“We’re losing time like this,” Ricciardo said. “We’ve got to decide what to
do.” There was no throwing his toys out of the pram, no whingeing, just a
composed assertion that he was being held up. His new team duly responded,
telling Vettel – the reigning and four-time drivers’ champion, remember – to
move aside, which he did without a fuss. This steeliness behind the wheel is
something even his paymasters have been slightly taken aback by, according
to Ricciardo.

“I definitely have my everyday approach, my happiness and all that is pretty
much who I am, what I am, 95 per cent of the time,” he admits. “When it
comes to the racing, and the business side of the sport, I do take it very
seriously. Although I’m having a really good time under the helmet, I’m much
more serious and much more focused probably than how I come across when I’m
having a few jokes outside the car.

“The team have been a bit surprised. But I think impressed that I can make
that switch from when I get in the car. I still make jokes – they are not
too serious. Last week in testing [in Bahrain] I was making a few jokes on
the radio in the car.”

What kind of jokes can you make over the team radio, one wonders?

“I was rapping at one point – or trying to rap. It wasn’t very good; I was
just making it up.”

Ricciardo’s ability to look on the bright side served him well throughout the
drama surrounding his disqualification in Australia.

After driving superbly to second, sounding almost giddy on the team radio and
joking that he was “tripping balls” in front of his home crowd on the
podium, he suffered the cruel fate of a disqualification as he left the
paddock late that night, which was confirmed at a hearing in Paris last
Monday.

But mention of the six-hour hearing, as well as the race itself, still
provokes a broad smile rather than a frown. “I definitely still savour it.
That feeling inside me when I was up there, that’s still in me. I still
don’t feel like I was disqualified or anything like that. I still believe
that I got it, so the confidence I’ll take from that is definitely still
with me.”

The one thing Ricciardo does seem to have inherited from Webber is his unfair
share of bad luck, with a mistake by the team during a pit stop blighting a
solid race in Malaysia. How does he stay so positive, even after being
denied the result of his life at his home race? Part of the reason, it
seems, is Ricciardo still does not quite seem to believe he is here. “I am
living the dream,” he says.

It is a dream which eight years ago in Shanghai, racing in Formula BMW, the
Australian did not think he would realise.

“In 2006, no I didn’t think I would get to Formula One. I wasn’t winning and I
wasn’t dominating. I didn’t think I had anything more special than anyone
else.”

There were other obstacles in the way of his path to the pinnacle of
motorsport too. While he was fortunate enough eventually to be signed by Red
Bull’s young driver programme, Australia is not an easy proving ground for
future F1 stars. As he boasts, he is the first from Western Australia. And
despite an enjoyable upbringing, there was a time when the travel to the
other side of his vast homeland seemed more than he could cope with.

“It’s far away [Australia], isn’t it!” he jokes. “It’s crazy. As a kid I
travelled a bit for karting, to Melbourne and to Sydney, and I didn’t like
travelling at all. I thought to race in Formula One I need to move to
Europe, and I don’t know how it happened. There’s a lot of things that I
didn’t enjoy doing. I think one day I matured and something happened. I went
from being a boy to a young man.”

But the boy who found moving to cold, wet England almost impossible to
contemplate is rapidly coming of age. As Christian Horner, his team
principal at Red Bull, said after Bahrain, his performances have been better
than expected. Ricciardo certainly wants to continue keeping Vettel honest.

“I don’t know how to say it – I don’t want to sound arrogant – but I believe a
lot in myself, and I believed if I had the right equipment and the right
opportunity then I would be able to show what I’m capable of, and that’s
been shown now.

“I haven’t surprised myself but it’s been nice to confirm it to myself that I
can do this. I believe I can keep doing it.”