If you’ve talked to me in the past month, you’re probably aware that I’m newly obsessed with Formula One. This is, of course, the fault of the excellent Netflix documentary series Drive To Survive. The first season came out in 2019, but I was late to it, only watching in the glorious week between tracking polls and the 2022 election - but by that I mean I watched the entire 4-season series that week. And since I don’t do things halfway, I now have watched all the November races and the October ones ESPN still had on demand, started lurking on the Formula One subreddit, and watched a deeply embarrassing amount of F1 YouTube (some official but also fan accounts, mostly the excellent WTF1 channel).
You should, of course, watch Drive To Survive and Formula One, but this is not a post about that. (I recommend Amanda Mull’s excellent Atlantic article for an overview of why it works so much better than other sports-focused reality TV shows at converting fans.) I am of course available to talk endlessly about how Lewis Hamilton got robbed at Abu Dhabi last year, why the hell Max Verstappen wouldn’t give up 6th place at Interlagos for Checo after the latter has been nothing but a great teammate, Ferrari’s alleged “race strategy,” or when and how we’re going to get my new favorite himbo Lando Norris into a top-tier car. But today, I’m going to process my anxiety via the lens of…Daniel Ricciardo.
(Yes, there’s an element of “but how does this affect Me, the Protagonist of Reality?” in all this. But my dude has made millions to drive cars very fast, sell things to us while smiling, and drink celebratory champagne out of his own shoe, so I think he’ll be okay if a post he’ll never see is a bit self-absorbed about his struggles. Sorry, Danny.)
To explain, Daniel Ricciardo is an Australian Formula One driver and the closest thing Drive To Survive has to a protagonist, particularly in the first couple seasons. If you’ve watched the series or F1, it’s really hard not to love him. He has an infectious million-watt smile he wears constantly, a relentlessly positive attitude, unabashed adoration of all things American, and approximately the same sense of humor as your average 12-year-old boy. I adore him endlessly. But it’s not just the charm that makes him great. He is a truly superb race driver, with 8 career victories in a sport where most drivers never get even 1, and a gift for fearlessly late braking and exciting overtakes.
The past couple years haven’t been kind to him, though. The first season of DTS focuses in part on his last year at Red Bull Racing in 2018, where he was playing second fiddle to up-and-coming superstar Max Verstappen (now a 2-time world champion), and his eventual decision to leave that team for Renault (now Alpine). He had a couple good years there - not quite as good as his peaks with Red Bull, but still very good - but chose to leave again pretty abruptly (at least from a fan perspective) for the storied but currently midfield British team McLaren. And that was…a lot less good. He struggled with the car, which had some issues and was mechanically the opposite of cars he’d done well in, and was routinely beaten by his much younger and less experienced teammate, aforementioned favorite himbo Lando Norris. He was routinely finishing races out of the points altogether (only the top 10 drivers in any given race, out of 20, earn any points) and hurting the team’s ability to compete in the constructor’s championship.
This summer, after some serious contract drama (I am also available to discuss this, F1 is a hot mess and I love it), McLaren announced that they had signed up-and-coming prospect Oscar Piastri to race for them in 2023 and that they and Daniel Ricciardo had “mutually agreed” to part ways for the last year of his contract. (It’s approximately the same as Yale Law and I mutually agreeing I will not attend there in fall 2023, which I assume will happen soon.) He ended up without a race seat for 2023, though he could have likely gotten the Haas seat had he wanted it. He’ll be a “third driver” for his old team Red Bull Racing, doing simulator/testing and promotional work while also taking some time away from the brutal F1 travel schedule. I’m really hoping that he’ll find a permanent seat that suits him for 2024 and some years beyond, but it’s frighteningly possible that he’s already had his last race in Formula One.
Watching all this unfold and learning about the whole saga while on the cusp of making my own leap of faith and a huge life/career change was nervewracking, to say the least. It’s hard to watch someone else make a huge change and have it go wrong. For me, it only increases the drumbeat of thoughts: “What if it all goes wrong? What if I fail?”
There are a lot of ways this whole adventure of mine could fail. I could hate living in Connecticut. I could fail to get into any law schools at all. I could struggle with law school and get shitty grades - my undergrad GPA had room for improvement for sure. I could fail at saving and budgeting and go broke/into debt while in law school. I could be unemployed after law school, or have a job in a kind of law I have no interest in doing. I could hate practicing law. I could wish with all my heart I’d never left DC or political polling.
I think about the ways I could fail a lot. I struggle with anxiety even at the best of times and I’m not normally a big risk taker. This is an absolutely massive risk with a lot of potential failure points. Honestly, I’m scared to death.
And yet, here I am. Keys to a Meriden townhouse in my purse. Applications in to 5 different law schools. My bosses and colleagues know I’m leaving this summer. I’m past the point of no return on this life change - at least a big chunk of it. I’ve got to keep going and make this plan, or something like it, work out for me. So how do I set aside the sheer terror that this is all a huge mistake and I’m going to fall flat on my face?
Well, let’s go back to Formula One and Daniel Ricciardo to try to answer that.
It’s very easy for us on the sidelines to say now that him leaving Red Bull was a mistake. Maybe it was. But here’s what we knew in 2018: his car was plagued with reliability issues that season, Red Bull was switching to a new engine supplier he didn’t trust (though they turned out to be good), the team clearly saw Verstappen and not him as their driver of the future. And though Red Bull has been massively successful since, it’s notoriously hard to be the second driver there. Two promising young drivers were fired in the span of two years for not getting the desired results, and though Checo has been more successful, there’s now apparently bad blood between him and Verstappen.
It makes sense why he took the leap of faith. And I think it makes sense for me too. I’m burned out on politics, and if I’m truly honest with myself, I have been for awhile. I knew after 2020 that while I might make it through another midterm, I didn’t have another presidential election cycle in me, especially not one that involved Trump. Maybe law school will turn out to be the entirely wrong path and I’ll have to start over again. But I’m pretty confident that forcing myself to stay in a job that’s worn me down so much over the last decade isn’t the right choice for me anymore.
And if everything falls apart…well, the thing is, Daniel actually seems pretty content with his situation. (Though the perpetual smile makes it difficult to know for sure.) He seems happy about a year away from it all, and I don’t blame him. I don’t have the financial cushion he does to fall back on, but I do have savings and family who can help me out if I need it. If I do fail, it just might be okay. I can figure out a Plan C, find someone who will pay me to do something that is neither political polling nor law.
I am deathly afraid of failure. But that fear doesn’t get to dictate how I live my life. I have to try anyway, make the best plans I can, and hope for the best. I may be shaking with terror the whole time, but I’m going to do this thing anyway.