+34
‘Learned their lesson’: How a famous Ricciardo win got nine Australians arrested in Malaysia
There was a time that Daniel Ricciardo was so good that he caused an international incident that landed nine people in Malaysian jail. Ricciardo’s breakout season with Red Bull Racing in 2014, securing three victories, made him an instant national icon.
Overnight his swashbuckling on-track style and charismatic off-track persona attracted legion fans dreaming of Australia’s next world championship. But Red Bull Racing was entering a steep decline. Ricciardo scored no wins and just two podiums the following season — the team scored just three overall — and suddenly the title dream was moving further out of reach.
Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K.Certainly it wouldn’t be happening in 2016, with Mercedes still at the top of the championship — but that season of twists and turns would be significant for Ricciardo’s career nonetheless. The 2016 championship set-up had turned into an unexpected thriller after Lewis Hamilton had thrashed Nico Rosberg to romp to the 2015 title.
Hamilton, as was characteristic at the time, let his foot off the pedal after claiming the crown, allowing Rosberg to win the final three grands prix of the season, and the German carried that momentum into the near year, winning the first two events. Rosberg brought a new mentality into the 2016 season.
Understanding the enormity of the challenge of defeating Hamilton, he shed as many distractions from his life as possible to give as close to 100 per cent focus to each race as he could, psychologically totally locking himself down. It got him an early bounce, and fortune was on his side too.
Hamilton was poised to hit back in China, one of his traditional fortresses, but an engine problem left him unable to qualify and therefore last on the grid, from where he recovered to sixth. PODCAST: George Russell wins the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after Kimi Antonelli crashes out of qualifying, but has he reignited his title hopes or simply delayed the inevitable?
|The same problem struck again at the next race in Russia, though by then he had at least made it into Q3. From 10th he had no trouble finishing second, but the combination of his bad start and bad luck left him a mighty 47 points off the lead. Round 5 in Spain was the flashpoint to end all flashpoints in their rivalry, with a crash on the first lap taking both drivers out of the race.
Team boss Toto Wolff was so furious that he threatened to sack whoever caused the next crash. Ricciardo inherited the lead ahead of new teammate Max Verstappen, who had just been promoted from Toro Rosso. Red Bull Racing split their strategies to cover the threat from Ferrari, and the approach worked — for Verstappen, who sensationally became the youngest race winner in Formula 1 history.
It was a bitter pill for Ricciardo to swallow almost two years since his last victory. Mercedes losses were few and far between at this time, and Ricciardo had just so happened to have been put on the slower strategy on one of those rare occasions.
It became an even darker experience for the Australian at the following round in Monaco, where he failed to convert pole to victory after a catastrophic pit stop blunder by the team left him stuck in his grid box, ceding the lead and the win to Hamilton. It was the first of six wins Hamilton slammed on across the following seven weekends to improbably take a 19-point advantage into the mid-season break.
Those engine problems early in the season had a sting in the tail, with a back-of-grid penalty required in Belgium after the break. He recovered to third, but Rosberg capitalised on the lost momentum by winning in Spa and then in Italy and Singapore to resume an eight-point lead. Though he’d won there only once, the fast and sweeping corners of the Sepang circuit suited Hamilton well, and he put 0.4s on Rosberg to take pole.
Verstappen and Ricciardo were closely matched on the second row of the grid ahead of Ferrari teammates Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen. Hamilton got away well with Rosberg on his tail. Vettel got a great launch from fifth to get alongside Verstappen, but in a bid to be latest on his brakes, he overcooked the turn and rammed Rosberg off the road, sending his compatriot spinning to the back of the field in a cloud of tyre smoke.
The screech of Rosberg’s rubber must have been music to Hamilton’s ears, who sprinted off to a comfortable lead completely unchallenged, with Ricciardo a distant second. Verstappen dropped to fifth on the first lap, and Red Bull Racing took the opportunity to put him on an alternative strategy during an early virtual safety car, putting him on softs to create an offset in an ambitious play for the lead.
Either he could stay out after his first top and try to make it to the finish on heavily used tyres, or he could turn the wick up on his engine and reopen a safe gap to pit without losing position. He chose the safer second stop, re-establishing his margin easily and putting himself on track for a points swing in his favour that would surely deliver him the title lead.
Hamilton’s race seemed won, leaving Ricciardo and Verstappen to battle for second place, the Australian on ageing hards and the Dutchman on fresher ones. Verstappen cruised up to his teammate on lap 39. Assuming Ricciardo was due another stop he radioed his team. Unlike three years earlier, when Red Bull Racing had told Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel to hold station with its infamous ‘multi 21’ order, Christian Horner was determined to let Ricciardo and Verstappen race.
Ricciardo and Verstappen hadn’t descended into the sort of acrimony that Webber and Vettel before them had done — they’d never had a championship fight to put their relationship under that sort of pressure. But you also have to wonder how much the race in Spain earlier in the season played a role. Despite leading the race early, Ricciardo had been snookered by Verstappen being given what turned out to be the quicker strategy.
Verstappen made his first attempt into turn 1, with Ricciardo defending from the inside line and keeping tight into turn 2 to prevent the Dutchman from getting an easy run on exit. They swept through turn 3, and Verstappen made his first attempt at turn 4 — where Vettel had beaten Webber three years earlier.
“I could see Max coming,” Ricciardo said. “I went to the inside, but I knew he’d probably switch back and get a good exit into turn 5. “Out of the corner I had a bit of wheel spin and thought he’d probably get me quite easily into five, but I just had enough drive to stay on the inside.
“He had the inside at six, but I held around the outside, and fortunately there weren’t too many marbles, so you could run two cars side-by-side through there, which was fun, which was nice. “Then into seven we tried to basically out-brake each other. I was a little bit on the cleaner line so could just go a little bit deeper into seven and held off that time.
“It was cool. To race Formula 1 like that, high-speed corners, to be inches from each other, it’s fun. Verstappen said it was a “great battle”.
“It’s always fun when you give each other enough space,” he said. “We were not trying to squeeze each other or anything — that’s great racing at high speed. ”But with remarkable timing, Hamilton pulled off the road in a plume of smoke emanating from his turned-up engine just a few seconds later. The ensuing virtual safety car allowed both Ricciardo and Verstappen to pit again to ensure they’d make it to the finish.
Verstappen pressured his teammate hard until lap 49, when he locked his fronts into the hairpin. The turn had been resurfaced that year to be negatively cambered — it now slopes away from the apex, with a one-metre elevation difference from top to bottom — and in the Dutchman’s eagerness to get his car onto the front straight, he spun his rear tyres.
Ricciardo’s job was done, and he took the chequered flag after 56 hard-fought lap with a 2.4s advantage. Mark Webber emerged to host the post-race interviews, joking that he had he “thought we were going to have ‘multi 33’ there at one point”.
“I’m exhausted,” a clearly relieved Ricciardo enthused in his podium interview, which happened to be hosted by Webber. “It’s such a hot race here, and it was a race of challenges. “Lewis got the lead and had his problems. I’m not really one for believing in a whole lot, but obviously it went the other way in Monaco, so I’ll take this today.
He would win the Monaco Grand Prix two years later, but for now a sweet Sepang victory would do to assuage that wound. It was the perfect race for him to draw a line under his 770-day victory drought, with Malaysia historically being a well-attended race by Australians, particularly from his native Perth, just a six-hour flight to the south.
Ricciardo, never having needed an excuse to please a crowd, gestured to his show, gestured to his shoe and gestured to his fans. After partaking in his own shoe, he foisted his race boot upon all the podium finishers to rapturous whoops and hollers from the fans below the podium. That included Nico Rosberg, who fought back from the field and 10s penalty for causing a collision to score 15 points for third, extending his title lead to 23 point.
Victory in Japan at the following round got him one hand on the trophy, and a trio of increasingly stressful second-place finishes to the rampant Hamilton secured him his sole championship by five points.
“I hope he does not win any more races this year! ” Rosberg laughed after drinking from Ricciardo boot. The hot and sweaty champagne had clearly gone to their heads in the humidity, but the delirium was shared with those beneath the podium, where a group of nine overly enthusiastic Ricciardo fans were drawing attention for the wrong reason.
Stripping down to just their budgie smugglers printed with a Malaysian flag motif, they drank beer from their shoes and chanted ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi’ reportedly for several minutes. The so-called Budgie Nine were arrested and spent four nights in a jail in Sepang, outside Kuala Lumpur.
Though authorities mulled serious charges of intentional insult with the intent to provoke a breach of the peace, in a court hearing later that week they were charged with the lesser offence of public nuisance and released without conviction to travel home.
“It sounds like they have learned their lesson, and I don’t think they will be doing that again any time soon in Malaysia,” Ricciardo said. It was a bizarre ending to one of the many memorable Malaysian grands prix at Sepang, a race for which Australia holds fond or less fond memories, depending on their spot on the podium — or whether they were below it.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News: You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Ken Wyatt Urges Pauline Hanson to Meet Indigenous Australians After Primitive RemarksFormer Aboriginal affairs minister Ken Wyatt has condemned Pauline Hanson's description of Indigenous people as primitive, calling it ignorance, and invited her to talk with Indigenous communities across Australia.
Read more »
Chronic Kidney Disease Affects 2.5 Million Australians, Many UnawareSenator Larissa Waters reveals she has chronic kidney disease, highlighting a common condition that affects millions of Australians, with many unaware they have it until it's too late for treatment.
Read more »
Coalition's Primary Vote Hits Record Low as Australians Demand Immigration CutsA new Guardian Essential poll reveals the Coalition's primary vote has sunk to its lowest level ever, while One Nation's support climbs to 25%. Despite criticism of Labor, the poll shows 55% of Australians want the migrant intake lowered, with strong backing for hardline measures such as forced deportations and restrictions on family members of international students.
Read more »
RBA Interest Rate Hike to 4.6 Percent Deepens Mortgage Stress for AustraliansHomeowners face increased financial hardship as the Reserve Bank of Australia raises the cash rate to 4.6 percent, the highest level in nearly 15 years, prompting warnings from advocacy groups about worsening household debt.
Read more »