Australian racer Daniel Ricciardo begins year two of his quest to try and convince Red Bull's hierarchy that he should be the driver they turn to when a vacancy next arises at their World Championship-winning team.
The Perth-born youngster, like team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne, was parachuted into the energy drink firm's junior Toro Rosso outfit at the start of 2012 after the management decided that neither Sebastien Buemi nor Jaime Alguersuari were the future title winners they were looking for.
Judging by their relative pace last season, the 23-year-old marginally holds the upper hand over the even younger Vergne heading into 2013 - although both in reality need a stronger package to demonstrate their respective talents.
As is the norm for up-and-coming drivers these days, Ricciardo comes from a karting background, having started as a nine-year-old before going on to win the Western Australian Formula Ford Championship driving in a 15-year-old Van Diemen.
His success saw him win a scholarship into the Formula BMW Asian Championship with Eurasia Motorsport. He finished third in his debut season, taking two victories and a pole position. That year he also competed in the Formula BMW World Final with Fortec Motorsport, taking fifth place.
From there he moved to Formula Renault with Rp Motorsport, entering the European and Italian Championships of the category. He remained a part of the series in 2008, racing in the European and Western European Championships, taking his first European title in the Western European Cup and finishing second in the Eurocup to Valtteri Bottas.
The Australian moved to the British Formula Three Championship in 2009 with Carlin Motorsport and won the title by 87 points from Walter Grubmüller.
At the end of the year the Red Bull-backed starlet was handed the chance to test the energy drinks firm's F1 car in the young driver sessions at Jerez and the strong impression he made saw him named as their reserve driver for the following season, which he dovetailed with racing in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series with Tech 1 where he finished second.
And although he remained in the series for 2011, this time with ISR, Ricciardo's reputation was growing far beyond the junior categories. On the back of another impressive appearance in the Young Driver Test the previous winter, Ricciardo was given the chance to take part in Friday practice sessions with Red Bull's junior team, Toro Rosso.
There was talk that his strong performances on Fridays would see him take a race seat away from one of the two regular Toro Rosso drivers. But instead, ahead of the British GP, it was announced that HRT had signed him for the remainder of the season in place of Narain Karthikeyan. It didn't take long for Ricciardo to take the fight to new team-mate Tonio Liuzzi, and with very few mistakes and a continuous upswing, it was the vastly more experienced Italian who was forced to make way when Karthikeyan made his expected one-off return for India's inaugural race.
Although Ricciardo's 11 grands prix ended without a single point - his best finish was P18 - it was a productive stint given the machinery at his disposal and finally earned him the call up to Toro Rosso.
Now with a quicker car in the form of the STR7, Ricciardo was in the points at the first attempt - on his home Australian GP debut no less - with ninth place, although that was the exception rather than the rule in the first half of the season as the small Italian team fell back into near anonymity.
A giant-killing sixth on the grid in Bahrain aside - which in any case unravelled on the first lap of the race - it wasn't until after the summer break in Belgium that Ricciardo hit the heights again when he finished ninth at Spa, a result followed by four further minor top-ten finishes before the season was out.
Although it was Vergne who finished one place higher in the standings, by six points with 17th, Ricciardo dominated their qualifying head-to-head and it is imperative for his career hopes that the likeable Aussie builds on that in 2013.
