How to Be an F1 Driver Page 9

  Rule 6: Being irritating can pay dividends

  It’s not easy to overtake in any form of racing, but if you’ve fluffed it there’s no point in thinking what might have been. You’ve got to get straight back on it, try and make the move again and try and do it immediately. You harass him, annoy him and he’ll hopefully slip up, because he’s already rattled and it happens that people brake too late, lock up and then you can pull things out of the fire and get the move done.

  It’s when you fluff a move and then you just sit behind the guy for the rest of the race – that’s when it really hurts, probably worse than getting overtaken, actually, because you had an opportunity but you’ve failed at it and now you’ve got to spend the rest of the race sat behind this car that you should be pulling away from.

  The last race of Super GT last year, I was in third, with the Championship contender behind. Whoever finished in front would win the Championship. He sat behind me for 20 laps trying to overtake but he didn’t get past and that must hurt.

  No kidding, my heart rate was through the roof knowing that if he got past me I’d destroyed the whole Championship for the team. He was probably faster, like a couple of tenths faster, but when you’re in front that doesn’t matter, especially when you’re both dealing with traffic, as we were. I was taking fewer risks because I was the guy in front, whereas he was behind, risking everything because, why not?

  Even crashing is better than finishing behind. We won, and it took me at least two days to get over the sheer adrenalin rush of that race.

  Rule 7: You’re at your most vulnerable when you’ve just done the overtaking (plus DRS is a drag, part 2)

  You’ve made the move and you’re past, but you’ve got a slightly worse exit because you’ve gone deep, and he regains the position. And I love it.

  Those sorts of moves are great. The ones where you’re battling the whole way. Fifty per cent of the time I’d say you get the overtake done and that’s it, you never see them again, you just pull away and they’re a fast receding dot in your mirrors.

  But the other 50 per cent of the time? That’s when it’s game on and you get the proper dogfighting – and it’s awesome.

  This is another reason that the DRS is a drag. It’s because it’s got drivers judging where they make the overtaking manoeuvre. So say you have a hairpin followed by a straight, well, there’s no point overtaking a car into the hairpin, because you exit and the car behind’s going to get the DRS now – you can activate DRS as long as you’re within one second of the car in front – so he’s going to be able to pass you on the straight.

  So, of course, you don’t do that move, you wait until the straight and then you’ll overtake him easily using your own DRS. It’s reduced the excitement. It’s taken away all that adrenalin of making a dive move, while the flipside is that when you’re the one who’s overtaken, you won’t really care because you know the DRS zone’s coming up and you can use that to get your place back. There’s just less fight from both sides.

  Rule 8: When you see your chance, take it

  You could argue that racing is better in a formula that relies on mechanical grip rather than downforce, primarily because you don’t lose mechanical grip when you’re behind another car, whereas with downforce, you do.

  No doubt the world of aerodynamics makes car design more interesting because it increases the top speed, but doesn’t make the racing more interesting, it just makes it more difficult to overtake.

  The reason is that you’re in a car where the wings and floor are producing downforce. Now if you’re behind a car, your floor won’t really be affected – that will still be producing downforce – but the wings are. It feels like you’ve taken the wings off the car when you follow another car, which, as you might imagine, makes it more difficult to overtake. You go through a corner and the guy in front of you has full grip whereas you have lost 30 per cent of yours, meaning that when you turn in, you’ve got more front slide, more rear slide, less stability, and then the gap opens again.

  That’s why you have to know when to make your move – one of those skills that can’t be taught – and you have to take it. If he’s made a mistake, for example, you have to make your move, because as soon as he’s gathered himself he’s back to having more grip than you.

  Your driving, meanwhile, will have to change to compensate for the fact that you’ve lost most of your grip, so if you roar into the corner right behind the car in front minus your front down-force, you have to pull out slightly and take a different line in order to try and recoup some of that lost grip from your wing.

  So, for example, if it’s a fast right-hander, you’ll come down the straight and you’ll pull out slightly so the air can hit the front of the wing. Otherwise you’re going to turn in and find you have no front grip. In a low-speed corner, it’s not so much of a problem. You pull out, you have all the downforce in the world, so if you pull out to overtake, you’ve got the same downforce as him.

  And then you have the drag. So you’ve caught him up, and you’re in his slipstream, meaning you’re carrying more speed than him, and then under-braking, you wait for him to brake, you brake a fraction of a second later, you pull out, dive down the inside. It won’t be the quickest line, but it doesn’t matter, because once you’re down the inside of him, he can’t turn in.

  You mess it up sometimes. You might go wide and go off the circuit. Or you’ll lock up, because you’ve braked too hard, you get smoke, no grip as it slides and overheats. Plus a flat spot on your tyre which you’ll have either for the rest of the race or until you pit for new tyres.

  But there are other times that you don’t mess it up. And those times are blissful. You’ve been setting up your manoeuvre from three or four corners before. You see what line the guy in front is taking and you’re purposely trying to set him up and trying to get good tow up behind him so that you can dive down the inside, or down the outside, if he’s blocking.

  And then it’s just… awesome.

  Overtakes In Practice

  Hungary, 2006, Me vs Schumacher

  I overtook Michael into turn one, having started from the 14th. He didn’t want to let me past, and there were some sweaty moments before he yielded, but ultimately I was able to sweep past.

  Action with any driver’s great, but with a legend like Michael – who at the time was driving a Ferrari – it’s that bit more special. He was bloody tough but – with me, anyway – he was very fair. He never took the piss when it came to racing. He’d push you to the limit but he would never push you over it.

  Like I say, I started at 14th and went on to win that race in the wet – my first win in Formula One – and that overtake was maybe the sweetest of the lot.

  Canada, 2011, Me vs Vettel

  Well, it was my greatest race, probably one of the greatest races in the history of the sport, and it was decided by this last-gasp overtake on Sebastian in the Red Bull. It wasn’t a brilliant bit of overtaking from me: Sebastian was too focused on me in his mirrors and ran wide, and as long as I didn’t do the same I was past him – and it probably wasn’t as significant as the earlier lap in which I passed both Michael Schumacher and Mark Webber in the same move – but in the context of that particular four-hour race, not to mention the fact that it nicely bears out Rule 6 (being irritating can pay dividends), it was a doozy.

  Hungary, 2012, Me vs Vettel

  There are heaps of different types of moves. There are DRS moves, slingshots, braking manoeuvres… then there are those times when you get a superior corner exit, so you’re getting a run on the car in front, and this one was a bit like that. Basically, I got better traction out of the previous corner. Why? Because it was a wet / dry race, we’d just put slicks on, I’ve got the tyres working better, saw a dry line and was able to get a good run on him out of the corner, putting his Red Bull squarely in my sights for the next corner. He saw me coming and tried to block but without as much conviction as he should have done, and I was on the inside, where
it didn’t matter if I braked a little too early.

  Austin, 2012, Me vs Schumacher

  Look at this overtake on YouTube and you’ll see that most of the move is made on the straight here. I’m using his slipstream before pulling out and diving down the inside for the corner. This is Michael in a Mercedes, though, and he makes it very difficult for me.

  Monaco, 2017, Me vs Hamilton

  So this was my return and although it was only a practice session, according to commentators it was still ranked as one of the weekend’s best overtakes. Lewis and I came out of the tunnel almost neck and neck, but I was the one who braked later going into the chicane, dived down inside of him, used the kerbs and came out just ahead. My last-ever overtake in Formula One, sniff.

  6. VISIBILITY, POSITIONING

  This is something that can differ quite considerably from car to car. I’m talking about the different years of car, but also different cars on the grid.

  At McLaren in 2014 we went through a year where the visibility was poor. They had lifted the carbon cockpit from the steering wheel to the nose so they could get a better aerodynamic flow on the underside of the cockpit. As a result, the straight-ahead visibility wasn’t too bad but the peripheral visibility was limited, so picking your turn-in point to a corner ended up being a bit of a guessing game.

  I was, like, ‘Guys, I can’t see anything.’

  ‘You can’t see anything?’

  ‘Not unless all you want me to see is the tyres, no.’

  By that stage, of course, it was a bit too late to go back to the drawing board. Instead they just told me ‘you’ll get used to it’, like it was just a prickly sweater, and not something that I had to drive at 200mph around Monaco.

  I’m not sure that I ever did get used to it, though, and I don’t think I was as precise in that car, purely because I had those visibility issues.

  By Monaco I had asked for an extra piece of the seat to get me higher so I could see over the tyres, but then it just felt uncomfortable, as though I was sitting on top of the car. Ick.

  So many of the issues around driver positioning are down to aerodynamics. The engineers are trying to design the car to where they think it’s best for aerodynamics, and they tend to be afflicted by (wind) tunnel vision, so they forget about the driver a bit.

  After that season we had a bit of a sit-down at McLaren – the drivers, the engineers and managers – and we drivers pointed out that any aerodynamic improvement was being cancelled out by the subsequent loss of confidence that comes from not being able to see.

  Fair play, they were really good at listening to what the drivers had to say, and things changed so that we’d do the seat fitting at the factory before the tub was actually built; you’d sit in a mock-up, like a 3D-printed plastic thing identical to the proposed carbon-fibre tub, and they’d adjust things around you.

  My biggest issue was inside the cockpit, because I’m taller than the average driver, the average being about five foot six, five foot eight, whereas I’m six foot. A little driver’s fine, it’s just about how much padding you have to put in the seat or in the car to make your seat up. A tall driver, you have to work bloody hard, days and days, to make sure that it fits correctly.

  For instance, in the cockpit of the car you have a safety check. They pass a template around you to check that you’re safe within the tub. For me, my legs were hitting the carbon fibre of the cockpit if I sat in my preferred position, so they had to move my bum back, which made me more upright, which was not a position I liked. It was a bloody nightmare. We got it right in the end and that was fine for a while. Oh, but then came the issue of where does all the stuff go? They had to put stuff in the car, like electronics boxes and wires, the fire extinguisher. And they installed all that but did that thing of forgetting about the driver again, until I said, ‘Guys, I can’t move my arms.’

  They stood there scratching their arses, I mean chins. ‘He can’t move his arms. Does he need to move his arms? JB, do you need to move your arms?’

  ‘Not really…’

  ‘Well, that’s great, then, problem solved.’

  ‘…as long as I’m not called upon to corner at all, seeing as I can’t steer.’

  ‘But do you think that’s how you drive?’

  Deep breath. ‘Yes, that’s how I drive. It’s not a train, it’s a car.’

  That convinced them, the train argument, and we came up with a compromise, where they left areas for my arms in which to move. I was a bit dubious at first, because there were still lumps and other obstructions that restricted my movement, but as it turned out they were right and once we’d jiggered things about a bit, I was mostly fine. I’d hit my elbow occasionally, of course – more than one car was guilty of being a real elbow hazard – I had to wear an elbow pad a lot of the time, and I found myself taking corners with my elbow in a weird position.

  It was always funny how you’d find yourself driving around your position in the car. You’d spend the first part of the season getting used to it, the next few races thinking you’d cracked it, and then you’d go off for the break, come back again and find you’d lost all that residual muscle memory

  I’d do exactly that and be like, ‘Oh my God, what have you done? It feels terrible.’

  And they’d go, ‘We haven’t done anything…’

  Which meant I’d have to get used to it all over again.

  Then you’ve got your wing mirrors. Key word there is vibration. As a result of which the other key words are. ‘You can’t’ and ‘see a bloody thing’ – unless you count a distant blob as meaningful.

  The thing is that if the wing mirrors are connected to the cockpit, it’s not too bad, you can kind of see. And by ‘kind of see’ I mean that you’re able to determine if there’s someone behind you and whether he’s going to the right or left, so that’s fine for a while.

  But then they went through a period where for aerodynamic reasons, teams were connecting the mirrors to the side pods. It was in response to a rule change in 2009, and all the teams did it. The first time they did that at McLaren, I pissed myself with laughter, because I could not see a thing. Like zero. Ground, sky, ground, sky, ground sky. It was just super, super high-frequency vibration. Reason being that the side pods aren’t solid; they’re carbon fibre, but they move, they shake around, they’re just not designed to be as stiff as the cockpit.

  As a result, there were accidents, of course, and I think a complaint was made to the FIA, which led to the FIA asking all the drivers, ‘Are these mirrors okay?’

  McLaren were like, ‘We can’t change it now and it’s better for aerodynamics.’

  So to the FIA I was like, ‘Yes, they’re fine,’ and of course all the drivers swore blind that they could see perfectly, when in fact they couldn’t see a thing.

  Best of it was that the FIA would sit us in the car, stand behind us and say, ‘Can you see me?’

  No lying needed. ‘Yup, I can see you perfectly.’

  ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

  ‘That’s not very polite, you’re holding up two fingers, and not in the Winston Churchill way.’

  (They love a joke, do the guys from the FIA.)

  So anyway, it didn’t take long for the FIA to cotton on to the fact that the teams were all telling porky pies, and the pod-mounted wing mirrors were banned in 2010. Good riddance.

  7. THE SAFETY CAR

  Safety cars are tricky. Obviously, the clue is in their name: they’re a safety feature. But boy, do they have a tactical impact.

  The idea of a safety car is that it appears during a ‘caution period’, either because there’s stuff that needs clearing from the circuit, or because the weather’s so shit that normal racing is dangerous.

  The rules differ depending on the terms of deployment, but you’re not allowed to pass the safety car or, more pertinently, each other, while it’s out. The safety car, a Mercedes, will go at between 120mph and 150mph, which is pretty fast but still agonisingly slow comp
ared to the speed of F1 cars, which should be going at over 200mph (top speed ever, by the way, is 231.5mph, recorded in a 2005 testing session by Juan Pablo Montoya in a McLaren-Mercedes), so what happens is that the field behind the safety car bunches up. Any lead you have? Wiped out. Were you trailing? Suddenly you’re not. If you were the one who’d opened up a ten-second lead on the rest of the pack then it’s a disaster. For the rest of the grid it’s almost like resetting the race.

  A lot of drivers use it as an opportunity to pit because you rejoin the race with new tyres or whatever and everybody’s still going slowly. In Australia in 2015, I was coming around the second to last corner, saw that there was an accident, worked out that there would be a safety car and at the last minute was like, ‘Guys, I’m going to pit, I’m going to pit,’ and I threw the car to the right-hand side to get in the pit lane, only just missing a cone by the skin of my skinny-skin-skin, changed my tyres, got back out on the back of the safety-car train, and because I was in and out of the pits quickly other drivers when they pitted came out behind me.

  As a result of that (rather quick-thinking if I do say so myself) manoeuvre, I was able to make up four places.

  You don’t have to pit, of course. Many do, and will adjust their strategy to accommodate the circumstance, but if it deviates too far from your chosen strategy you may simply decide not to. In this case, your job is to stay behind the safety car, fighting the loss of your tyre temperature, which you do by weaving and braking on the throttle, which puts heat into the disc and in turn, puts heat into the wheel which puts heat into the tyre.

  It’s something we do before starts as well, a tactic we’ve learnt to do over the years. We did lots of different tests with our tyre guys. The best way of braking in order to put core temperature into the tyres was to hammer the brakes. Bang, bang, bang, really quickly.