Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Ricciardo wins Laureus Breakthrough award

Daniel Ricciardo has been named World Breakthrough of the Year at the Laureus World Sports Awards in Shanghai.

The Australian was nominated following a hugely impressive debut season with Red Bull, stepping up from Toro Rosso to win three races in 2014 as he finished third in the championship to the dominant Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

“2014 is a year I’ll remember for a long time — it was definitely a breakthrough in my mind as well,” Ricciardo said. “Standing on the top step of the podium a few times was icing on the cake.”

Ricciardo - who had to accept his award by video message as he is in Bahrain ahead of this weekend's grand prix - was the only successful nominee from Formula One, with Hamilton missing out on the Sportsman of the Year award to tennis star Novak Djokovic.

Hamilton had already admitted after the Chinese Grand Prix he knew he wasn't going to win the award, while his Mercedes team was also beaten to Team of the Year by the Germany national football team.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.