Un-doing the Button
April 2010 |
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I was staying at a bed and breakfast near the circuit. After arriving in the afternoon, I decided to cycle to the track to occupy my time. As I approached the gate I saw this familiar looking guy leaving the circuit in a dark blue Vauxhall Astra with lowered suspension, a spoiler, blacked out windows and a stupidly large exhaust. I thought he was a complete tosser.
I guess part of my opinion was based on jealousy because this guy was only a year older than me and was obviously better than I was. Still, having kept a vague interest in his career progression, I wasn’t convinced he was Formula 1 material.
I remember first seeing him on Eurosport in 1995 when he was racing in karts. He obviously had talent and was winning everything he entered so I wasn’t at all surprised when he made his Formula Ford debut in 1998 – only a year before me – and dominated that championship. He also took victory at the prestigious Formula Ford Festival and won the coveted McLaren Autosport Young Driver of the Year Award.
He naturally made the move to Formula 3 where he won a few races and finished 3rd in the championship. He also finished well at both the Marlboro Masters and Macau Formula 3 races so not bad for his first season but, again having only kept a vague interest in his progress, I felt he was lacking something.
I think my problem with him was that he appeared to have had things relatively easy throughout his early career. What I mean by that is he always had the backing and never seemed to struggle with money. He became a works karting driver very early on and managed to secure drives in Formula Ford and Formula 3, seemingly without any problem. Now, I’m not entirely sure whether they were works drives or he had immense funding from somewhere but either way, he never had to work for it – so to speak.
Now, I am fully aware how expensive motor racing is and I know the figures to secure a drive in Formula 3 are well into the hundreds of thousands of pounds per year. I also know that to get anywhere in motor racing you need the financial backing behind you if you’re to get anywhere. I also know that, unless you have insanely rich parents, you are not going to get financial backing unless you have the talent. Jenson obviously had the talent otherwise he wouldn't have been offered a works drive in the first place so I’m certainly not criticising his financial ease.
However, I remember thinking that he would make the move to Formula 3000 (as it was back then) and his career would stall. I thought that he would find the going tougher there – possibly land a drive with a team that wouldn’t afford him the results – and fade into obscurity after two or three seasons. I still stand by that theory. I’m convinced that if he’d not got the break with Williams he would now be racing in some obscure sports car championship with the rest of the failed hopefuls.
On paper, moving to Williams was the right move because they were on their way up after a couple of seasons in the wilderness. I just felt that he wasn’t quite ready. Oh how wrong I was. He soon started out performing Ralf Schumacher (mind you, who couldn’t?) and was unlucky not to score a podium in Belgium. He nevertheless scored some good points and I was gutted for him when he lost the drive to Fatty Montoya for 2001.
The move to Benetton was never going to be successful because they were quite frankly rubbish by then. He did well in his second year before that obnoxious cheating Italian turd, Flavio Briatore, kicked him out in order to put another driver who was under his management in the car.
I felt BAR was another backward career step because I thought the team was a complete waste of space. Still, I disliked Jacques Villeneuve and thought he was an even bigger waste of space so I was happy when Jenson came in blew him away - especially after Villeneuve was publicly critical of Jenson's ability.
His career with BAR/Honda was very up and down. He had an exceptional year in 2004 and a pretty good year with his first (if slightly lucky) win in 2006. The other years were disappointing to put it mildly and shockingly crap to put it another. This reaffirmed my earlier suspicion that Jenson lacked something. He lacked the ability to lead and to turn a rubbish car into a race winning car. It is a quality that Schumacher and Alonso both possess and marks those two out as such supreme all-round drivers. With Jenson’s experience coupled to his supposedly great talent and the weight of Honda’s bank balance, they should have created a car capable of challenging for the championship in the 6 years they were together.
After Honda pulled the plug, I thought that was it for Jenson. There was no way he would be able to take a year out and find a way back in. When Ross Brawn rescued the team, I was delighted but totally disagreed with the pundits that the Brawn would be as good as their testing times showed.
Once again, I was proved so very wrong. Jenson’s domination in the early part of the championship was mind-blowing and I started to reconsider my long running opinion of him as being one of the most over-rated drivers in Formula 1.
However, by mid season, Red Bull and McLaren had caught up with Brawn and cracks started to appear. Jenson began to struggle and seemed more inclined to whinge about his car not being as good rather than getting his head down and motivating the team to make the strides forward that were needed. He was obviously feeling the pressure.
Still, he did what I thought he would never do and won the championship. Then he buggered off to McLaren for a fresh challenge – or because Mercedes wanted Schumacher.
As I said in my Time of the Month article in March, I thought it was the right move for Jense although I predicted he would be put into the shade by Lewis Hamilton. Given how far ahead McLaren are of Mercedes at the moment, his move seems to have paid off. However, I have been pleasantly surprised by his performance against Lewis and he is certainly giving him a good run for his money. It was great to see him win for McLaren in Melbourne; I thought he deserved it after his brave choice to change to slicks when he did, which is the mark of a great driver and a great team leader.
It was also good to see him put one over on his team mate. I’m sure Lewis’ robotic brain couldn’t compute that one. It was obviously information overload because he malfunctioned in his post race interview and didn’t once use the phrase "the team did a fantastic job".
