Culture
In likely F1 farewell, Daniel Ricciardo helps ‘old pal’ Max Verstappen’s title hopes
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SINGAPORE — Under the lights of Marina Bay, Lando Norris was simply untouchable.
Regularly lapping 1.5 seconds quicker than Max Verstappen, his Formula One championship rival, Norris never looked for a moment like he’d lose the Singapore Grand Prix.
Norris was poised to record his first career ‘grand slam,’ scoring victory from pole position, leading the entire race (on his eighth attempt from pole, he managed to retain the lead on the opening lap) and setting the fastest lap.
His benchmark of 1:34.925s was so quick that, after he set it, his race engineer suggested he take a drink and manage his pace. Two glances of the wall offered brief scares. Kevin Magnussen had gone quicker on fresh softs, only for his time to be deleted for track limits. The fastest lap bonus point, so important in the title race, was Norris’ to lose.
And then Daniel Ricciardo came along.
In what could well be his final act as an F1 driver, Ricciardo pitted late to fit fresh soft tires and, in clean air, go half a second quicker than Norris on the race’s penultimate lap.
Ricciardo had been way back in 18th, running second to last. There was nothing for him or his team, RB, to gain by pitting for fresh softs and going for the fastest lap. The bonus point only counts if you finish inside the top 10.
But it would help Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing, RB’s senior team. By denying Norris the bonus point, Verstappen’s championship lead dropped to 52 points instead of 51. Verstappen was quickly told on the radio after the race that his “old pal” Ricciardo had set the fastest lap, to which Verstappen replied: “Thank you, Daniel.”
Ricciardo joked that if Verstappen were to win the title by a point, he’d at least guaranteed himself a nice Christmas present.
“He can have anything he wants,” said Verstappen.
The fastest lap push immediately sparked questions over its reasons, given Red Bull and RB’s shared ownership. Zak Brown, McLaren’s CEO, has long spoken against the practice of so-called A and B teams in F1. Now, it looked like Red Bull’s sister team had moved to deny his driver a crucial point in the title race.
“Given this may have been Daniel’s last race, we wanted to give him the chance to savor it and go out with the fastest lap,” RB team principal Laurent Mekies said in the team’s post-race press release.
Brown told SiriusXM after the race that he would “certainly ask some questions” about what happened and that it illustrated his concerns over sister teams working together. “I think you wouldn’t have made that pit stop to go for that.”
Daniel Ricciardo driving during the Singapore Grand Prix. (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella didn’t want to draw as strong a link, but admitted he found it “peculiar.” Norris shrugged it off, admitting there was nothing he could do. “(It’s) the logical thing to do, the smart play by them,” Norris said. “I’m happy for Daniel, that’s all.” Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team boss, said he didn’t think it was “dirty tricks,” but Red Bull simply playing the game as part of the title fight.
Christian Horner, Red Bull’s team principal, denied any coordination between Red Bull and RB over the fastest lap push. “Daniel obviously wanted to finish the race on a high,” he said. “You’d have to ask VCARB about that.” Ricciardo explained he “thought they were just letting me have some fun because we were a long way out of the points.”
The rationale behind the fastest lap push aside, it was a high to finish on in what could be the last race of Ricciardo’s F1 career.
On a weekend that started with serious doubt over whether he’d be on the grid for the next race in Austin (let alone for 2025) as Liam Lawson waits to step up, Sunday’s race felt like a final goodbye from the eight-time grand prix winner.
The hints were there after qualifying on Saturday when Ricciardo had dropped out in Q1 while teammate Yuki Tsunoda made it through to Q3. From 16th on the grid, at a street track like Singapore, getting anywhere near the points would always be a big, big ask. Ricciardo was clearly downbeat about the result, saying it “sucks” while noting “all the s— going on” around his future.
Without a safety car for the first time in the history of the Singapore Grand Prix, Ricciardo didn’t stand much chance of advancing far up the order. An early stop helped get him the undercut while compromising his strategy. Two stops became three when he pitted for the fastest lap, which will go down as the 17th of his F1 career.
Was this really it? The end of the road after 13 years and more than 250 starts? Ricciardo could not say definitively after the race. Horner claims no decision has been made and the upcoming three-week break is a “period of time where we’ll evaluate all of the relevant performances of the drivers” within the Red Bull jigsaw.
However, Ricciardo’s body language throughout his post-race interviews and the emotion in his voice made it clear. This really may be it for him in F1.
Ricciardo couldn’t hold back his emotions after the race. (Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)
He admitted there was a “realistic chance” he wouldn’t be at the next race in Austin and wanted to soak up every single moment in Singapore. “I was aware maybe that was my last race, so I tried to enjoy that,” he said. The RB team even held a guard of honor for Ricciardo outside the motorhome after the race, just in case it was his final race for the team. The thought of that display having to be repeated this year is too awkward to contemplate.
Signing off with 18th place in his final start isn’t how Ricciardo would have wanted his F1 career to end, but there was no feeling of regret. “I’m proud of the career,” he said. “I tried to become world champion, I tried to become the best at something in the world. I think it is a tall task that we ask from ourselves. Some achieve it, some don’t.
“In the end, if I came up a little short, I also can’t be too hard on myself, happy with the effort I put in. And for that, there’s no sadness or feeling or regret or what could have been.”
Verstappen, Ricciardo’s teammate of almost three years at Red Bull, paid tribute to the Australian after the race, notably speaking in the past tense. “He’s a great guy, honestly,” Verstappen said. “We always had a great relationship. We had a sporting rivalry in the team. He would be remembered as a great driver, as a great person also. He has a great character. I think it’s very rare if someone hates him.
“I think also in a few years’ time, when I won’t be here anymore, we’ll sit back and look at all those years together and have a beer together.”
Quite the reception for Danny Ric back at RB 🤜🤛#F1 #SingaporeGP pic.twitter.com/yn39km1ba2
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 22, 2024
As inevitable as it looks, a swift decision would be best for everybody. The race-to-race, even session-to-session, swings within the Red Bull driver setup this year involving Ricciardo, Lawson and Sergio Pérez up at the senior team have been difficult for all involved, no matter how it may be viewed as a source of motivation. As painful as this may be for Ricciardo, there will at least be some resolution.
The fastest lap wasn’t Ricciardo’s only potential farewell gift. He was also voted ‘Driver of the Day’ by F1 fans with 20 percent of the vote.
“It’s not something to brag about, but I think today the fans read the media and know this could be my last one, so I think that’s a really nice gesture from them and today it is appreciated,” Ricciardo said.
“I do acknowledge that — I thank them for being a part of it and acknowledging my efforts and my love for the sport. Obviously, there were times it tested me, and I wasn’t always grinning ear to ear.
“But I felt like I always tried to have as much fun with it and leave as much as I could on track.”
If this is it for Daniel Ricciardo and F1, it’s a fine sentiment for him to finish with.
GO DEEPER
Daniel Ricciardo expects call on F1 future after Singapore amid questions about rest of season
Top photo: Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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