I first stepped into the world of F1 in 2019, and soon became a fan of Ricciardo. It wasn't because there was anything about Ricciardo that I thought was right, but the packaging of the gift I gave to my friend happened to have the word "Ricciardo" written on it. Although it sounds a bit ridiculous, it was indeed an opportunity to support Ricciardo.
Ricciardo won the 2021 F1 Italian Grand Prix.
If I wasn't naturally fascinated by racing, I would have to associate F1 with fishing, both of which have a kind of boredom of repetition and waiting. So, if there is no team or driver that I want to support, it seems difficult to find the joy of persistence just by watching.
Not to mention, no matter how complicated the sport of F1 is, its viewing value has been decreasing year by year due to the variables that influence the race, and it is not as good as before. In short, it is no longer a good time to watch the race.
Later on, it turned out that supporting drivers like Ricciardo did not make watching F1 more interesting, but worse.
As a driver, Ricciardo has two personal symbols that fascinate fans, one is his killer smile, and the other is Shoey (drinking champagne with shoes that have just finished a race). Perhaps it is because Australians are optimistic by nature, he always smiles, and the whole person seems to have no flaws or shadows, and his driving skills are just like him, clean and graceful.
As for Shoey, this iconic action of Ricciardo when celebrating victory has only happened once in the five years since I started watching F1. He performed it on the podium in Monza, Italy in 21. Most of the time, he always retired from the game prematurely due to various problems. His career after the age of 30 seemed to be cursed.
These are things that you will know naturally as the game progresses, without the help of any network. As long as we support a person, we instinctively want to know everything about him, especially when a long period of lows comes. I will also be curious about how the land behind Ricardo has shaped his character and his career.
Ricardo's dream of racing began with his innate yearning and talent for speed, not because of a car he owned as a child. To this day, Australia has only produced one local car brand called Holden. But this is actually not accurate. Holden was originally a harness manufacturer, and it was not until it was acquired by General Motors and renamed GM Holden that it began to produce its first car. In theory, Holden is a completely American car brand.
However, Australians turned a blind eye to this and tied Holden to Australia through sports events, marketing advertisements and other means. "If you don't like football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars, then you are not a real Australian." This Chevrolet-like advertisement completely ignited the national sentiment of Australians in the 1970s. Holden naturally became a national favorite brand.
Holden was also the main sponsor of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. At that time, it and Ford jointly dominated Australia's roads. In order to write a book about the Olympics, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami went to Sydney alone in the summer of 2000 to watch the games. He took advantage of the time between the games to complete a round-trip self-driving tour between Sydney and Brisbane. The car was a Ford Falcon borrowed from Hertz Car Rental. In Sydney!, he wrote: "It may be jarring to bring it to Japan, but it has no shortcomings in Australia. You will even forget that you are driving. You will know what kind of car Australians want as long as you sit in it. Indeed, if you are driving a Ferrari on the road and a group of kangaroos suddenly hit you, I am afraid you will not even have time to cry."
Soon, Toyota, which also took root in this continent, began to exert its strength and broke some of the balance, but that is a story for another time. Australia is generally a country with a shallow affinity with cars. Since the implementation of the Patton Plan in the 1980s, trade liberalization supported by the Australian government has made imported cars cheaper than locally manufactured ones. For automakers such as Ford, Holden, and Toyota that already have factories locally, this is undoubtedly a fatal blow.
More importantly, they were powerless to change. Australia's market size and higher labor costs than almost anywhere else made economies of scale completely ineffective, no matter how much the government subsidized them. In the end, Ford, Toyota, and Holden closed their factories around 2017 and withdrew from Australia one after another.
Australia has completely become a country without an automobile industry. In the past, "it was cool if someone owned a Torana (a Holden car)." This is what Ricardo said in an interview. Nowadays, the streets are full of imported foreign brands, the most common of which are Toyota, Ford and Mazda.
What remains unchanged is that Australians still prefer durable cars. Among the top three cars, pickup trucks occupy two seats, Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux. No wonder BYD is so eager to introduce its own pickup truck, and the name it gave is also quite aggressive, SHARK. When it comes to cars, Australia can be said to have made no achievements, but other aspects are another story. This ancient country has the largest number of poisonous animals in the world, and there are also many sharks. It seems that BYD intends to make a big wave here and carve out a path.
What remains unchanged is that Australia is facing the same predicament as it did 20 years ago, and the country's economic situation has not been easy since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Australians call their country a lucky country, of course, thanks to its extremely rich natural resources, they can always dig something out of the ground to survive the crisis.
But good luck will eventually run out, and Australians are once again scratching their heads and wondering what to do. "There will always be a way." After taking advantage of the Olympics to visit Australia in depth, Murakami made this judgment on the people living on this continent. The next step is to "pay attention to energy transformation... and properly develop the care economy. These are the cornerstones of future prosperity." The government said this about the GDP, which only grew by 0.1% in the first quarter of this year.
Chinese electric car brands eager to make a big splash on the world stage have flocked here, with BYD and Tesla, which took the lead, becoming two major forces dominating the Australian electric car market, although in terms of scale, they still have a huge gap with Toyota and Ford.
With four races left, F1 will enter the summer break, but Ricciardo has yet to show enough performance to convince the team. Japanese driver Tsunoda has already got a contract for next season, but Ricciardo's future remains uncertain. Whenever his performance is below expectations, his multiple identities outside of being a driver will naturally become the target of attack, and such noise always makes the Australian's career confusing.
However, Ricciardo once said in the past, "Once I get tired of racing, I think I will leave. I don't think I will be tied to this sport for the rest of my life. In the end, enjoyment is the most important thing."
You see, no matter what, Australians always find a way.
