Vettel fits nicely into his Ferrari named Loria
Thankfully, I never grew up dreaming of becoming a Formula One driver — or pilot as the serious F1 people like to call them.
That was my initial thought when I got an up-close look at the cockpit of driver Kimi Raikkonen’s car during a news conference Thursday morning at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve promoting Ferrari’s partnership with Shell and Pennzoil. At six-foot- three and around 230 pounds, there’s no way I could fit in the thing.
There’s a reason why the biggest driver in F1 this season is Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg, who is listed at six-foot-one and 163 pounds. The FIA is planning a rule change for next year that will require a minimum seat-plus-driver weight of 80 kilograms (about 176 pounds) to ensure heavier drivers are no longer penalized.
Raikkonen is five-foot-eight and 139 pounds, while Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel is five-foot-nine and 142 pounds and they both fit nicely in the cockpits of their bright red cars. Heading into Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, Ferrari was in second in the constructors’ standings with 156 points, 22 behind Mercedes. Vettel was second in the drivers’ standings with 96 points, 14 behind Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes, while Raikkonen was fifth with 60 points.
“Driving the car, the feeling unfortunately is something that you can try to explain, but you can’t really share,” Vettel said about his Ferrari. “There’s not much room to invite other people to have a lap or try. The feeling inside the car is what drives you. It’s an incredible machine, a lot of people working for it.”
F1 is a sport that is measured in hundredths of a second for a reason. The difference between winning and losing can be minimal so teams are always looking for new ways to make their cars go faster.
“Squeezing out that extra bit is really tough and that’s the same for ultimately the whole car,” said Vettel, a four-time F1 world driving champion. “Creating downforce is probably an easy thing to do, but creating more than everybody else and just a little bit more so that you can go faster, that’s the tricky bit. Same for power. The efficiency of these engines is incredible. I think they are the most efficient engines we have, not in Formula One but on the planet if you look at the power we’re able to squeeze out. So that’s Formula One, that’s the challenge. It’s crazy, but that’s why we do it.”
F1 teams are only allowed to use three engines to get through the 21-race season and the Canadian Grand Prix was race No. 7. Vettel used his second engine on Sunday.
“Compared to a road car — I don’t know which car you drive — the driving is very different,” Vettel said. “We are not nice to the car. We either go all out or nothing. This is one of the toughest tracks. We spend a lot of time full power and then we literally stop the car for the turn and then hit the accelerator again to go as fast as possible. So the engine doesn’t see much break. So that’s why covering so many races it’s quite tough with only three engines. Not just the power, but also you need the reliability. On top of that, we’re limited in the amount of fuel we can use for the race. It’s part of the challenge. If you get behind the scenes, it’s really interesting. But speaking about the fuel that we’re allowed to use in the race, only 105 kilos, if we go flat out we would need more. So we have to be careful. The engine has to be very efficient and that’s also a big part of the work we do with Shell to make sure the engine is powerful, the engine lasts, but also is very efficient so it doesn’t burn a lot of fuel.”
Vettel has a special relationship with his cars and even gives them names. His Ferrari this year is named Loria.
It’s a tradition Vettel started in 2008 when he won his first F1 race with Ferrari in a car named Julie. After joining the Red Bull team in 2009, Vettel named his car Kate and following a chassis change in the middle of the season the name changed to Kate’s Dirty Sister. He won his first of four straight F1 driving championships in 2010 with Luscious Liz and Randy Mandy, followed by Kinky Kylie in 2011, Abbey in 2012 and Hungry Heidi in 2013. Vettel drove Suzie for his final season with Red Bull in 2014 before returning to Ferrari in 2015 with Eva, followed by Margherita in 2016, Gina in 2017 and now Loria.
Vettel said his love affair with cars started when he was a young boy.
“My first go in a go-kart was when I was four years old and I guess I had a big smile on my face and my father said: ‘OK, let’s do it again. The boy seems happy,’ ” the 30-year-old German recalled. "From there it just evolved and the cars got bigger and faster.”
Thankfully for Vettel, he didn’t grow too big for F1.