Daniel Ricciardo Age 2026: How Old Is Daniel Ricciardo?

Last updated: November 11, 2026  ·  By Nathan Cole

Daniel Ricciardo is 37 years old in 2026. He was born on July 1, 1989, in Perth, Western Australia, and turned 37 on July 1, 2026. He is no longer a racing driver. His last Grand Prix was Singapore in September 2024, he confirmed his retirement from racing on September 5, 2025, and he now works as a global ambassador for Ford Racing — the same Ford whose engines power the Red Bull team he used to drive for. In 14 seasons of Formula 1 he started 257 Grands Prix, won eight of them, stood on the podium 32 times, and built an estimated $50 million fortune on salaries that peaked at a reported $35 million a year with Renault.

People search for his age for a simple reason: he left the sport at an age when most drivers are still racing, and his name keeps appearing in 2026 anyway — in interviews, in paddock gossip, and in a November 2026 interview where he called his old teammate Max Verstappen “one of the best ever”. This article answers the age question first, then lays out the full picture current to November 11, 2026: the Perth childhood, the karting years, the Red Bull breakthrough, the Renault gamble, the Monza win, the long goodbye, the retirement and the Ford role, the fortune, and the honest comparison with the 2026 grid he no longer races on.

How Old Is Daniel Ricciardo in 2026?

Daniel Ricciardo is 37 years old in 2026. He was born on July 1, 1989, in Perth, Western Australia, and his 37th birthday fell on July 1, 2026. He turns 38 on July 1, 2027. The arithmetic is simple, but the internet keeps getting it wrong: a surprising number of biography pages still list him as 36, and one lists him as 33. The 36s were written before July 2026 and never updated. The 33 is from a page that stopped being maintained years ago. If you want to check any driver’s age, the test is the same every time: take the birth date, take today’s date, and do the subtraction yourself. For Ricciardo, that gives 37.

Thirty-seven puts him in an interesting place on the age scale of Formula 1. He is younger than Fernando Alonso, who is 45 and still racing in 2026, and younger than Lewis Hamilton, who is in his forties and now racing for Ferrari. He is older than Max Verstappen, who is 29, and much older than Kimi Antonelli, the 20-year-old who is nearing his first world title in 2026. Had Ricciardo still been on the grid in 2026, he would have been the fourth-oldest driver on it — behind Alonso, Hamilton and Nico Hülkenberg. He chose to leave instead, and the choice is part of the story: he has said he privately considered retiring as early as Silverstone in 2015 and again at Monaco in 2022, years before the decision was finally made for him in 2024.

Early Life in Perth: Karting at Nine

Daniel Joseph Ricciardo was born on July 1, 1989, in Perth, Western Australia, to Italian-Australian parents. His father, Joe, was born in Sicily; his mother, Grace, was born in Australia to Italian parents. The family ran a business in Perth, and the young Ricciardo grew up around motorsport — his father raced, and the household treated speed as a normal part of life rather than a fantasy. He began competitive karting at the age of nine, and the talent showed fast enough that by his mid-teens he was racing in junior single-seaters in Australia and then in Europe.

The European move is the step that separates the drivers who make it from the ones who do not. Ricciardo won the Formula Renault 2.0 West European Cup in 2008, which put him on Red Bull’s radar, and he joined the Red Bull Junior Team — the driver academy that has produced more Formula 1 drivers than any other. From there the path was the standard Red Bull ladder: Formula 3, Formula Renault 3.5, test driver duties, and then a race seat. The ladder took him from Perth to Milton Keynes, and by 2011, at 22, he was a Formula 1 driver.

The Climb: HRT, Toro Rosso and the Red Bull Junior Team

Ricciardo made his Formula 1 debut at the 2011 British Grand Prix with HRT, the backmarker team, as part of a deal with Red Bull, for whom he was test driving. HRT was the slowest car on the grid, and a debut there is a test of patience rather than speed: the driver learns the circuits, the media, the travel, and the politics, while the car gives him nothing to show for it. He scored his first points in March 2012, after moving to Toro Rosso, Red Bull’s junior team, and spent two seasons there learning the craft. His first pole position came at Monaco in 2016, and his first victory at Canada on June 8, 2014 — but the climb itself, from HRT to Toro Rosso to Red Bull, took three years of proving himself in machinery that could not win.

The Toro Rosso years matter because they explain the driver Ricciardo became. In a midfield car, a driver learns to overtake — and Ricciardo’s late braking became his trademark, the move that earned him the “Honey Badger” nickname and a reputation as the best overtaker on the grid. The nickname stuck because it fit: a small, fearless animal that does not back down. It also fit the smile. Ricciardo’s grin became one of the most recognisable images in the sport, and in October 2026 he admitted on Formula 1’s Beyond the Grid podcast that the grin had sometimes been a disguise — a way of hiding frustration when the results were not coming.

Red Bull 2014: The Year He Beat Vettel

In 2014 Ricciardo was promoted to Red Bull Racing, replacing Mark Webber alongside Sebastian Vettel — the four-time defending world champion. Nobody expected what happened next. Ricciardo won three Grands Prix in his first season with the team, at Canada, Hungary and Belgium, scored 238 points, finished third in the championship, and beat Vettel over a full season. He remains the only teammate who ever beat Vettel over a full season at Red Bull, and he did it against a man who had won the previous four world championships. The Canada win, his first, came on June 8, 2014, and it announced him as a genuine front-runner rather than a promising junior.

The 2014 season is the foundation of everything that followed: the salary, the fame, the Netflix stardom, the $50 million fortune. A driver who beats a four-time champion in his first year at a top team gets paid like a top driver from then on. Ricciardo’s reported salary at Red Bull was around $6 million a year — modest by the standards of what came later, but the platform was worth more than the pay. Red Bull gave him the car, the wins and the audience, and the audience is what turned a racing driver into a commercial property.

The Peak Years: Monaco, Malaysia and the Honey Badger

The years after 2014 were the peak of Ricciardo’s career, and they produced the moments fans still quote. In 2016 he won the Malaysian Grand Prix and finished third in the championship, outranking his new teammate Max Verstappen — the teenager Red Bull had promoted mid-season and who would go on to win four world titles. In 2018 he won the Monaco Grand Prix, the race every driver wants most, from pole position, and added the Chinese Grand Prix the same year. Seven of his eight career wins came with Red Bull, all three of his pole positions, and 29 of his 32 podiums. The numbers say it plainly: Red Bull was where he was at his best.

The Monaco win deserves a line of its own. Ricciardo had lost the 2016 Monaco race through a pit-stop error while leading, and the 2018 win was the correction — a pole position converted into a victory on a circuit where overtaking is nearly impossible. He drove the final laps with a failing power unit, managing the car home at reduced speed while the driver behind him closed in. It was the kind of win that builds a reputation: fast, calm, and unbothered by pressure. By the end of 2018 he had eight seasons of Formula 1 behind him, seven wins, and a decision to make about where the next chapter would be written.

Renault: The Million Gamble

In 2019 Ricciardo left Red Bull for Renault, in a move that surprised the paddock. The reported salary was $35 million a year — the biggest of his career, and the reason the move made financial sense even though the car was slower. He raced for Renault for two seasons, delivered two podiums, and never won. The gamble was simple: take the money and the status of a team leader, and bet that Renault’s works project would grow into a winning one. It did not, at least not while he was there. The two years cost him wins and momentum, but they paid him more than any other period of his career, and the $35 million salary is the single biggest contributor to the $50 million fortune.

The Renault years also changed how the sport saw him. At Red Bull he had been the smiling challenger. At Renault he was the expensive signing who could not make the car win, and the narrative around him shifted. He left after 2020, having banked the money and learned the lesson that every driver learns eventually: in Formula 1, the car matters more than the driver, and a big salary in a slow car is a trade with a cost attached.

McLaren and Monza: The Last Win

Ricciardo joined McLaren for 2021, and the first season there was rough. His teammate Lando Norris outqualified him most weekends, and the car did not suit his driving style. Then came Monza. Ricciardo passed Verstappen into the first chicane at the start, held the lead through the pit sequence, and when Verstappen and Hamilton took each other out at the Rettifilo he simply drove away. Norris followed him home for a McLaren one-two — the team’s first win since Jenson Button at Brazil in 2012. It was win number eight, and it turned out to be the last one.

The second McLaren season was worse. He finished 11th in the standings with 37 points in 2022, and McLaren paid him a reported $18 million to leave a year early. The exit payout is the part of the story that rarely gets mentioned, but it belongs in any honest account of his fortune: a driver who is paid $18 million not to drive is a driver whose contract was worth more than his results. He spent part of 2023 as a Red Bull reserve driver, watching from the sidelines, before the call came to return to the grid mid-season with AlphaTauri.

The Long Goodbye: AlphaTauri, RB and Singapore 2024

The return was supposed to be a redemption story. Ricciardo came back with AlphaTauri midway through 2023, stayed into 2024 as the team was rebranded RB, and raced for a seat at Red Bull that never opened. The results were not enough. With six races left in the 2024 season, Red Bull and Racing Bulls replaced him with Liam Lawson, and his 257th and final Grand Prix was Singapore on September 22, 2024. He knew it was over before the team told him. On the last lap he set the fastest lap of the race — a final flourish, and a farewell written in the timing screens rather than in a press release.

He did not formally retire from racing until September 2025, almost a year after Singapore. In the months between, he stayed away from the paddock, spent time with family and friends, and let the bitterness fade into pride. In October 2026 he spoke about the period on Formula 1’s Beyond the Grid podcast, admitting the exit had felt like a humiliation and that his trademark grin had been a disguise. He also said he was grateful the decision had been made for him — that he had privately considered retiring at Silverstone in 2015 and again at Monaco in 2022, and that the team had spared him a choice he kept putting off. It was the most honest interview of his career, and it reframed the ending: not a sacking, but a door closing on a driver who had already been thinking about leaving.

Retirement and the Ford Racing Role

On September 5, 2025, Ricciardo confirmed he was finished as a racing driver and took a job as global ambassador for Ford Racing. The role fits the moment: Ford is Red Bull’s engine partner from 2026, supplying the powertrains for the team Ricciardo used to drive for, so his old team’s name is never far away. In 2026 he serves as a Ford Racing ambassador, appearing at events, fronting the brand’s motorsport programme, and staying close to the sport without any sign of a comeback. Honda’s driver profile lists the role plainly: “In 2026, Ricciardo serves as a Ford Racing ambassador.”

The ambassadorship is also the answer to the question people ask whenever a famous driver retires: what does he do now? The answer, for Ricciardo, is that he does the parts of the job he always liked — the events, the fans, the brand work — without the parts he had grown tired of: the travel, the pressure, the qualifying laps that decide everything. He has stayed away from the F1 paddock for the most part, and when he does speak about the sport, it is usually to praise the drivers he raced against. In November 2026 he called Verstappen “one of the best ever”, and noted that the Dutchman had won three of the last five Grands Prix in the first season of the Red Bull Ford powertrain partnership.

Life After F1: What Ricciardo Does in 2026

Ricciardo’s 2026 is quieter than his racing years, and that is the point. He works the Ford Racing ambassador role, he launched his DR3 rosé wine brand in 2025, and he appears in the occasional interview or podcast — the Beyond the Grid appearance in October 2026 was the most revealing of them. He has not taken a team role, a commentary job or a management position, and there is no sign of a comeback. The paddock gossip that follows every retired driver — the rumours of a return, the reserve-driver speculation — has largely passed him by, because he has been clear that he is done.

What he has kept is the audience. Ricciardo became a global star partly through Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which made him the most recognisable driver of his generation to people who had never watched a race. That audience follows him into retirement, and it is the reason brands still want him: a Ford ambassador who can fill a room is worth more than a former driver who cannot. The 2026 version of Daniel Ricciardo is a brand ambassador, a wine entrepreneur and a retired racer who has made peace with the ending. The grin, by his own admission, is real again.

Personal Life: Heidi Berger, Family, and the Order of Australia

Ricciardo keeps his personal life mostly private, and the public record reflects that. His partner is Heidi Berger, an actress and the daughter of former Formula 1 driver Gerhard Berger — a connection that ties him to the sport’s history as well as its present. The two have been together since 2022, and she has appeared with him at events, though neither of them discusses the relationship in detail. He has no children as of 2026.

Family remains the centre of his story. His parents, Joe and Grace, still live in Perth, and he has spoken about the time with family and friends after the 2024 exit as the thing that helped him move from bitterness to pride. In 2022 he was named a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Australia Day Honours, for service to motorsport — a formal recognition that sits alongside the eight wins and 32 podiums as the public record of his career. He is 179 cm tall (5 ft 10 in) and weighs 69 kg, measurements that put him at the taller end of the Formula 1 grid, where drivers are usually built small to fit the cars.

The Million Fortune, Explained

Daniel Ricciardo’s net worth in 2026 is estimated at $50 million, according to SurpriseSports (updated October 7, 2026), a figure agreed by CelebClive and Bharat Horizon. That is the consensus of the 2026 sources, and it is the anchor for this article. The fortune was built on salaries, and the salaries are public enough to trace. The table below lays them out, with the reported figures and the sources that carry them.

One figure does not belong in the table: the $96 million (£76 million) net worth quoted by F1Oversteer, attributed to brand deals with Beats, St Hugo and Singtel Optus. No other 2026 source corroborates it, and it sits nearly double the $50 million consensus. This article notes it as an outlier and does not use it as the anchor. The $50 million figure is the one three separate 2026 sources agree on, and it fits the salary history: a driver who earned $35 million a year for two years at Renault, $15 million a year at McLaren, and $18 million to leave McLaren early does not need a $96 million headline to look wealthy. Readers who want the full adjudication can read our Daniel Ricciardo net worth profile, which covers the fortune in detail.

The maths is the story. A Formula 1 career is short, the peak salaries last a few years, and the money is made in the window when the driver is both fast and famous. Ricciardo’s window was 2014 to 2022, and the Renault contract was the peak of it. What the $50 million figure does not include is a public real-estate portfolio or a disclosed investment account. His fortune is concentrated in career earnings, the McLaren exit payout, brand deals and his DR3 wine venture. If the Ford ambassadorship and the wine brand grow, the next update to this figure will likely move up. For now, $50 million is where the evidence points.

The Drive to Survive Effect: How Netflix Made Him a Star

Ricciardo’s fame outgrew his results, and the reason has a name: Netflix’s Drive to Survive. The series, which began following Formula 1 in 2018, made Ricciardo its breakout star. His humour, his honesty about the sport’s politics, and his willingness to talk on camera turned a midfield driver into the most recognisable face in the paddock — and then, as the show’s audience grew into the tens of millions, into one of the most recognisable athletes in the world. People who had never watched a Grand Prix knew who Daniel Ricciardo was. That matters to the money story, because the audience is what the Ford ambassadorship and the DR3 wine brand are built on.

The show also shaped how his career is remembered. The Renault move, the McLaren struggles and the 2024 exit all played out on camera, with Ricciardo narrating his own story in a way few athletes ever do. The October 2026 Beyond the Grid interview, where he admitted the grin had been a disguise, reads as the final chapter of that long public conversation — the driver telling the truth about the years when the cameras were rolling and the results were not coming. It is rare for an athlete to be that candid about a career while it is still warm, and it is one reason his retirement has been received with more warmth than bitterness.

There is a commercial lesson in it too. A driver with eight wins and no world title does not normally command a $50 million fortune. Ricciardo does, because he was never only a driver: he was a personality, a brand, and a story. The $35 million Renault salary was paid for speed. The Ford ambassadorship and the wine brand are paid for something else — the audience he built, largely through a television show, over a decade of being the most likeable man on the grid.

Ricciardo by the Numbers

The career, reduced to the figures that define it. Ricciardo started 257 Grands Prix across 14 seasons and won eight of them, with 32 podiums, three pole positions, 17 fastest laps and 1,329 career points. He drove for seven different constructors — HRT, Toro Rosso, Red Bull, Renault, McLaren, AlphaTauri and RB — more teams than most drivers manage in a career, and a measure of how often he had to rebuild. His first win and his last win were seven years and three months apart, Canada in June 2014 to Monza in September 2021, which is a long time to stay at the front of a sport that discards drivers quickly.

Two of his three pole positions came at Monaco, the circuit where qualifying matters most and where his one-lap speed was at its best. Seven of his eight wins came with Red Bull, and the eighth came with McLaren. He never won for Renault, Toro Rosso, AlphaTauri or RB, which says as much about the cars as about the driver. And the statistic that will follow him longest is the 2014 one: he remains the only teammate who ever beat Sebastian Vettel over a full season at Red Bull, and he did it in his first year at the team, against a man who had won the previous four world championships. That single season is the foundation of his reputation, his salary history and his fortune.

Sources & Reporting

This article was researched from live sources in November 2026. Crash.net (November 10, 2026) supplied the Verstappen praise and the Red Bull Ford context. WhoSharesMyBirthday (November 2026) and YourLifeChoices (October 30, 2026) supplied the age confirmation and the Beyond the Grid interview detail. Happy Hour Racing (October 15, 2026), via the official F1 record and the Ergast database, supplied the career totals (257 starts, 8 wins, 32 podiums, 3 poles, 1,329 points) and the 2014 Vettel comparison. Formula1Points supplied the season-by-season stats. SurpriseSports (updated October 7, 2026) supplied the $50 million net-worth anchor and the salary table. CelebClive (updated April 2, 2026) supplied the salary history, the $18 million McLaren exit payout and the DR3 launch. Bharat Horizon supplied the Heidi Berger detail and the McLaren salary. F1Oversteer supplied the $96 million outlier figure. Honda’s driver profile supplied the height, weight and the 2026 Ford ambassador role. HITC supplied the Racing Bulls replacement detail. Yardbarker supplied the Antonelli title-race context and the retirement confirmation. Wikipedia and F1 Fandom supplied the career timeline, the Order of Australia honour and the debut dates. Where sources disagreed, the article reports the range and the reason rather than choosing the largest number. Reporting window: November 11, 2026.

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