Max Verstappen turning up in Red Bull gear with a bold “3” on his cap should’ve been the sort of detail that slips past unnoticed in the off-season churn. Instead, it’s become one of those quietly telling paddock moments: a world champion, freshly stripped of the right to run No.1, choosing to wear another driver’s identity — and doing it with the blessing, and banter, of the man who made it famous.
Footage from Red Bull’s Ford launch last month in Detroit has now surfaced showing Daniel Ricciardo clocking the number almost instantly. Verstappen spotted his former team-mate, tapped him on the shoulder, and the pair fell straight back into the easy rhythm that used to light up Red Bull’s media duties.
“I know those soft hands,” Ricciardo joked as they hugged, a line that landed exactly as you’d expect with Verstappen: half-smirk, half-eye-roll. “That’s a bit scary,” Verstappen shot back, before the conversation veered into an unexpectedly domestic tangent about skincare. Classic them, really — two elite racers talking like they’ve wandered off from a sponsor shoot.
Then Ricciardo saw it: the “3” sitting there on Verstappen’s cap.
“C’est magnifique,” he grinned.
In F1, driver numbers are supposed to be functional. In reality, they’re branding, superstition, and sometimes a little bit of theatre. Verstappen made No.33 iconic, then swapped to No.1 once he became champion. But after the 2025 season ended with him missing out on the title — by two points, as it turned out — the rules did what the rules do: No.1 moved on to the new champion, Lando Norris. Verstappen, suddenly, needed a number again for 2026.
That’s where Ricciardo comes in.
Ricciardo’s last Formula 1 appearance was in September 2024, which meant he still held the rights to No.3. And Ricciardo has already revealed Verstappen had approached him at the United States Grand Prix in Austin last year with the question: if Verstappen lost the title, would Ricciardo be willing to hand over the number?
At the time, it didn’t sound like idle chat. Verstappen was staring at a deficit with five races left — 40 points to Oscar Piastri and 26 to Norris — and even a late-season rally might not have been enough to keep No.1 on the car. He did rally: three straight wins to end the year dragged him to within two points of Norris. It was still a defeat, though, and with it came the small but symbolic shift you’re seeing now.
Ricciardo, for his part, didn’t treat it like a footnote. Speaking previously, he framed it as something shared — a nod to their Red Bull past and the fanbase that grew around it.
“It’s good. I got to see Max recently,” Ricciardo said. “The number three thing is quite cool. It’s a cool story for us and also fans of F1 who supported Max and I when we were teammates.
“So when I caught up with Max in Austin and when he mentioned he wanted to take number 3, of course I was very, very happy to say yes, because otherwise I think he would have had to wait one more year.
“It’s a pleasure for me to pass that number on to him now.”
That last line is doing a lot of work. Driver numbers don’t get “passed on” in any formal, ceremonial way — they become available, and another driver selects them — but everyone in the sport understands what Ricciardo means. No.3 is Ricciardo’s signature, and for Verstappen to take it with a public nod from Ricciardo turns a regulation detail into something more personal.
It also lands at an interesting moment for Red Bull, as the team leans into a new era with Ford now in the picture and Verstappen confirmed as one of its 2026 drivers. Ricciardo was there in Detroit not as a returning racer but as a Ford ambassador — a different role, different badge, same presence. And yet the chemistry between the two made it feel, briefly, like time folding back on itself.
Verstappen wearing No.3 isn’t going to change lap times. But it does underline something about how he’s approaching 2026: no performative mourning for No.1, no grand statement — just a clean pivot, with a choice that comes with its own edge and history. If you’re looking for hints of a reset, this is about as Verstappen as it gets.
And if you’re Ricciardo, watching your old number reappear on the cap of a rival-turned-friend at a major launch event, you can either make it awkward or make it fun. Ricciardo made it fun — and in doing so, made the whole thing feel oddly fitting.
For a sport obsessed with the new — new rules, new partners, new talking points — this was a reminder that some of the best moments are still the ones that aren’t really planned at all.
