Barcelona Testing: Round 2

Winter testing in Barcelona

And so to Barcelona for the second extended peak at all the new F1 cars for the 2013 season, or in the case of Williams, our very first look at the new FW35 (more on that later). Still lets not be too hard on Williams, at least they now have a car and two drivers which beats Force India who at the time of writing* have only formally announced one driver (but looking increasingly likely that Sutil will get the gig). Way to go guys.

*STOP PRESS* I had the best of intentions to post this blog last night but due to attending a Numeracy Session at the 5 year old’s school (and suffering the slight humiliation when I was unable to complete a puzzle that small children probably manage in 10 seconds), I didn’t quite get around to it.

Anyhoo, it may be the worst kept secret in F1 but Force India have FINALLY appointed Adrian Sutil as their second driver. It was clearly a close run thing between Sutil and Jules Bianchi who had impressed at the first test in Jerez. The word on the street is that Force India thought it might be a bit soon for Bianchi to take the big step up. Well, he is 23 so hardly a wide-eyed spotty teenager and I suspect that his manager, Nicolas Todt (son of Jean) isn’t deliriously happy at the turn of events. Still it is rare in F1 to be given a chance at redemption and the Sutil 2.0 Update will hopefully bring a welcome injection of personality and controversy into this year’s line up. Might be best if he steers clear of Hamilton given that messy business when Hamilton failed to turn up as a witness in Sutil’s trial for GBH. But the on-track fighting will be fun to observe.

Adrian Sutil - the man of the moment

So lets have a quick canter back through the second test not least because the third test got underway today! If nothing else it will bring the husband up to speed!

First Caveat: Rely on pre-season testing times at your peril but interestingly Sergio Perez topped the timesheets overall last week just ahead of Fernando Alonso who had taken a break from posting on Instagram Olympian style fitness training to do a spot of driving. Ferrari definitely look like they’ll be in the running from the off unlike this time last year where they were reeling from the trauma of discovering in winter testing that their car was basically crud.

Alonso back and raring to go

Both Red Bull (Webber) and Lotus (Grosjean) did full race simulation runs which are a much more accurate barometer of where the cars will all stack up come Melbourne. The Red Bull was slightly quicker in the first stints and the Lotus in the closing laps. What it does tell us is that on the face of it (insert the usual non race conditions/colder track/tyre degradation caveats here) Red Bull and Lotus look extremely close in terms of pace. And when Vettel and Raikkonen are behind the wheel they will go even faster.

There is a lot of talk coming out of Mercedes downplaying the team’s chances this year. Lewis in particular suggesting he will be scrapping with Caterham for the odd crumb in terms of points. So you would be forgiven for doing a double take at seeing Rosberg’s name top of the timesheets on the first day of testing, and Hamilton’s name topping the final day’s times. Admittedly the weather was pretty dire on the last day (torrential rain with some hail thrown in – I’m almost amazed we weren’t holidaying in Northern Spain at the time, such is our catastrophic luck with holiday weather!) and Hamilton set his time in the tiny window of slick tyre running. But still.

Lewis getting to grips with the new Mercedes

Mercedes is not alone in (ahem) managing expectations. Button has been lamenting “the tricky winter so far” at McLaren and saying he is finding it very hard to understand the car. Does that mean Perez is understanding it better than him or they’re still heavily refining aspects of it. In other news at McLaren, their technical director, Paddy Lowe, has been pinched by Mercedes for the 2014 season. It doesn’t take rocket science to deduce that Ross Brawn may well be enjoying Ferrari’s finest hospitality come the Monaco Grand Prix. To quote McLaren’s Managing Director, Mercedes have clearly decided to adopt the ‘Roman Abramovich’ approach to winning – just chuck telephone directory salaries to get people to join your gang. Just as with Chelsea, it might well work for a time but no one will like you very much. Least of all their managers apparently.

Lewis Hamilton and Paddy Lowe - soon to be reunited at Mercedes

Red Bull are still in full ‘lockdown’ mode guarding the RB9 behind special screens the very minute it returns to the pits before covering the car up with blankets. A strange image of Christian Horner as Jack Bauer has just entered my mind so I shall swiftly eject it and move on! Either Adrian Newey has been interpreting the old rules and regulations a bit liberally (again) or they are trying to spook the other teams that their car is yet again brilliant and The One To Beat.

Jack Bauer - any old excuse

Not too surprisingly, the Williams racked up the most laps in Barcelona and while no earth-shattering times were set, the core reliability of the brand new car was impressive. Apparently they will be bringing upgrades to every single race which is no mean feat. Both Sir Frank and Mike Coughlan have been full of praise for the tremendous job that Maldonado did last year. Music to the husband’s ears. What will 2013 hold for the New Senna?

The FW35

Looking down the lower end of the grid, is anyone else perplexed as to what ‘conflicts’ are preventing Luiz Razia from driving for Marussia? To date Luis has completed just two days testing since his drive was announced. Kind of ironic that the reason for his appointment (in part) was his sponsorship backing which is the very thing stopping him racing.

The final 4 day test begins today in Barcelona and towards the end of this test we should finally see a lot of the cars running Melbourne-spec. That will give us the biggest steer (pardon the pun) yet of how they will all line up in Australian in under 3 weeks time. Excited much!

All I need to do now between now and Melbourne is work out who I’m rooting for in this strange post-Schumacher world.

Testing testing...

Jerez testing (February 2013)

The start of the new F1 season is only UNDER THIRTY days away. Not that I’m getting excited or anything. Much. What a long, endless winter it has been but at least now the end is really in sight. All the teams have now officially launched their cars (except for Williams who have pushed it back to 19 February). Funny old things, F1 car launches. Back in the day someone would literally pull a sheet off the car, say voilà and the assorted F1 journos would trundle off to the bar. And there’s a lot to be said for keeping it simple especially when you call to mind the horror of the 1997 McLaren launch (Spice Girls in attendance and enough dry ice to submerge Alexandra Palace) or the one where Honda unveiled its hideous ‘earth dreams’ livery to promote environmental awareness. The memory of that season probably brings poor Jenson out in a cold sweat even today.

Hesketh Racing: F1 advertising 1970s style

Possibly my all time favourite (before my time but it lives on in legend) was the 1974 Hesketh launch which involved whisky and the simultaneous launch of a campaign to 'Back British Bears'. Perhaps this underlines the absurdity of all overblown and overhyped launches. Having said that, the different car launches mark the start of the season and if like me you’ve barely functioned without F1 in your life since November, it was beyond exciting to see all the new cars, the new line-ups and Christian Horner again. I’ve missed Christian – he brings a calm to my house that is totally lacking. But I’m not going to cover the launches on here not least because they have already been brilliantly chronicled (almost at live-blogging speed!) by Katie over on stoodonthepodium.

The launch of the RB9

What got me even more excited than the launches (or even the sight of Christian Horner) was the First Test in Jerez that began on 5 February. Obviously we have to remember that the cars are still just prototypes and all the engineers are pretty much camped out in wind tunnels working ballistically hard  to refine the design and improve the car’s performance. Its safe to say Adrian Newey won’t get much shut-eye between now and Melbourne (unless the RB9 is already so utterly brilliant that he can just sit back and enjoy the view).

A first glimpse of the E21 in action

Its hard to draw meaningful conclusions as the cars run different set ups, use different tyres and are on different fuel loads and throw into the equation the fact that the abrasive Jerez track tends to chow up tyres. BUT I think there are still things that we as fans can learn (as opposed to the elite few who have degrees in aeronautics and mechanical engineering who can obviously learn loads) from last week’s four day test.

So here goes – lets take a look at how all the teams shaped up for better or indeed for worse in Jerez.

Red Bull: The RB9 looked solid and tidy without blowing anyone away with times (but Vettel in particular is of the ‘but we’re not even pushing’ too cool for school brigade). As we all know, Red Bull like to keep their cards very close to their chest and it will be interesting to see how the car has evolved by the time of the next test in Barcelona. Certainly its straight line speed is lagging well behind McLaren or Ferrari and so early indications are that the front runners will be bunched much closer together this year. But are Red Bull still the team to beat? Probably.

Mark Webber giving the new Red Bull a work out

McLaren: Button caught the eye by clocking a blisteringly fast speed on the hard tyre on a dirty track though was hit by some reliability issues during the test. Its safe to say there is some disparity between the performance levels of the two team-mates and Perez has really got to raise his game between now and Melbourne. I expect him to be doing a LOT of track-time in Barcelona in the MP4-28.

Jenson Button setting the pace in Jerez

Ferrari: The new F138 looks very fast (without apparently any of those niggling issues that afflicted last year's uninspiring car) and that's not even with a Spaniard behind the wheel. Yes, Felipe Massa actually set the fastest time of all 4 days on the soft tyre. Slight mystery why Alonso was a no-show. Definitely not due to a rib injury say Ferrari and hey they wouldn't lie to us. Apparently Fernando was working on his fitness (while taking some lovely, arty photos on Instagram while others did all the boring donkey work). Unlike last year, Ferrari really need to hit the ground running and make sure that Alonso is given the top performing car he deserves from the off. Keep an eye out for their nifty DRS booster system with sexy Fluidic Switch. It will be all the rage apparently. Until other rival teams lodge protests or Adrian Newey designs a better version.

Massa impressing in the new Ferrari

Lotus: Attention all fans of Kimi Raikkonen - the new Lotus looks seriously impressive. The E21 topped the time sheets twice on two days of testing. And this time round, Kimi is a finely honed (give or take!) and race-sharp driver with a full year of F1 racing under his belt. It looks fast and reliable but really none of that matters a hill of beans to mounting a title challenge unless Lotus have hired someone who can devise race-winning strategies (their Achilles heel last year).

Kimi in the new Lotus

Mercedes: In many ways this is the team-mate battle I'm really looking forward to seeing play out. Because the car was so all over the shop last year and notoriously unreliable, it was hard to compare Nico with a winding-down-to-retirement Schuey. But I have a feeling that Nico will give Lewis Hamilton a far greater run for his money than people are expecting. And does the W04 look any better than last year's clapped out dustcart? Not all that much to be honest. Now lets see, one car had a brake failure, the other an electrical fault, it lacks aerodynamic downforce (the thing which makes F1 cars fast) and basically any grip. Lewis (never one to mince his words) said "We have some work to do but it doesn't feel like a disaster". Damned by faint praise hey. It will be VERY interesting to see how Lewis deals with driving a pig of a Mercedes week in and week out. Still if he wants to embark on a romantic re-run of Rebuilding A Formerly Great Team à la Schuey in 1996, now is his chance. Am also keeping a watchful eye on the political machinations within Mercedes itself. Especially as Toto Wolff and Ross Brawn are now doing apparently the same job. Who will actually be calling the shots?

Nico and Lewis - interesting times ahead?

Force India: A more refined version of last year's car without setting the world on fire. Please can someone at Force India just pull their finger out and for the love of God sign up another driver. At this rate, there'll either be just one Force India on the grid in Melbourne or Narain will turn up with a helmet and just get into the car when no one is looking. Mind you, Jules Bianchi did himself no harm with a strong performance in the VJM-06 on the final day of testing.

Force India: two cars, one driver. The clock is ticking.

Sauber: The new car looks quietly impressive. Beautiful cars which look fast often are fast. Early doors but the C32 is already my Dark Horse for the season (especially in those carnage safety car races) and they have a seriously talented driver on board in Nico Hulkenberg.

The most attractive car on the grid is the new Sauber IMHO

Williams: Well not much to say as they've not actually launched their car yet. They turned up to Jerez to get tyre data and try out some parts but (and I might be wrong) there's no substitute for good old-fashioned testing practice. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice (I have an Alice so this quote is allowed!).

In lieu of pictures of the new Williams

Toro Rosso: To listen to Jean-Eric Vergne, this car is ground-breaking. To listen to everyone else it looks ok and perhaps is a bit faster than last year's. Possibly not one to watch.

Caterham: Oh dear. Apparently their next upgrades are due in Barcelona (in May). You just want to give them a big cuddle. Poor sods.

Marussia: A completely new driver line-up with two rookies (Max Chilton and Luis Razia) with NO Grand Prix starts between them. But just to be in Jerez genuinely was a MAJOR achievement. Its all relative at the end of the day and it could be worse - the MR02 could be sporting an earth dreams livery!

Roll on the next test at the Circuit de Catalunya starting on 19 February. Lets face it we still pretty much know nothing (by that time, Adrian Newey could have designed a completely new car with straight line speed worthy of NASA!). The road is long…

Meeting the legend that is…Damon Hill

Damon Hill, May 2012

If truth be known, this blog has been in the pipeline for several months. Since last May in fact. But the slightly more pressing matters of the Spanish Grand Prix and Monaco Grand Prix rudely pushed it to one side and then…er…the rest of the season happened and then Christmas and so here we are. Actually with hindsight, I probably should have just binned watching the Korean/Indian/Singapore Grand Prix and written this blog instead but hindsight is a marvellous thing. My (now) 5 year old would argue you can never have too much gangnam style dancing in your life. Though actually it was the racing (or lack thereof) that was the problem!

Remember last May when the successive wins of Maldonado and Webber meant we had 6 different winners in the first 6 races, Schumacher was fastest in qualifying in Monaco and Alonso was leading the championship. Truly a happier time. As I casually perused various motorsport websites (all in the name of blogging), my eyes happened to clock an article on a race meeting at Brands Hatch the very next weekend where The One and Only Damon Hill would be racing. Fortunately the husband hadn’t booked a surprise weekend away for my birthday at Babington House or Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons (I include these references just in case they ever pique his interest…). What a stroke of luck that was hey. However this did mean we were free to drop everything (ie. nothing) and load up the car with sprogs, picnic and a gazillion toys/activities and head off to Brand Hatch for the day.

Here or Brands Hatch for the weekend?

Now I realise I might be the only person on the planet who pretty much hero-worships Damon Hill AND Michael Schumacher (I’m not even going there on Adelaide as people called Rich gang up on me) but hey there you have it. Yes they were wildly different in style behind a racing wheeI, but off track they are quite similar people. Both fundamentally decent, intensely private, devoted family men who do huge amounts of charitable work. Who said sport was a rational pursuit anyway!

Schuey and Damon shooting the breeze (time is a great healer!)

Its no exaggeration to say that Damon Hill gave me some of my all-time favourite moments ever in my countless years of watching F1. But watching Damon was never ever easy. Even when he had the best car, I always had a sense of impending doom that something was about to go wrong (see F1 season, 1995). My nervous system was pretty much shredded to pieces after most races. But that’s what made the moments of glory all the more fantastically brilliant.

So, I’m going to throw one out there: Damon Hill was a very underrated driver. I’m not saying for one moment he should join the pantheon of All-Time Great Drivers (there’s a thought for a blog) but he certainly was not there to make up the numbers. Bad or even mediocre drivers do not win 22 F1 races (more race wins incidentally than Mika Häkkinen or even Stirling Moss) against some pretty stuff opposition (lest we forget his entire career in F1 overlapped with Michael Schumacher). Because he wasn’t normally the fastest kid on the block, people often overlook how well Damon could actually race especially in the rain. He had a languid silky smooth style of driving that in its own way was beautiful to watch and reminds me a lot of Jenson Button, another driver who I believe is very underrated <awaits hurling of brickbats>

Winning the British GP (a feat his father never managed)

To understand what made Damon tick, you have to dig back into his past a bit. He lost his father aged 15 in a helicopter accident and the family’s wealth were wiped out by resulting insurance claims. He worked as a labourer and motorcycle courier while he raced bikes at weekends. The only remotely glamorous thing about Damon’s early racing years was that he shared the legendary ‘Hill’ name (trust Graham Hill to give his son 'Devereux' as a middle name!) and growing up in a racing dynasty meant he had met some of motorsport’s greatest drivers as a child.

Graham Hill and Damon Hill pushing Jim Clark around on a toy tractor. Different times.

His journey to the top echelon of motorsport was far from easy. Damon only started racing cars competitively when he was 25 years old. To put that into perspective, Sebastian Vettel has just won his third F1 title aged 25, Alonso had won two titles by the same age and Lewis Hamilton won his title at only 23. Damon clawed his way up through Formula Ford, Formula 3 and Formula 3000, battling a lot of the time just to raise the finance to keep racing.

Starting out

Damon’s big breakthrough was being hired by the Williams team as test driver in 1991. His dedication, testing performance and almost geekish interest in car development/set up impressed Williams. When it became apparent during 1992 that there would be a Williams drive going spare in 1993, Damon really upped his game. Reassured that Damon would be fully competitive and had the big advantage of thousands of miles of testing an active suspension car, Williams took the plunge and promoted Damon to the full race team, partnering multiple title winner Alain Prost. When asked once why he choose Damon over other contenders, Frank Williams said simply it was because he was a “tough bastard”. It takes one to know one!

The slightly surprising Williams line up for the 1993 season

All of a sudden, Damon was catapaulted into the Big Time. And I think there was a sense among F1 fans that here was a journeyman who through a combination of circumstances had got a mahoosive break. You would have needed a heart of stone to begrudge Damon his rags to riches moment. In the space of 12 months he went from driving a shed-on-wheels (with apologies to sheds, most of which are vastly more aerodynamic than the Brabham BT60B) to the best car on the grid.

Contrary to expectations, Damon held his own and to many people’s surprise matched the pace of the illustrious Prost on a number of occasions. In his first proper season he had 3 race wins (there should have been more wins but for a hefty dollop of bad luck) and 7 podiums.

Senna and Damon at the start of the ill-fated 1994 season

In 1994, after the traumatic death of Senna, Damon was propelled suddenly to the role of team leader with barely 1 year’s experience in the top flight. He came agonisingly close to winning the title and was instrumental in helping Williams clinch the constructors title (a phenomenal achievement with 3 different team-mates partnering him that season). His drive in torrential rain at Suzuka under intense pressure (his win meant he started the final race just 1 point behind Schumacher) was absolutely sublime and I think the finest drive of his career.

Damon's thrilling victory in Suzuka brought the title race down to the wire

1995 was a total aberration from start to finish and the wheels basically fell off (pardon the pun). Damon has acknowledged with characteristic honesty that 1995 was probably the reason that Williams didn’t re-sign him for 1997 and instead hired Heinz-Harald Frentzen to replace Damon. NOT THAT I’M STILL BITTER. Seriously, Heinz-Harald Frentzen…what were Williams thinking?! Well presumably that he was the ‘new’ Michael Schumacher. Epic fail. But then I could write a whole blog on Williams’ ill-advised driver appointments since 1996. Don’t even get me started on Montoya.

History in the making - Graham and Damon are still the only father and son to win the F1 Championship

The moment when Damon Hill crossed the line to win the Japanese Grand Prix in 1996, and seal the World Championship is one of my all-time favourite life moments ever. It was truly magnificent right down to Murray Walker’s choked up “I’ve got to stop now…I’ve got a lump in my throat” commentary. Definitely worth getting up at 4am for. And me being me, I actually really really loved that Michael Schumacher finished 2^nd and was on the podium with Damon!

The Suzuka podium

There were a couple of other stand-out races after Damon left Williams in 1996. Firstly, his almost-win in the 1997 Hungarian Grand Prix. In an Arrows (a car that managed to combine a complete lack of speed with constant breakdowns), Damon qualified 3^rd and would have won the race but for the cruel misfortune of a hydraulics failure which meant Villeneuve passed him on the final lap. There may have been swear words at the time.

Damon and Jacques on the podium at Hungary, 1997

The other stand-out race is of course the Belgian Grand Prix. By this time, Hill was driving for Jordan and he secured their first ever F1 win at Spa in atrocious conditions. There may have been team orders, there may have been only six cars that finished but it was still a stunning drive. And I’d better mention this before the husband kills me, this race was in fact the subject of his first chat up line to me. Lucky I liked F1 hey.

Damon leading the thrilling Belgian GP in 1998

And so to May 2012. After many years, I finally watched Damon race again, in the Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup. Five other motorsport legends (ok mini-legends) – Mark Blundell, Martin Donnelly, Julian Bailey, Perry McCarthy and David Brabham lined up on the grid. Poor old Damon was forced to retire from the race after 7 laps with a technical defect following contact with another car. Incidentally, Damon was racing to raise money for the Halow Project, which looks to support young people with learning difficulties to enable them to live as full and integrated a life as possible.

Damon Hill racing at Brands Hatch, 2012

An unexpected bonus of the race was discovering that Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard were taking part in the DTM race that weekend. We were there on the day of DTM qualifying and they finished in 18^th and 20^th spots respectively. Life must suck being poor old Ralf mustn’t it? He scrapes 18^th in qualifying in a DTM race while his older brother set the fastest time in qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix a week later. Awkward. I’m not going to lie to you…I might have sniggered just a little bit at the mention of Ralf’s poor qualifying over the tannoy. Old habits die hard.

Coulthard in qualifying for the DTM race

While we were on a grand quest to buy the 1 year old some noise-blocking headphones (the 4 year old had some and, ergo, the 1 year old had to have her own pair), we heard that Damon and the mini-legends would be meeting fans and signing autographs before the race. Well it would have been rude not to wander over and say hello. I gave the 4 year old a crash course in the queue on Damon Hill and he was enormously impressed that Damon had fought a very exciting title battle with Michael Schumacher. HANG ON…what if the 4 year old brought this up and even worse announced that Michael Schumacher was his favourite driver. So I spent the rest of the time in the queue frantically coaching the 4 year old not to mention Michael Schumacher under any circumstances much to the amusement of other fans.

Waiting in the queue

Such was the demand to meet a former British F1 world champion (not forgetting the mini-legends!) that the queue snaked right past the whole VW hospitality area and I could spot the marketing suits looking at their watches in an agitated fashion. OMG they were so obviously going to cut off the queue at any moment. Sometimes it helps to have a small child. I started talking quite loudly to the 4 year old about how amazing it would be for him to meet his idol and I kid you not, they cut off the queue right after me. Even the suits didn’t want to see a small boy cry. Wise move, my friends.

Damon signing endless autographs

So the 4 year old got to meet Damon Hill or rather Damon Hill got to meet the 4 year old. It was a awesomely brilliant moment although I did suffer a small degree of embarrassment when the 4 year old (of ALL the things to say) told Damon he had drawn a picture of him that morning. No word of a lie – we still have the picture and its fair to say Damon wouldn’t recognise himself in it. And I discovered something new about Damon Hill, not only was he a pretty darn good driver but he is FANTASTIC with kids. He told the 4 year old that he was a real artist and the 4 year old was utterly elated. In fact I couldn’t stop the 4 year old jabbering on and on to Damon until the suits had to come over and ruin everyone’s fun. To be fair Damon actually had to go off and race. Bet he didn’t have this much fun shooting the breeze with Sir Frank and Patrick Head pre-race in the Williams garage! The mini-legends were also all top guys. All in all, something of a life high!

The 4 year old riveted by the action on track

The 1 year old petrolhead

They always say, never meet your idols. You will always be disappointed. And by and large, I think that’s often true. But not in the case of Damon Hill. A total gentleman and legend, as much off the track as he was on it.

Guest Blog: A view from the cockpit by Mr Eau Rouge

Mrs Eau Rouge asked if I would like to do a guest blog in the close season and I said I would.  So she asked what I would write about, and a discussion ensued. I suggested a lavishly-illustrated 4,000-word exposition on why the Lotus 79 was the greatest F1 car ever; or an open letter to the world on how I envisioned blown rear wings sometime around 1988.  Instead Mrs Eau Rouge hammered me into submission explained her audience to me and she suggested that I write a short blog about my experience driving a single-seater racing car around Brands Hatch, as I had raved on and on about how it gave me a little insight into what it must be like to drive an F1 car. So, sit back and let me try to convey to you how utterly thrilling, scary, breathtaking and exhilarating the whole experience was.

A little context first: I am a massive F1 fan. James Hunt, Alan Jones and Nigel Mansell were heroes in my household growing up. I lived in Argentina at the time of the 1981 Grand Prix and witnessed a country stopping for the weekend to go F1-mad). I was taken to Fangio’s garage in Buenos Aires and saw his title-winning Alfa Romeo. I cheered and wept (in a manly way) over Damon’s trials and tribulations. I even met Mrs Eau Rouge in 1998 after we got chatting about the tumultuous Belgian Grand Prix. And I proposed to her at La Rascasse restaurant in Monaco (all together now, ahhh).

In my opinion, the greatest!

BUT – I am not a boy racer. I drive fast but not like a demon (no, I leave that to Mrs Eau Rouge!!), nor do I sit at traffic lights revving my engine in an open invitation to have a drag race.  The most exciting car I have owned was an MGF and I currently drive a Mazda RX8.  While I like reading about the latest aerodynamic innovations in F1, if I need a spark-plug changing on my car, I wouldn’t know where to start. So when Mrs Eau Rouge gave me a racing driving experience at Brands Hatch for my 40^th birthday, as well as being thrilled I was also secretly a bit scared. What if I was utterly rubbish at it?

Perfect racing conditions

My birthday is in late December, so we waited until the summer and better weather before actually doing the event.  It was early September and (thankfully) wonderfully dry and sunny weather when we turned up at Brands Hatch to do my Jenson Button impression. Despite perfect driving conditions I was quite nervous, not least since I had watched two episodes of Top Gear in which both Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson had embarrassed themselves trying to drive F1 cars. F1 cars are so difficult to drive because they’re set up to be on the limit: a lay person isn’t brave enough to drive that fast, so the car isn’t driven at the optimal speed for its aerodynamics to work, which ironically makes it harder to drive. Hammond and Clarkson had experienced the ultimate embarrassment of stalling when trying to pull off. If that happened to them, what chance for me?

Yes, yes, I know, I wasn’t going to be driving an F1 car, but I was still going to be driving a single-seater (a Formula Brands Van Diemen Audi, for those who are interested). The clutch would be tricky; the engines are designed to be revved high; wings generate downforce; and (horror of horrors) the gear change is a little pokey stick ON THE RIGHT HAND SIDE. The last time I’d tried to drive a car using my right hand to change gear was in Spain, which resulted in the crashing of mangled gears while I accidentally opened my door.

Anyway, before we got to play in the mini-F1 cars, we had to learn how to drive on a racing track, while also learning the (short) Brands hatch track itself. I remember F1 at Brands and in particular Mansell’s thrilling 1986 British GP win. It is a stunning combination of turns, climbs, dips and swoops, connected by some short straights.  It has the fearsome Paddock Hill Bend, a fast right-hander at the end of the main straight which not only turns into a hurtle down Derek Minter Straight, but has adverse camber – i.e. the turn is banked the opposite way to what you would expect, so if you get off line it accentuates your slide off the track. Jacques Laffitte crashed there in 1986 and broke both legs, ending his F1 career, and so I was slightly surprised when we had the driver’s briefing and they told us to take it pretty much flat out.

The drivers' briefing

After the briefing at which they talked us through a lap of the track, explained racing lines, the flag system and racing etiquette, we went down to the track and were given 3 laps in a BMW M3 to learn the circuit. An experienced racing driver was in the passenger seat to give us tips and hints, and in my case, act a source of potential embarrassment. Can you tell that I had started to develop a complex about this?

That first lap was a MASSIVE learning curve: I’d never driven a semi-automatic sequential gearbox car before, so my left leg was instinctively pumping an imaginary clutch pedal while I was changing gear with far too few revs on the clock.  All the time my instructor was issuing a stream of instructions to watch for braking points, think about my line, watch out for other cars on the circuit (there were 12 of us doing the experience that day), keep my hands in the 10-past/10-to position without feeding the wheel and watch for blue and yellow flags. I ONLY HAVE TWO EYES!

Getting to grips with Brands

But you’d be surprised how quickly you learn, and by mid-way through lap 2 I was getting faster and it had started to come more naturally.  The car was awesome, and the circuit more so – the sense of speed was fantastic.  Accelerate up to the entry to Paddock Hill Bend, touch the brakes, - no more than that, and later and later as each lap went by - and back onto the throttle to accelerate through the corner and swoop down Derek Minter Straight, stay wide and change down for the double-apex Druids, twisty-turny through Graham Hill Bend, early on the throttle into Cooper straight, a jink through McLaren and keep the speed through what seemed to be three apexes on Clark Curve, and finally hammer along Brabham straight. I kid you not, my breathing got faster typing that because I remembered what it was like doing each lap.

So, we took our helmets off and let the adrenaline die down while we got feedback and then a briefing on driving a single-seater. My instructor gave me 7-out-of-10 for everything, except a 6 for hand position on the wheel (I kept on trying to feed it through, what a boy scout am I?) and a 9 for “mechanical sympathy”, whatever that means.   I hadn’t embarrassed myself and my instructor seemed happy to let me out again. Phew!

We got shown around the Formula Brands car, and there it was: the right-hand gear-shift, glaring malevolently at me, daring me to chicken out and drive all ten laps in first gear. I put it to the back of my mind, clambered into the cockpit (not so easy in my 40^th year) and readied for the off. We lined up in our cars in the pits and as I feared, my mechanic confirmed that they were a bit tricky to pull off in, and I should “give it a bit of welly” and keep the revs high while letting out the clutch smoothly. Okay, I can do that, can’t I?

In the zone (Schuey eat your heart out!)

The first two cars pulled out with no problems and I increased the revs, let the clutch out – rrrrrowwwRRRRROOOWWWWWthufffttt – and stalled the car. Luckily Mrs Eau Rouge was right on hand to laugh at me.  They re-started my engine and this time I was away! I was so excited and busy concentrating on changing up to second that I almost forgot to steer round the chicane at the exit to the pits. Now THAT would have been embarrassing. And then it was onto my first lap!

Strangely, it wasn’t that weird using the right-hand gear-shift. The whole package – sitting in a bathtub on wheels with wings and an engine attached – was so new and unusual, it felt no more strange to change gear with one’s right hand than it did getting used to the BMW’s gearbox.  Instead, and I don’t want to sound too…er…Clarkson here, this felt like really driving – unfettered by speed limits, oncoming cars, road signs, parked cars, pedestrians and potholes, you could just drive as fast as you could. The vision in a single-seater is incredible, as you’d expect, so you can place your wheels where you want them, kiss the apex of a corner and zoom off onto the straight.  The car is almost an extension of yourself – quite like riding a motorbike. 

Poetry in motion!

There’s no power steering on these cars, so you have to wrestle them through corners, and you can feel all the powers being exerted on you – the car wanting to go straight on, the grunt of the engine behind you, the brakes straining to slow you down, the tyres and wings sticking you to the tarmac when your family car would be wrapping itself around a tree. It dawned on me by about lap 3 that to go faster and get the best out of this experience, I had to “find the limit”: not the physical limit of the car, like an F1 driver would, but my mental limit, so I would be driving out of my comfort zone.  So each lap I tried to ignore the voice in my head screaming “BRAKE!!!! Slow down or you’ll kill us!” and tried to see how late I could brake, how early I could get on the throttle and how tight I could turn in. That was scary, but fun. It’s a bit like being on a roller-coaster – you get the best out of it when you’re terrified.

For those who want to know, I got my time down from 1:23:73 to 1:10:34, and I was 5^th  fastest out of 12 on the track. By the last lap, I felt quite comfortable and I understood what they are on about when they talk of an F1 driver being “in the groove” – you know where to brake and turn in, where to overtake, and where you can get better next lap. But I was ready to come in! My arms and shoulders ached from steering, my right knee hurt from where it had been bumping against the side of the car, and my posterior was numb from the bucket seat!

Thumbs up...I have survived!

But that aside, it was quite simply THE most exhilarating experience I have ever had. Honestly, if you like F1 and you like driving, do it! I pulled into the pits and found Mrs Eau Rouge and raved like a madman about how great it was, how it was the best present anyone had ever given me and was the highlight of my 40^th birthday celebrations. It took me about 20 minutes to come down, by which time Mrs Eau Rouge was on track as a passenger in a Le Mans Jaguar sports car, which I had convinced her to do. But that is another story...oh and if you do ever want a 4,000-word exposition on why the Lotus 79 was the best F1 car ever, let me know!