At the top of the tree are the big bosses…
There’s no logical reason why you can’t get on well with a team owner. But for some reason you never really do. Is there a psychiatrist on board who can explain why there’s always an element of awkwardness at play? I’m telling you, a shrink would have a field day listening in on some of the awkward, stilted conversations that take place between a driver and a team owner. Even Martin Whitmarsh at McLaren, with whom I got on really well, always maintained a certain distance. And as for Ron Dennis…
Why? I just can’t say. And I even wonder if it’s something that I’m inventing, but then again, no, and I’m sure it was on both sides. Perhaps it’s the sums of money involved. The danger. Maybe it’s because they’ve employed you as the star driver and they don’t want to get too close; they want to maintain that employer–employee relationship, knowing that one day they might have to give you your marching orders.
Luckily, of course, we drivers can keep the awkward team-owner-encounter dynamic to a minimum, and when it comes to financial matters we have managers to sort our shit out (not literally), and that can be all kinds of hilarious because team owners tend to dislike managers. They dislike them because they don’t trust them.
They have good reason, because it’s true that lot of managers are not straightforward with team owners, but then they’re probably the managers who aren’t straight with the driver, either. They’re the managers you can’t trust. And believe you me, there are a lot of untrustworthy managers out there,
Me, I had to kiss a lot of frogs before I found my… well, let’s not get carried away, but Richard’s a diamond. Team owners don’t like working with him because they know he’s hardnosed, but they also know he’s better than the alternative because he’s honest. He doesn’t bullshit, he says it how it is, and I think they respect that he plays hardball. ‘You put this in the contract or he won’t drive.’ But he’s also a lovely character, and he can have a joke with the team owners.
As for me and him, there’s a lot of trust and respect. We don’t always see eye to eye, and we argue, but in the end I know he’s got my best interests at heart, which is the most important thing. He was introduced to me by my dad, which says it all, really.
Anyway, back to team owners, and in reverse chronological order…
My boss at McLaren was a contradictory guy. Still is, no doubt. Ron loves to talk, but he’s also quite shy. He has a famous, almost obsessive, love of the colour grey, but he’s actually quite a colourful, emotional character. Loves being the centre of attention. Appears awkward and ill at ease when the spotlight is on him. You see what I mean?
One thing that never changes, though, is that he’s a very clever guy, and a very shrewd businessman.
I don’t know anyone else like him, but I do have a lot of respect for him, even though we didn’t always get on, especially when I tried to get out of my contract at one point. Not to go into too many details, but he was like, ‘No, you can’t get out of the contract.’
I said, ‘Ron, you don’t want a driver driving for you who doesn’t want to drive.’
Ah, but we reached a compromise in the end, and when I decided to leave, he was cool with it. He used me a lot for sponsor events and, as I said, I enjoyed it. It was good fun and I liked working with him.
Martin Whitmarsh, of course, was team principal, and I got on really well with him. We’d go out for meals, and I think he appreciated the fact that my arrival at the team had lightened the atmosphere a bit. I liked him a lot, actually. He was one of the few people who would stand up to Ron. Never minced his words.
Ross was great. A real talismanic presence. He would never lose his cool, never scream or shout. I remember when Brawn scored its first one–two on what was our very first Grand Prix, seeing him going absolutely nuts. It was a joy to witness because he was normally such a calm and controlled presence.
What’s more, the car he’d built was absolutely brilliant. You may or may not be familiar with the term ‘architect’s window’. An architect will include a window on his drawings knowing that it will draw the client’s attention and be vetoed. This way the architect gets his other ideas approved ‘under the radar’, as it were, because all the attention is on the window.
Brawn’s ‘double diffuser’ was a bit like that. All the attention of the other teams, the press, the fans and the FIA was on the diffuser.
‘Everybody’s looking at the double diffuser and they’re not paying attention to what else is on the car,’ Ross told me one day. ‘Plenty of little tricks on it.’
Things didn’t end as well as they could have done between me and Ross. He thought I was making a mistake going off to McLaren and told me so, but I was feeling the McLaren call for a variety of reasons and that was that. He was fairly cool about it, though. (The chief executive Nick Fry was not so cool but that’s another story, and one that’s already been told.)
He was the Benetton team boss who was my overlord in my second and third season in F1, who called me a lazy playboy.
Later on, when I was at Brawn he called me a paracarro, which translates as concrete bollard or something similar.
So, a bit of a turkey, in other words. Flavio based his whole persona on being a flamboyant Italian. And with that came a very outspoken side. Except that he tended to reserve his most flamboyant and outspoken moments for when the cameras and tape recorders were running. In private, to your face, he was actually really nice, when you could understand a word he was saying. But then he’d go off and say something to the press that contradicted what he’d just said to you in private and you found yourself wondering, Well, which is it, mate? Is it this way, that you’ve just told me in the office, or is it the other way, that you’ve just told the press in the paddock?
Like I say, I prefer people who are straightforward. Whether they like me or not, or we get on, I don’t care, it’s understanding a character and someone that’s honest that matters most to me, especially when you’re working with them, like…
Frank couldn’t have been more different from Flavio, being very straight-talking, very up front. As a result, I got on really well with him. There were ‘issues’ in that particular relationship, of course, because although Frank had taken me on at Williams as a rookie in 2000, he also had Juan Pablo Montoya waiting in the wings. At the same time I was having some personal problems, making the headlines for the wrong reasons, etc. And then Frank announced that Juan Pablo Montoya was going to take my seat.
So that wasn’t great, and it sent me off to Benetton where for a while I had a torrid time under Flavio. But I didn’t and still don’t hold it against Frank. We’ve shaken hands over it. Let’s face it, nobody’s going to hold a grudge against Frank. He’s one of the true giants of the sport.
Depending on your reading speed you are, in about a minute, going to hear me go on about how your teammate is your biggest rival.
However, at the risk of dismantling everything I’m about to say on that, you still have to have a rival from another team. Step forward, Mr Sebastian Vettel.
We’ve always had a good personal relationship – he recently asked me to swap crash helmets, in fact – and on the podium at Abu Dhabi in 2010 when he’d won the Championship and thus taken it off me, he said, ‘I’m really happy to be standing up here with you, it really means a lot,’ which was a very cool moment, because the previous year we’d been on that same podium and I was World Champion and he was the guy who had been fighting me for it. So, yes, we’ve always had a good relationship.
Having said all that, the competition has frequently been fierce, and we’ve certainly had our moments together. There was Spa in 2010, and, of course, there was the incident in Suzuka, the thrills and spills of which I’ve covered already. After which there was a bit of bad feeling.
Me and him never shouted at one another, though. We have more respect for each other than all that. Plus we both know that the minute you start shouting you’ve lost the argument. Like if you start yelling at a bloke, the chances are that he’s going to start yelling back and any point you were hoping to make will be lost in the ensuing chaos, as cups of tea are upturned and vases of flowers sent flying. But go to him and make your point calmly and diplomatically, even if the point you’re making boils down to ‘You’re an idiot,’ and he’s more likely to reflect and maybe even repent.
Needless to say, I follow Seb’s career with interest. He’s a four-time World Champion, he’s obviously very talented, but I don’t think his current car is the right fit for him. Not only is the car not quick enough, but he’s also making mistakes and it’s surprising to see how many he’s made this year. He’s spun off quite a few times, hit the wall in testing as well in Monaco, had a couple of tangles, including a nasty little incident with Max at Silverstone. He’ll be back, though.
Unless he retires, in which case he probably won’t be.
I cannot say this often enough, but you have to beat your teammate. It really is the only true competition in the sport. You might not be winning a race – well, you definitely won’t be unless you’re driving for one of the big three – or you might be winning, or you might have technical problems or you might not.
Doesn’t matter. You have to beat your teammate.
After a race, you’ll get changed, shower, and then go into your meeting at which all the engineers and strategists will usually be present. After that, you go into a private talk with your race engineer and your data engineer. Usually, you’ll have kept something back from the other meeting that you’ll share with your engineers. A little secret titbit for their eyes and ears only.
At the same time you’ll all be super aware that he’ll be doing the same thing. You’ll also be aware that the walls have ears. It makes for a really strange, surreal environment. You’re kind of at war, but pretending not to be. It’s the reason why if something’s bothering you, you tend not to make too much of a fuss about it because you don’t want it spilling over into bad feeling. It’s like a marriage that both parties are desperately trying to keep off the rocks.
In Turkey in 2010, the two Red Bulls in front of Lewis and me in our McLarens wiped each other out. (And there is nothing more embarrassing than wiping out your teammate, etc. etc.) I closed in on Lewis and readied for an overtake.
Meanwhile, he was on the radio, having been asked to conserve fuel, saying, ‘Is Jenson going to overtake me?’
‘No,’ he was told, ‘he won’t.’
But I never got that memo, and I passed him.
Next came some exciting racing that ended up with him first, me second (the official gap between us was 0.0 seconds), after which he said, ‘Did you pass me against team orders?’
‘No,’ I said, somewhat puzzled at how irate he seemed, given that he had in fact won the race.
After that he decided that the team were taking my side against him, which actually, when you think about it, makes no logical sense, because in a one–two situation almost nobody in the team gives a toss about who’s first and who’s second.
It was just a miscommunication, but we drivers tend to get very emotional, especially if we think that the team are backing your teammate more than you.
For example, Daniel Ricciardo, who was with Red Bull for years, had Max Verstappen as a teammate. Max came in, super young, super fast, won races. He didn’t really outperform Daniel, but they were on a par. However, Daniel felt they were backing Max more – apparently, Max was on more money than him – so he left and went to Renault and now he’s got a long-term contract with them.
I don’t see Renault winning a race in the next three or four years, whereas at Red Bull he’d be fighting for a podium the whole time and there’s always the possibility of winning a race. But he’s moved, maybe because he’s got too emotionally attached to the idea that he needs to have equal treatment and maybe doesn’t feel he was getting it at Red Bull.
By rights, we should all just think, ‘You know what? I can do my talking on the track,’ but that’s easier said than done and it’s all too common to get hung up on perceptions of the way you feel you’re being treated.
When it comes to the essential difference between you and your teammate, the equipment is, of course, the same, but you can adjust your car to work differently from his and sometimes you do go in a totally different direction, one that suits you more, and your teammate might be fine with that.
Ditto the reverse situation. As far as I’m concerned, he can do what he wants, I feel that I’ve done the best set-up I can for me.
But then if your teammate’s quicker and he’s done a different set-up, you’ll be like, ‘Hang on, I want to try and work out why he’s quicker. Can we do his set-up?’ And you might copy it. You might choose his base set-up and then make your own little refinements, hoping that you can improve on his. Maybe he likes more understeer, or you like the car a bit low at the rear to give you more traction.
There’s no harm in a bit of in-house fighting, of course, especially if there’s no other team in serious contention. That was why the in-house fighting between Nico Rosberg and Lewis was great, because no one else could touch them. Mercedes were so much faster that you had to have in-house fighting, or else it was a boring weekend.
Same at McLaren when it was Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. They were a second and a half quicker than anyone else. People forget that. It was the best racing of F1 history, they say. No, it wasn’t. Those guys could be almost a lap down and still win the race, so it was all about beating their teammate, and that’s why there was so much passion and, I guess, a bit of hatred between them, because all they had to do was beat each other.
As they both knew, it hurts when a teammate kicks your arse. I had that with Checo Pérez in 2013. Lewis had just left and because he was so shit-hot I assumed that nobody could come in and be close to him.
Then at the third race, in Bahrain, Checo aggressively overtook me, pushing me out wide in the process.
I got on the radio, bit cross about that, feeling like he was taking the piss. Then I overtook him, and then he tried to overtake me back and we made contact and I was back on the radio complaining about it, after which he beat me in the race.
Not a great day for me. And afterwards, I was pretty pissed off about it and made my feelings known. I was so angry the way he was driving, and even said so in the press (in the diplomatic, euphemistic way we do in Formula One: ‘Soon something serious will happen so he has to calm down. He’s extremely quick and he did a great job today but some of it is unnecessary and an issue when you are doing those speeds.’).
It took me a few races to work out that I wasn’t really angry at him for the way he was driving, because he was racing and, after all, that’s what we’re paid to do, otherwise it’s not sport, it’s a catwalk for cars. I was just angry because he’d beaten me, simple as that.
For his part, he was hungry for the win and didn’t care that I was his teammate. Fair play to him, he went out and proved himself, and in retrospect, I was jealous and upset that he’d come out on top. See? Told you we had thin skins. And once I came to that conclusion we became great teammates and he was the guy who surprised me most out of all my teammates, which I suppose is something else you need to factor into the strange teammates’ brew: that need to impress your teammate, earn his respect – and he certainly did that.
Checo left for Force India and was replaced by Kevin Magnussen for a year, before Fernando Alonso joined in 2015 – a return for him, in fact, since he’d previously partnered Lewis at McLaren.
It’s fair to say that Fernando turning up at McLaren came as a bit of surprise to many of us. He had left Ferrari because he wasn’t happy there and he felt that he should have been winning titles, but even so, he left a team that was winning in order to join a team that was middle of the pack, or even near the back of the pack.
Why? Well, for him, probably the money. But for the team which has to find that money in order to employ a top driver that probably won’t bring them any extra silverware?
Well, at first blush, it’s a situation that provides an instant, short-term boost right across the board. The team wants the best driver line-up because it gives a lift to the mechanics and the engineers, it elevates the team in the eyes of the watching world. Everyone was like, ‘Wow, McLaren have got two World Champions and one of them’s Fernando Alonso, one of the biggest talents the sport’s ever seen.’
So that’s good. For a while.
But of course what ultimately happens is that the results don’t come rolling in, and it serves as a painful reminder that simply having a great driver line-up isn’t enough in Formula One, because drivers are only one part of the formula. Next, the team will get to wondering whether all that money being used to pay the drivers couldn’t be going on developing the car. And maybe, who knows? They might have a point about that. The whole thing is such a high-wire balancing act.
For the driver, you have to wonder if a move like that is worth it. Sure, Fernando had a lot of money in the bank, but he also had to watch other people win World Championships that conceivably could have been his. At the kind of level we’re talking about, that means more than money. Plus, I doubt Fernando was getting paid poorly at Ferrari.
Still, I liked having him as a teammate. Lewis was quick but as I’ve already said, Fernando was a much more ‘complete’ driver. In him I had probably the toughest teammate in the world and as a result you raise your game (not like you’re slacking before, but you know what I mean), and when I finished in front of him at the weekend, it was a proper buzz. It was like winning a race.
He hated it when that happened. I’m not saying he was a poor loser, but… well, in my opinion, he was a bit of a poor loser
All of which is not to say that we weren’t friendly. We were. Just that we both wanted to finish above the other. We knew we weren’t going to win any races or step on the podium, so beating each other was all the competition we had. Beating each other in qualifying, beating each other in the race.
Fernando could be quite publicly critical of the car, and he got a bit of flak for that. Deservedly so, in my opinion. I’d say if the car was tough to drive, but I wouldn’t criticise it, or the team, because that would hurt the team and it would hurt the sponsors. Everyone knows that the car’s not good enough. We all know that Fernando Alonso’s not driving slowly, but sharing your frustrations publicly doesn’t help anyone.
For me, it worked in my favour. The team would be more supportive of me, because I wasn’t putting them down. It wasn’t like I was blowing smoke up their arses. I’d tell them that things were wrong. I’m not one of these drivers who go, ‘It’s all right, it’s going to be fine.’ I tell them the issues, just as much as Fernando did. But I did it in a different manner, behind closed doors. Which is the way it should be.
I think the teammate I’ve had the best relationship with was Rubens Barrichello, who was my teammate at Brawn. I’m not saying that we always saw eye to eye – we didn’t, because we were teammates, and like I say, it’s always the elephant in the room – but we got on. Rubens is a lovely bloke. Like a lot of Brazilians, he’s a real family man, but when he’s in the factory or at the circuit, he’s 100 per cent focused on the job at hand. He understands the car better than anyone, better than me, even, which was definitely a strength of his and meant that having him as a teammate really helped me develop as a driver.
A bunch of us have appeared on Top Gear over the years. Michael did it, Kimi did it, Lewis, myself, and Rubens.
Of us all, Rubens was the only one to beat the Stig so he got us all T-shirts made. His said, ‘I beat the Stig’, and ours all said, ‘I got beaten by the Stig’.
Not everyone wore theirs. I did though.
And then there’s Lewis. He may not have been as good as I was at doing voiceovers for Tooned, but he was certainly the fastest driver I ever had as a teammate.
Not only that, but he’s the real big character of the sport. He’s got 11 million followers on Instagram, He’s huge on Twitter. He’s one of the few current Formula One drivers who is a household name.
I think he’s probably one of these guys who’s done an awful lot of growing up in the public eye. I mean, he came into the sport as a phenomenal talent, and that has never dimmed, obviously, but in terms of his skill at presentation, it’s come on leaps and bounds. I remember getting ready for events with him and he’d look at me, wanting tips on how to look, and now he’s a fashion guru.
I always remember him trying to think of something to say. If I said something in an interview and it was his turn, he’d look at me and go, ‘I was going to say that, I don’t know what to say now. I don’t know how to better that.’
I’d be like, ‘Mate, it’s not about bettering me. It’s not laps on the circuit. We’re just saying how we feel about a situation, about how that race went,’ But he never really got that. He always felt that he should go one better.
Like I say, though, he’s developed an awful lot. The Lewis Hamilton I know is a great person, but I think that a lot of people in F1 don’t get him because he leads a very different lifestyle, and I think he’s looked upon as being quite American in his outlook. What his detractors forget, though, is that he’s got a lot of people interested in the sport who weren’t interested before, and a lot of those will be Americans. What’s more, the chances are he’s going to go on and dominate the sport for years to come, and he will, of course, deserve every success that comes to him, because you don’t get it unless you’re very talented, which he is, and prepared to learn and work hard, which he is.
Who can stop him, though? That’s the question. And the answer it seems is Max Verstappen. This is a guy who’s come in, been bloody quick and won his first race in Barcelona, which was either the best thing that could have happened to him or the worst, because on the one hand his confidence bloomed and on the other hand he thought he was invincible, at which point the crashes started coming, the mistakes, the incidences of him losing his head. You don’t need to push as hard in practice as he was. He crashed in Monaco last year before qualifying started, destroyed the car and didn’t qualify as a result.
It’s a well-worn scenario. It’s happening to Charles Leclerc right now – another very raw talent still being fine-tuned. A version of it happens to a lot of drivers, yours truly included. The true test of racing character is whether the driver can come out the other side, and while it’s taken Max a while to learn from his mistakes, and work out that you need to ease off every now and then, I think he’s really getting there now.
To me, it feels like he’s much more like the finished article now. Not the finished article. But getting there. His natural ability is being better managed. He’s much more balanced and as a result he’s been finding a lot more consistency, and for me he’s probably been the driver of the year in 2019.
The problem with designing new circuits is that they cost a fortune, so there aren’t many new ones, which is why city-centre circuits, like the new Hanoi Street Circuit debuting in 2020, are where it’s at.
And that’s good, because street circuits are kind of fun. But at the same time you don’t want too many of them, because they’re very difficult to overtake on. You don’t have the run-offs and braking zones that you get on the custom-built circuits, whereas on a lot of the street circuits there’s no run-off. There are just walls. And if you have a brake failure you’re going to meet one of those in a big hurry.
Saying that, there’s an upside. Having no run-offs reduces the temptation to overdrive the car, unlike somewhere like Austin or Malaysia where all that space tempts you into taking risks that may ultimately derail you. Instead, you build up to getting the maximum out of the car, you work up to finding your limit, rather than going over and pulling back, which to me is the essence of good racing.
From a driving point of view, though, the circuits I like are the fast, flowing ones like Suzuka and Spa, which have a mix of tricky corners and ones that you can take almost flat-out.
It’s the same with Le Mans. There are two corners that I really don’t like at Le Mans, and they didn’t suit the car we were driving. You’d brake and the car wouldn’t slow down enough, and you’d turn in and you get understeer and only just about make it round. Ah, but every other corner on the circuit was just awesome, just lovely and flowy and smooth, and it’s such an amazing experience driving at night.
However, I have a rule in Formula One when it comes to the best circuits for visiting. Not necessarily driving, but visiting. And it’s the three Ms: Montreal, Melbourne and Monaco.
Montreal is a street circuit, and basically the city stops, just like a city-wide festival. There are a couple of places where all the restaurants get marquees out into the street, and it’s party time, day and night. It’s a very special atmosphere.
As a driver, if you’re staying in the city, it’s a nightmare, because you can’t get around, so you leave the circuit and there’s no way to reach your hotel. Sometimes you’ve got to walk, which is unusual, but for most of us is a really welcome change of pace. I’ve mentioned before how being in Formula One is like being in a never-changing city: Formulaoneville. Well, Montreal is where you do actually get to see a bit of your host city for that reason, and very beautiful it is too.
My first ever race in Montreal was 2000. Me and my dad and various others went to a party hosted by the owner of Cirque du Soleil at his huge house, and it was there that we found ourselves sitting around a bonfire singing ‘Yellow Submarine’ with none other than George Harrison. Pretty surreal. Trouble was, I was really tired, so I said to Dad who, bear in mind, was sitting around a bonfire singing Beatles songs with George Harrison, ‘Dad, I’m going to have to go. You stay. Enjoy yourself.’
He was like, ‘Uh uh, no. We go together.’ But anyway, as it happened, the quiet Beatle – who it turned out wasn’t all that quiet – was ready to leave, and so he jumped in our limo with us. Off we went home with George sticking his head out of the limo sunroof, still singing Beatles songs. That was an incredible, very special experience – one that opened both our eyes to this wonderful world we were suddenly a part of.
Melbourne, meanwhile, is a bit hit and miss with parties but it’s a fun race to go to, because there’s a good atmosphere and it’s the first Grand Prix of the year, and everyone’s really excited to see what the new cars look like and how they perform. It’s in a park, of course. Albert Park, which is beautiful.
And then there’s Monaco, which encapsulates all the glamour of Formula One. It’s the oldest race. It’s yachts and film stars and models, and lots of racing drivers live there.
These are the little things that all add up to Monaco’s very, very special atmosphere.
Meanwhile, for a driver it’s great, too. You never feel more alive than when you’re wrestling this 900 horsepower monster around its streets. Coming out at the end of a lap around Monaco, especially when you’ve done a good lap and you’ve pushed the car to the limit, there’s nothing like it. It’s scary but also immensely rewarding. There’s no other place that you qualify and enjoy it as much as Monaco. It’s physically and mentally another level compared to anywhere else.
Then, at night-time, all hell breaks loose, because you get parties on boats, parties in nightclubs like Amber Lounge, or in bars like La Rascasse, which is a bar on the second-to-last corner. When the circuit opens back up to the public at night, La Rascasse spills out into the street, so, at midnight, 1am, you’ve got drunk people drinking on the street, on the race circuit, spilling their beer on the track. It’s complete madness. There are scooters parked everywhere and then parties finish at I-don’t-know-when in time for the big clear-up before testing begins at 9am.
About seven in the morning, all the scooters that have been left by revellers are taken to the police station. I mention the scooters in particular because I once lent my PR guy, James, my scooter. He left it on the street outside La Rascasse and then staggered back to a boat. The next morning, he awoke, groggy, groaning and massaging his sore head. Where am I? Oh, that’s right, I’m on a boat in Monaco harbour having gone out and got absolutely trashed last night. Where’s Jenson’s scooter? Oh, that’s right, I left it on the road outside the bar. What’s that sound?
Oh my God, it’s racing cars.
James leapt out of bed running to the prow of the boat, only to run straight into a glass door, knocking himself out. By the time he came round he had a lump on his head the size of an egg and a monumental task ahead: to recover my scooter on race day in Monaco.
Credit, though. He found it. Took him the whole of race day, and he had to pay the Monaco fuzz a massive fine, but he got the scooter back.
Salutary tale there.
Okay, one more M. It’s Monza, which because you’ve got Milan down the road is actually great for parties. Like Monaco, it’s one of the big races, and a lot of that is down to the Italian fans, the famous tifosi. They pack the place – a beautiful park, it is – every seat in the grandstand is taken. People drive their caravans up to the edge of the circuit so they can stand on top of them to see. People hang off walls, hang off signs to watch the race. It’s a really special atmosphere, even for a driver not driving a Ferrari.
In 2011, I was leading for a lot of the race until Fernando, who was driving for Ferrari, jumped on me in the pit stops, and I ended up finishing second. Got up to the podium and the fans were booing me. I was like Really? You’re booing me? A Ferrari has won, for crying out loud.
But that’s Monza for you. And after all, the partisan crowd is an essential part of the whole experience there. If you’re on the podium with two Ferrari drivers, it’s mega – all you see is a sea of people all the way down the straight, a field of red in the stands. You forget about the cameras, the TV audience, you’re just totally in that moment, where the excitement of the crowd is so infectious and intoxicating that it takes you to a whole other level. It really is very special indeed.
If the three Ms are the circuits that are the best to visit for whatever reason, then there are the three Ss which are the best for the racing itself. Silverstone is fast, it’s flowing, you’re rarely below 130mph. It’s just crazy how fast it is. I remember going there back in 1994 with my dad. We camped and I recall standing on the banks and watching the cars come through. It’s the best race to see an F1 car up close.
Spa is another one. A great driver’s circuit. My favourite, though, is Suzuka, which is flowing, narrow, old school. You’re on the edge the whole time, knowing that if you make a mistake, it’s going to end in tears, which is good for the same reasons it’s good to race on a road track: you build up to your limit rather than overreach and have to pull back.
I won there in 2011 with McLaren when I finished first, Fernando second and third was Sebastian, who clinched his second World Championship the same day that I won. So, a great race, on a very special circuit. In qualifying, when you’re on low fuel and new tyres, you feel like you’re a superhero driving this 900-horsepower car from turn two up to turn eight. There’s so much downforce you can only just about keep up with where the circuit’s going.
Mind you, the problem is that a lot of the circuits I’ve talked about and the circuits that I love are probably not the best circuits for overtaking. If you’ve qualified at the front it’s great, but if you’ve qualified tenth then you know you’ve got a battle on your hands.
Compare it to Austin, a great circuit because you can have some really good battles. There are five places at which you can overtake, which means that if you do happen to find yourself in tenth, you have chance of clawing back the places, and the fight is awesome. If you make your move then the guy will come back at you at the next corner and vice versa. You can overtake down the inside on the back straight and he’ll go round the outside at the next one and then you’ll be on the inside for the next corner. It’s just brilliant. Added to that, Austin has a very unusual nightlife situation in that it’s kind of dead during the day but once the sun goes down it’s like a different place. There’s one particular road through the city that comes alive.
And lastly, and although I hate to end on a downbeat note, an A.
Abu Dhabi, my least favourite circuit, was never exactly fun, it was very stop-start. There were no real fun fast sections. It was like straight, brake hard, 90-degree corner, straight, brake, left, 90-degree corner. Very angular circuit.
Still, that’s like saying what’s your least favourite Ben & Jerry’s flavour. I mean, they’re all pretty good.