There’s a particular sound to a Daniel Ricciardo pass.
It’s the short, sharp scuff of front rubber right before the apex. This is the moment he asks more of the car than most dare. The engine note steadies as he releases the brake and lets faith finish the corner.
Ricciardo’s legend was built on those lunges that feel reckless until you study the craft.
He doesn’t simply brake later; he brakes differently with a longer, cleaner trail into the turn. He carries speed while the car is still rotating, trusting the front to bite and the rear to settle as he comes off the pedal.
2018 Shanghai Masterclass
Ask around the paddock and you’ll hear the same refrain: his overtakes aren’t chaos; they’re calculus under pressure. The Shanghai masterclass in 2018 is the go-to case study. A late Safety Car presented fresh tires, and a series of moves turned a tight race into a highlight reel.
He attacked from improbable distances, yet arrived at the apex composed, already readying the throttle.
To make late braking work, you need three things: front-end trust, brake-release finesse, and a read on the rival’s mirrors. Ricciardo built that triad during his Red Bull peak. The car gave him a pointy front and a stable platform on entry.
The technique is classic trail-braking, but his signature is the “extra half-beat”. He stays on the pedal just long enough to square the pass without pinching the corner. It’s why his moves often look clean even when they start from a postcode away.
Remember Baku 2017? From deep in the pack to the top step, he pulled off the kind of multi-car Turn 1 attack that belongs in coaching clinics.
He was patient on the approach and decisive at the commit point. The pass felt audacious on TV. However, in the data, it’s just precise entry speed and perfect brake release.
Monza tells its own story. The first-chicane passes are pure Ricciardo: brake after the boards have ended, straighten the wheel early, and trust the car to rotate as you peel off the pedal.
The “divebomb” nickname undersells the nuance. He’s not gambling; he’s reallocating risk — taking more of it before the apex so there’s less to manage at exit.
When It Doesn’t Click: McLaren, Car Dependency & the Reset
Of course, the technique is brutally car-dependent. At McLaren, the entry characteristics never synced with his instincts. This exposed how sensitive late-braking artistry is to front-axle bite and rear stability.
The same driver who could pry open gaps at Red Bull suddenly couldn’t get the nose to obey on entry. And when you can’t trust the first inch of braking, the rest of the move never starts.
Then came the rebuild. Back in familiar Red Bull family machinery, Ricciardo spoke openly about “feeling the front again” — that quiet confidence to brake into the rotation and let the corner come to him.
When that feeling returns, so does the body language: the late juke and the decisive pedal strike. The car settles right as the rival realizes it’s already done.
If you strip the romance away, late braking is simple physics: maximum decel, minimum distance, preserved rotation. But the greats make physics feel like theater.
Ricciardo’s passes are loud in the stands and quiet in the cockpit. It’s one clean breath, one long squeeze of the pedal, and one ruthless commitment to the apex.
That’s the sound of success.
