SP: Who'd you compete against?
CD: Valtteri Bottas, Carlos Sainz, Dani Kvyat.
SP: Danny Ric? You're buddies with him?
CD: No. We were really good friends, but he was actually one year ahead of me. So he was in different series, but we were all, like, living near each other in England at that time.
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SP: What's Danny Ric doing these days?
CD: Dude, just chilling. I talked to him yesterday. We caught up and he's just, he loves just chilling. It was his birthday last week, and he's like, I just left my phone at my house for like three days. I was like, that's awesome. He said he played padel for three days. I was like, that sounds great. He's a big racquet sports guy now. I think he loves getting away from the mental chaos that is motorsport.
SP: He went to the Indy 500 for the first time with you. What was his experience with that?
CD: Well, he's coming back [to the Indy 500] next year. I know that.
SP: In a fire suit?
CD: No, no, no.
SP: In a 3XL Dale Earnhardt shirt?
CD: Probably that, yeah. Man, he loved it. I think he hadn't been to a racetrack in a long time to actually watch a race. When he goes to some of the Formula One events, he does it for his clothing company, Enchante, and they do events kind of off-site, doesn't really go to the track. And this race, it brought out something in him that he hadn't experienced in a while, like, since he stepped away. He just loved it.
SP: Did people lose their mind around him?
CD: Oh, it was crazy. We had to get a guy, like a security guy. It was kind of funny. But it was because people love him. And he just wanted to watch some motor racing. And he was in our engineering meetings, just kind of chilling, checking it out. And he loved the immensity of it, the sheer passion that people had for just everything. Because the Indy 500 is so unique from a sporting perspective and I think that locks people in. Like now he follows the sport more, and obviously all of us drivers, we follow everything, because we respect it. And he respects IndyCar a lot. So much so that he's like, I'm scared to do it, which I respect because it's not everyone's wheelhouse.
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SP: Well that's Project 91, right? Do you think Ricciardo, as much as he likes chilling, do you think he would sign up for something like that?
CD: That's a great question, man. I think Daniel gets asked every week to do something. Like when I was at Travis's last week, someone was on the phone on speaker talking to Travis about some race. And then Travis said that I was there and that guy was like, can you get Daniel to do a pro two race at Crandon? I don't know, honestly. I think he's just chilling. I could see him doing something eventually with Ford, because he has a really good relationship with Ford. But to be honest, I think he loves, like, just enjoying a bit of life.
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SP: Did you guys hit the streets in Indy at all?
CD: Oh, yeah. Man, after the race, and this is what was most disappointing, and I told my fellow IndyCar comrades this. I said, there were more Formula One drivers out after the Indy 500 than there were IndyCar drivers at the bar, at Clayton's Country Bar in Indianapolis. Lando Norris flew in from the Formula One race in Montreal. His race sucked. The car blew up or something. We're at dinner at 10:30, and he texts me, he's like, I'm on my way. I said, what do you mean? He's like, I'm going to be in Indy in an hour.
SP: He literally just told his pilot, like, I don't want to go home?
CD: No. So apparently, I didn't know this, but McLaren was doing something with him on the Monday after the 500. But I didn't know this. And so I'm at dinner with Daniel, and I said your boy is on his way. And he's like, awesome. And so Lando shows up to Clayton's Country Bar at about 11:30. I go get him at the back door, run him through the kitchen and we drank till like four in the morning there. It was a great time.
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