Daniel Ricciardo could celebrate his return to Red Bull Racing with his first trip to Mount Panorama, behind the wheel of a Formula One car.
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Daniel Ricciardo is likely to make his first on-track laps at Mount Panorama when Red Bull Racing stages a Formula One demonstration at Bathurst in February.
Ricciardo became Red Bull’s Formula One reserve and demonstration driver last month after he lost his full-time race place with McLaren, a spot now filled by fellow Australian Oscar Piastri for the 2023 season.
One of his jobs in the new role with Red Bull is to drive a superseded Formula One car – the howling V8-powered Red Bull RB7 from the 2011 season – in promotional events for the energy drinks company.
There is a good chance the car could crack the fastest lap recorded at Bathurst – currently claimed by former F1 world champion Jenson Button at 1 minute 48.8 seconds – and should handily undercut the official V8 Supercars lap record of 2:04.7602 set by Chaz Mostert in a Ford Falcon in the 2019 running of the Bathurst 1000.
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The Red Bull demonstration will happen during the Bathurst 12-Hour race meeting from February 3-5, an endurance event for GT sports cars including Porsche, Mercedes-AMG, Lamborghini and McLaren.
“This will be the best opportunity in 2023 for Australian F1 fans to get up close and personal with F1 machinery and an even rarer opportunity to see a Formula One car lap Mount Panorama,” the 12-Hour director, Shane Rudzis, said in a statements.
Despite his success as a Formula One driver, with seven Grand Prix wins at Red Bull and another at McLaren, Ricciardo has never driven at Bathurst.
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He began his competition career in cars by racing a Formula Ford in his home state of Western Australia, before jumping to the Formula BMW category in Asia and then moving up the junior single-seater ranks in Europe.
The Red Bull demonstration will be the first time a modern Formula One car has lapped Bathurst since a similar event in 2011, when McLaren bought one of its superseded F1 cars to the track following that year’s Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
The highlight was a ‘car swap’ between Jenson Button and Craig Lowndes – thanks to common sponsorship from Vodafone – who traded their F1 car and V8 Supercars racer for a string of high-speed laps.
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