Love Stories: Daniel Ricciardo's surprising common thread with girlfriend Heidi Berger
By Merryn Porter |
H?e's the Aussie-born Formula One racing car driver who has put Australia on the world racing map.
She's an actress who is racing car royalty in her own right, as the daughter of a former Formula One driving champion whom Ricciardo idolised as a child.
So, ?what do we know about Daniel Ricciardo and his relationship with girlfriend Heidi Berger?
Daniel Joseph Ricciardo was born in Perth, WA, on July 1, 1989 to parents Giuseppe, known as Joe, and Grace.
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It seems racing was in Ricciardo's blood from a young age, and he previously said one of his earliest memories of motorsports was watching his father race at nearby Barbagallo Raceway, now Wanneroo Raceway, about 50km north of Perth.
By the age of nine, ?Ricciardo was karting and soon began entering events as a member of the Tiger Kart Club (TKC).
When he was 15, he entered the Western Australian Formula Ford championship, ending the season in eighth place.
After finishing sixth in the 2007 Formula Renault 2.0 Italia, Ricciardo was selected for the Red Bull Junior Team, before making his Formula Three debut in Germany during the 2008 season.
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Ricciardo moved to the British Formula 3 Championship the following year before driving in the Macau Grand Prix.
His big break came in 2009 when he debuted at the wheel of a Formula One car as a test driver for Red Bull Racing. On the final day of testing, he clocked the fastest time of the test by over a second.
Red Bull Racing's team manager Christian Horner promoted him to the team's test and reserve driver, and the following year he represented Red Bull Racing at the end-of-season young driver's test.
In 2011, he made his debut at the 2011 British Grand Prix, and in 2012, he clocked his first World Championship points on home soil when he finished ninth at the Australian Grand Prix.
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In 2014 he went back to Red Bull, replacing Mark Webber at the start of the Formula One season. The first race of the season was the Australian Grand Prix, ?where he finished second but was disqualified.
In 2016, he won the Malaysian Grand Prix and followed this up with wins at various grand prix events over the next two years, before moving first to Renault and then McLaren racing teams, where he recorded his biggest victory of his career, winning the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.
Meanwhile, Berger, 26, has a racing pedigree of her own. Her dad is former Austrian Formula One champion driver Gerhard Berger. Her mother is Portuguese former model Ana Corvo.
After growing up in Monaco with her sister, where she started her own modelling career, she took a gap year after high school and moved to London to study theatre.
In a 2016 interview with the Portuguese magazine Caras, she said she then moved to Portugal after she was cast in a soap opera, which ran until 2017.
After two years, Berger, who reportedly speaks several languages, moved to the US to study at New York University, but also continued to act between 2018 and 2020, and appeared in a movie.
It is around this time Berger and Ricciardo reportedly began dating, although neither have confirmed when their romance first started or how or where they met. ?
Many assume it was somehow related to Formula One, with her father still involved in the sport.
Rumours first surfaced that the two were dating after they were reportedly spotted together in New York at the start of 2021, and again in June of that year, when they were seen taking a helicopter ride together.
In October of that year, she was pictured in the paddock during the lead-up to the F1 Grand Prix in the US state of Texas.
But it wasn't until August 2022 that the couple confirmed their relationship when Ricciardo included snaps of Berger in a carousel of photos he uploaded to his Instagram account.
The series of photos, from what appeared to be a holiday, were uploaded with the caption 'Us' and showed Ricciardo and Berger at a waterfall, enjoying a view from a lookout and out with friends.
?In September 2022, Ricciardo gave the first insight into his relationship with Berger during an interview on the Fitzy & Wippa radio show, when he was asked by host Ryan Fitzgerald if he was in love.
"Yeah mate, I'm in love, I got a good thing going, so yeah. I've got a good balance in life right now," he said.
Ricciardo also shared that as a child growing up he even had a Gerhard Berger hat and he likes to talk racing with his idol.
"It's funny, I talk about [racing] with him. He still goes to quite a few races," Ricciardo said of Gerhard.
"He still has an interest in the sport and he still does some business with it."
He also joked that his girlfriend's driving ability was "definitely not race car status. No offence."
In May 2023, the pair put on a loved-up display at the Italian wedding of Aussie snowboarder Scotty James and billionaire heiress Chloe Stroll, whose brother Lance Stroll is a fellow Formula One driver.
In June 2023, ?Berger gave fans a glimpse of her glamorous life with Ricciardo, uploading a series of photos to her Instagram with the caption 'Some cute stuff'.
Among the photos was one of Ricciardo planting a kiss on a smiling Berger's cheek as they cruised a waterway on a boat.
In August 2023, Berger shared a pic of ?Ricciardo wearing a backpack during a trip together.
Since then, there have been few sightings of the pair and there is no sign? that Daniel Ricciardo and Heidi Berger are engaged, or plan to get married.
Berger has had no acting credits since 2020, according to her profile on IMDb.?
Her net worth is not known, but her father is thought to be worth millions.?
After reportedly amassing a net worth of about $100 million thanks to a racing career that has seen him win eight grand prix, Ricciardo took a break from the sport at the end of 2022.
He returned to racing in 2023 before a broken hand at practice forced him off the track, and he underwent surgery and rehabilitation.
Ricciardo is now racing for the Visa Cash App RB F1 Team and will be back on the track at the 2024 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne this month.
We will have to wait and see if Berger accompanies her boyfriend Down Under.
