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Daniel Ricciardo will start his 200th Grand Prix on Sunday at Spa-Francorchamps, a milestone reached ten years after his F1 debut at Silverstone in 2011.
The Honey Badger's decade in the sport includes 7 wins – all achieved during his tenure with Red Bull Racing, 3 pole positions and 31 podiums.
But Silverstone is where it all started for Danny Ric, when an unexpected call-up from Helmut Marko put him on the grid of the British Grand Prix a week later with minnow outfit HRT.
"I won’t lie, I was intimidated by being there," remembered the McLaren driver, speaking on a recent In the Fast Lane podcast.
"I was excited and yes, I believed in myself, like I knew I didn’t just get put there for the sake of being put there.
"But as you’ve got all these world champions on the grid and now you’re part of those twenty-two at the time, pretty wild."
When he lines up on the grid on Sunday afternoon at Spa, Ricciardo will once again be flanked by a couple of world champions.
But the times when he was "intimidated" by such a royal presence are long gone. That was 199 races ago!
