Norris claimed that he was disappointed to see the Honey Badger leave and that he ‘hated’ how people assumed they were not on good terms.
He was reminded about his own statement where he said he would not sympathise with Ricciardo and was quick to clarify that he was just being honest as opposed to sugarcoating the entire situation at the time.
Omfg I’m dead 😂😂
— 🌠📢LIVE NOW📢🌠 – @LUKEALELE (@lukealeleGames) June 30, 2022
Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo racing on space hoppers. WAIT UNTIL THE END!! #F1 #Silverstone pic.twitter.com/aEfK5aJJFF
Even though there is a significant age gap between the two, Norris claimed that they had developed a very healthy friendship.
One aspect that really caught Norris was how Ricciardo seemed to be one person while driving and someone completely different off the track. He felt that that was a characteristic that he would like to imbibe from his former teammate at some point in his career to gain greater emotional balance.
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