Ricciardo is haunted by his fame as a tattoo lover after making a bet with his former boss, Cyril Abiteboul, that he would get one if he achieved a podium finish with Renault . The Australian has several visible all over his body, but this Thursday, prior to the Abu Dhabi GP, he surprised with a very striking one that he himself wanted to reveal.
It was the face of Fernando Alonso, although at first glance you could see that it was a decal, one of those ‘remove and put’ tattoos that last a short time. And when asked how the recent Saudi Arabian GP had gone, the great driver, seeing himself on the screens, made reference to that face on his left arm:
“I just saw… I just saw the tattoo. I just saw myself on TV and you can see like half of it or so,” he said, laughing.
And when asked to explain the joke, he revealed that it was the game of “Invisible Friend” or “Secret Santa”, the one in which gifts are given without the recipient knowing the identity of the person who bought it.
“I played Fernando in the Invisible Friend, and along with a nice bottle of red [wine], he also gave me some temporary tattoos of… Fernando. It’s nice! I already had several, so I was happy with that gift.” .
Then the McLaren muscled up and commented: “I was going to stretch like this, to see what happened to Fernando’s face in the tattoo. Gr… Yeah, it changes a bit, it becomes a bit more chiseled.”
(Look at the photos of Ricciardo’s tattoo with Alonso’s face before continuing)
Photo by: FIA Pool
Photo by: FIA Pool
Photo by: FIA Pool
Photo by: FIA Pool
Photo by: Glenn Dunbar/Motorsport Images
Outside the press room, in the media corral, Ricciardo and the Spaniard from Alpine ran into each other, with Daniel saying, “It’s nice, it’s nice,” before watching Alonso show him that he, too, had a tattoo of himself. . Without stopping laughing, he declared before the microphones: “Fernando has just kissed Fernando.”
The ‘Invisible Friend’ that Formula 1 does every year always leaves laughs and great anecdotes, since the pilots usually give each other gifts that contain hints or reveal little secrets between them. After seeing the occurrence of Alonso (and the use that Ricciardo has made of it), we are looking forward to knowing the rest of the gifts and reactions.
