TED KRAVITZ

Televising the drivers’ briefing is helping to reveal what they’re really like

THAT NICO ROSBERG – WHAT A NICE CHAP. I suppose that having achieved your life’s ambition and retired, aged 31, financially secure for the rest of your days, you can afford to be easy-going, but Rosberg takes self-confidence to a new level. Even a flood of messages on Twitter asking him to stop saying ‘for sure’ quite so much while guesting for us on Sky was handled with equanimity. Being ridiculed on a public forum during one’s debut TV punditry performance would have reduced anyone else to a gibbering wreck. But Nico? For sure, not.

Later that evening, Nico, his colleague Stephen and I whiled away the three hours from Suzuka to Osaka Kansai airport in an Outlander PHEV with little chats about lots of different topics. Typically for a racing driver whose brain has been accustomed to processing information at speed, Rosberg has a short attention span and gets bored quickly, so conversation works best if you flit from subject to subject.

We went from TV ratings to Ferrari, from family to flights. But what did hold Nico’s attention was my answer to his question about favourite drivers. ‘ Apart from Senna? Alexander Wurz,’ I said. (The lanky Austrian drove for Benetton, Mclaren and Williams before his F1 career fizzled out in 2007.) ‘Really?’ said Nico. ‘ Why?’ ‘ Well, because he was the only driver in my time working in F1 that I really identified with. We’re the same age and while he was very thoughtful about race strategy, set-up and tactics, he often surprised me with his breadth of intelligence and knowledge about other things.’ ‘Oh’, said Nico. And then, after a pause: ‘ What about current drivers?’ I explained that there were things I liked and admired about all of them, but there wasn’t really one in particular who was my favourite. ‘I honestly don’t care who wins and who doesn’t.’

‘Yes, but…’ he countered, ‘you must have a view on who the current drivers are as people.’ We discussed how Lewis Hamilton is an awesome driver but can be a little awkward and distant, especially if he’s in a bad mood. How Nico Hulkenberg is smart and quick, but can be a difficult little blighter when he feels like it, and how Daniel Ricciardo is just lovely and adored by everyone he comes into contact with.

Racing drivers are people, like the rest of us, but how much of what we see is real? They’re heroes to many because they have skills the rest of us don’t and are expected to perform to their maximum potential, under intense pressure and scrutiny, every other Sunday afternoon. And that, Rosberg observed, is tough. ‘It’s really hard. People don’t realise how difficult it is to be perfect, to be on top of your game, week after week. And how if you make one little mistake, whether it’s a crash or a spin or not qualifying on pole or a race where you’re even the slightest bit offform, everyone asks why you’re suddenly useless.’

At that point the Mitsubishi fell silent as we both stared out the window, recalling the occasions I had asked Nico precisely that.

It’s impossible to truly judge F1 drivers on anything but the most superficial level because we’re asking for perfection every day of their working lives. Applying that standard to ourselves proves the point: we might go to work and do a decent job and come home feeling as though we achieved something, but the reality is that most of us don’t hit perfection every day. But that’s demanded of F1 drivers – and when they don’t achieve perfection it gets noticed.

Protecting themselves against such criticism is a necessary part of the job and explains why drivers give so little of themselves away in interviews, but a recent novelty has stripped back a layer or two: The Drivers’ Briefing. Every race weekend at 5pm on Friday afternoon, F1 drivers and their team managers assemble in a room with race director Charlie Whiting and other officials to go through the weekend’s running, any rule or procedure changes, and matters arising from the previous event. Formula 1’s new owners, Liberty Media, have started televising this last section of the briefing and posting it on their Youtube channel. It’s fascinating stuff.

Romain Grosjean comes across as a man who appears to take immense pleasure in stirring things up, mischievously abetted by Felipe Massa. Lewis Hamilton lounges nonchalantly at the front but actually seems quite sharply engaged, while Sebastian Vettel and Sergio Perez sheepishly defend themselves against alleged rule-breaking rather like schoolboys caught holding someone else’s bag of crisps.

Right now it’s a bit stilted, but hopefully in time, when they forget they’re being filmed, the drivers will show us heroworshippers even more of who they really are. And that will be fascinating, for sure.

‘Hamilton lounges nonchalantly at the front but actually seems quite sharply engaged’