F1 ANALYST
Ben Edwards on why experience still matters
Two decades after bursting up to the top level of motorsport, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Räikkönen will be headliners again in 2021. With three world titles between them, plus several that slipped away, their impressive statistics set the scene.
Alonso has won 11 races more than Räikkönen, but Kimi has the higher number of podiums (103, including race wins). Add their joint tally together and it comes to 200 and counting. Fernando has half the number of Kimi’s fastest laps (23), but Alonso has led one more race (84). And both have scored close to 1900 points in total.
Their records speak loudly, but at a time when young drivers such as Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc have shown new talent can bring an extra zing to the equation, what is it about the old-timers that has convinced two teams to sign them up?
Eric Boullier, former team principal of Lotus then racing director at Mclaren from 2014-18, worked closely with both Kimi and Fernando, so has a clear understanding of their value to a team.
“To be honest they are very different but they have one thing in common: they have the strongest determination that I have ever seen,” Boullier says. “Fernando has a work ethic that is comparable to Michael Schumacher’s – he is the hardest-working driver on the grid. Kimi comes across as very cool, like ‘I don’t care’, which is actually not true at all. Behind the scenes he can be very direct.
“They work differently with those around them due to their unique personalities. Both can be perceived to be abrupt, but when they deliver on track it motivates everyone in the team to do more. Sometimes they persist in asking when studying details and looking for answers because they need to know they are being heard. Drivers of this calibre like to attract attention because they can guide and influence the car design in the way they want.”
When Kimi was at Lotus, he was known to be unhappy with the feel of the power steering system in particular, as Eric explains: “He is one of those drivers who is very sensitive to the steering; we had to redesign the steering rack to give him the feel that he pushed for, and while you may think that we were just giving in to him, like a spoilt child, it wasn’t like that because when we got it right he really started to deliver.”
This innate understanding of the specific requirements needed for progress allows a veteran performer to push the team forward, and much of it comes from experience. That’s why it can be so difficult for the rapid junior category champions to get their foot in the door in F1.
Boullier ran the Gravity Management young driver programme before becoming boss at Lotus, a group that helped Esteban Ocon early in his career. Ocon has gone on to deliver sound performances at Force India and Renault, but Eric was very aware of the extra challenges of Esteban moving up to the top rung.
“You have the junior categories like Formula 3 and Formula 2, where kids can develop and learn how to manage a tight group of people around them, but then suddenly they pop up in F1 and have hundreds of people around and at the beginning they get lost,” Boullier adds. “They don’t know who’s doing what, and there’s a series of processes and protocols to learn how to work in F1 which is very different from F2 or F3. This is a big step for them.”
The change in mindset occurs in multiple arenas, including the ability to change the basic handling of the car. In single-make junior championships, teams can alter balance to suit a driver’s style. At grand prix level, the handling of each team’s car is based upon an aerodynamic concept around which the entire machine has been built. If the package was defined to encourage understeer but your new driver thrives on oversteer, there’s a problem…
“In F1 the driver has to adapt his driving to the car, to the conditions and to the tyre compound that he has,” Boullier adds. “That’s why there’s a lot of information for the young drivers to get hold of.”
Eric worked with other newcomers such as Kevin Magnussen while at Mclaren, and once again he saw those hurdles of the top tier causing reputational damage: “Same story – the step up from Renault World Series, a big, big change of world. He was eager and competitive, so he wanted to show that he could do well, but he made a few more mistakes than he should have done just because he wasn’t ready yet.”
So, what’s the answer? Can F1 open the door more readily to talented youngsters and give them a better opportunity? When we look back to the start of Lewis Hamilton’s career, Mclaren provided him with a firmer grounding because rules on testing then were more generous. Boullier feels it’s time to learn from that era.
“Between F2 and F1 there should be a proper testing programme for drivers, to learn how to handle the technical environment as well as the car itself,” Boullier says. “It would allow novices a chance to handle the technical side and how to interact with the team.
I believe a mandatory six-day rookie testing programme would make a huge difference.”
And it would offer an opportunity to better balance the books between calculating oldtimers and starry-eyed new kids on the block.