"Hope they don’t fight over Lando": Fans react to Australia having 2 F1 drivers in Oscar Piastri and Daniel Ricciardo for the first time in a decade

After Daniel Ricciardo was announced to replace Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri for the rest of the 2023 season, F1 once again had two Australian drivers for the first time since 2013.

Tem years ago, Mark Webber drove in his last season before retiring from the sport, leaving Daniel Ricciardo as the sole Australian driver for nearly a decade. Ricciardo was eventually replaced by another young Australian, Oscar Piastri, for the 2023 season. Hence, there was yet again only one Australian driver.

Finally, when the massive news broke of Ricciardo returning to F1 with AlphaTauri, the decade-long stretch of one Australian driver being on the grid came to an end. Now, Piastri and Ricciardo are both in the sport, driving for different teams.

This fact was recently posted by F1's official Twitter account. Since the news of Daniel Ricciardo returning to F1 was huge and still trending, there were several people who reacted to this fun fact.

Here are some of the positive reactions:

"Hope they don’t fight over Lando," one fan tweeted.

On the other hand, there were some comments about how the F1 Twitter account has been posting a bit too much content from Daniel Ricciardo. They asked the admin to stop and continue the normal run of content for a race weekend.

Some also spoke about Oscar Piastri being better than Ricciardo.

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Daniel Ricciardo is aware of AlphaTauri's issues but is still pumped to return to F1

Daniel Ricciardo recently attended his first drivers' press conference prior to the 2023 F1 Hungarian GP after returning to the F1 grid with AlphaTauri.

When asked by Sportskeeda about how Nyck de Vries struggled in the team and how he would tackle those issues, Ricciardo replied:

“Firstly, I'm not worried. I know there will be challenges, for sure. I know that it's probably going to be a car that we're going to have to work at, probably every weekend. I mean, everyone's working on it, but probably a little bit more at the moment with where it's at."

He added:

"But look, I don't see the, let's say, pessimistic point of view or being worried about this or that, or if the car doesn't suit me, it's just, for me, like an opportunity now. I think the time off was really, really beneficial for me. And I'm in a place now where I'm just hungry and ready to go. And that's really it. That's where I'm looking at. Yeah, so, pretty pumped.”

After Ricciardo participated in a Pirelli tire test at Silverstone with Red Bull, the seniors of the team decided to sack Nyck de Vries and place Ricciardo at AlphaTauri with immediate effect.