SIMMONS ON THE FAST TRACK
British charger and his F1 aspirations
With a name like that, one supposes he could only have become a racing driver. “Yeah it’s quite cool, definitely!,” Ayrton Simmons tells Motorsport News. “Obviously everyone might recognise me because of Senna but I’m a different person, I’m trying to have my own path, achieve my own achievements and my own goals.”
His distinctive moniker wasn’t due to as simple a story as having a parent who is a Formula 1 fan, though Simmons’ father is indeed just that. Rather it reflects Simmons having an English father and Spanish mother, and them looking for a compatible name for both countries.
Even so it was only from a chance comment by Simmons’uncle-to-be, asking the pregnant mother ‘how’s little Ayrton doing’, that the name stuck.
“It comes with a bit of pressure, when people see the name Ayrton they expect you to be up there,” Simmons continues. “But luckily for them in the last couple of years it’s been a high so no stress on that front.
“I idolised Ayrton, he was an amazing driver and an amazing person as well, he did a lot for the Brazilian people so he is someone that I definitely look up to and to have his name is pretty cool.”
Simmons has indeed come a long way in the last couple of years. Last season as a British Formula 4 graduate he completed his first full British Formula 3 season with Chris Dittmann Racing, not one of the biggest teams, and Simmons was far from one of the best-funded drivers.
Yet he was a consistent frontrunner and won three races on the way to third in the final standings. It also got him a place in the four-driver BRDC young driver award shootout at the end of the year. Now the 19-year-old steps up to pan-european competition for 2020, in Euroformula Open with Double R Racing.
But even before his impressive 2019 F3 campaign Simmons had made his mark in the category, and immediately. he completed some one-off F3 rounds with CDR the year before, starting at formidable Spa. “That was the most impressive really,” Simmons’ F3 boss Chris Dittmann tells MN, “coming straight in from F4, no testing, hadn’t even sat in the car really until we arrived at Spa on a circuit he didn’t know.
“And [he] ended up qualifying fourth, a tenth off pole. That was the real show of his outright pace [and] how quickly he gelled with the team.”
Simmons was delighted with his showing too. “I didn’t know what to expect,” he recalls, “I just rocked up and first free practice we were 15th then next one was 12th then 10th then seventh and then got to quali and we were, bang, P4. To just get on well with the team and the car itself straight away was a good feeling and for me it shows as well that the Chris Dittmann boys always had a very fast car and competitive car.”
Ditmann continues: “And that followed on into 2019, we had all-in-all a very very strong year with him. We were disappointed a little bit not to come away with the championship but ultimately he did a fantastic job and he’s definitely a star for the future.”
Simmons’ first full British F3 campaign included bagging the CDR team’s firstever F3 win. “It was a long time coming shall we say,” Dittmann notes, “we knew we’ve had the team and the car to do the job, but it was it was long time getting the right driver to do the job. But we knew with Ayrton it was just a matter of when not if.”
Dittmann notes also vast improvement in Simmons during his F3 spell. “When he first joined us he had raw pace, that was plain to see, but from previous teams he’d been with and experience he’d had he wasn’t taught anything, he was driving just with raw feel and flat out all the time.
“We approached it a completely different way, it was just understanding what the car is doing, how you can change your driving to make the car do what you want to do, and ultimately how to get the best out of the car. So he learnt more in six months than probably two or three years of racing beforehand and then that development continued throughout the year. He was a lot more of a complete driver [at the year’s end] than he was at the beginning of the year.”
Simmons noted his own improvement too. “Quali was a bit of my weakness in my early stages of single-seater racing but it’s got a lot stronger. [I did] lots of things [to improve it], the main one was just probably experience, the more times you return to quali the more calm you are, you know what to focus on.
“And another one was just simply to keep calm if the car isn’t spot on.
It’s about being patient and just focusing on the right areas, not overthinking.
“The main one [strength] for me is racecraft, I do make my mistakes, everyone does, [but] I’m pretty good at getting my elbows out when I need to be and being patient when I have to.
“I like to analyse very far ahead. And the way I connect with engineers off-track as well, I work so hard to get my vocabulary right to make sure that the team and the engineers know exactly what I’m asking from the car.”
For 2020 as noted he steps into paneuropean competition, and on what he calls “the big-dog circuits” raced on by his F1 heroes. And his form on the one track he has experience of, Spa, is encouraging to say the least. It was the scene of another high point last year.
“It’s just the way that the weekend planned out,” Simmons recalls. “We were off the pace, over a second off in the practice before quali. We rocked up to quali not knowing where we were going to be after making some quite big changes. Then we managed to get double pole and to do that without a tow in Spa that’s pretty impressive, and then as well in the race we got a P2 which was good.
“And it was just the way that we focused on the right things in the right areas all weekend after practice. We learnt from our mistakes in race one, the guys just said the first three laps you do have got to be bang on, because you’ve got the long run up Eau Rouge and you get eaten alive usually starting from pole. I ended up getting an incredible start [in race three], pulled a bit of a gap and from there on I just kept pushing, kept focusing on the right areas and we ended up winning. To do it in such a circuit as well is unbelievable.”
Dittmann adds: “His outright pace [is his biggest strength], getting down to a time quickly, the first, second lap he was always setting purples as he went out, so that was really impressive.
“[But] probably his biggest strength could also sometimes be his biggest weakness. He’s a very attacking driver and in this championship [British F3] a lot of the problems you can have are other people. He was always pushing to the last lap which is fantastic but with a championship you’ve got to sometimes take certain results.
“Our biggest downfall last year unfortunately was the second [reversedgrid] race, not always his fault obviously but [there are] other drivers who would just consolidate a place [and that] ultimately was the difference between winning and coming third. Coming back this year that’s something he would have learned from, but championships don’t always have that reversed grid.”
And for Simmons motorsport is in the blood, him quickly establishing an F1 ambition from watching it with his dad at a young age, then about as quickly realising from karting in Spain that he had a talent.
His F1 ambition remains. Though as is often the case budget, rather than ability, is likely to be the chief discriminant.
“He’s definitely got the potential to get all the way but unfortunately as do a lot of drivers,” notes Dittmann. “So it’s all down to the backing unfortunately. They
[the Simmons family] come from a very humble background, they don’t have huge budgets, the parents work very very hard to get where they are, they don’t rest on their laurels. So it depends who helps him along the way but he’s certainly got the potential to do that, he very much can make a living out of motorsport, no question about it.”
And Simmons isn’t deterred by the challenge. “We’re trying as hard as possible [to get to F1], me and my team work so hard, and I couldn’t be here without my sponsors, it’s a long way ahead of where we thought we were going to be a couple of years back.
“It’s all about money these days, that’s the thing. You could put the season of your life and it’s not going to get you nowhere, so we’re working extremely hard to find a budget to continue. We’re already working on a Formula 2 budget, and we won’t give up on the F1 dream until we actually physically run out of money or something happens that we can’t progress anymore.”