LOWS AND LEAVING F1
I think I know the low point…
When he nearly died in Budapest in 2009. From a professional point of view of course, but an order of magnitude more than that, from a human point of view. We had become friends by then, good friends, and seeing that with your work colleague but more importantly a really good mate of yours is devastating.
It’s very, very hard at that time. I still had a job to do even though the car wasn’t running because - again being slightly a-modest for a while - I think the car crew at Ferrari, one of the things that I tried to do at Ferrari was to build up that car crew and to make that a really strong unit around Felipe and a strong unit that felt we were all fighting for each other and we all had each other’s backs. They looked upon me as a leader and it’s nice actually because they still call me boss now when I walk past them. All my old car crew they all go “How you doing, boss?” in Italian obviously!
So therefore that weekend, as you do when you lead people, you have a job to do. I really just wanted to get on a plane and go home. You’ve got your mate in a coma and it’s touch and go whether he’s going to come out of that coma and the first thought in your mind is: “Do you know what? I don’t do it for this, I’m not paid enough for this, whatever it is I just want to go home and be with my family”. But you couldn’t, you had to stay there and reassure the guys and that first 24/48 hours was absolutely horrendous. But we got through it and he came back and he was as good as ever.
That’s the thing that is really disappointing when you look back on that period because he walked back into a different team
That’s the thing that is really disappointing when you look back on that period because he walked back into a different team. That was a team that was very fairly balanced between him and Kimi when he had his accident, it was very fairly balanced and when they beat each other it was on merit, and he walked back into a team that was very Fernando-centric as Fernando is very good at doing. I’m not saying that’s right, I’m not saying that’s wrong, it’s just fact that Ferrari became Fernando’s team and he walked back into it and really struggled to cope with that in the short term.
He wasn’t always dealt a fair hand and knew he wasn’t always being dealt a fair hand despite the words coming out of people’s mouths. I think that was fairly hard for him to deal with but he got on with it and he still had some really good results there in not a great car, but came out of it, came here to Williams and has had the final part of his career. It’s been good for him and it’s nice that he’s going out on a high.
©WRi2
How important was it for him to leave Ferrari and come to Williams to finish in that way?
Very important. He could have retired. If you talk about what he has achieved as a driver, the money he has made - if that’s important, all of those things that count, that are status in peoples’ mind if that’s how your mind works - he’d already done all that. He’d got all of his medals, he didn’t need to do anything else. I think it was really important for him mentally to come here, to have a really strong team-mate like he’s got in Valtteri and pit himself against him. And to help the team grow as well from being something that was absolutely in the doldrums to getting it into being at the front of the midfield.
He’s done that, he’s done his bit. He came here and he’s done exactly what he’s asked of him and I think it’s absolutely the perfect time for him to retire. All the conversations he and I had leading up to that were definitely along those lines. It was the best thing to do. Where else is he going to go now? Is he going to get a drive at Mercedes? Is he going to get a drive that is guaranteed race wins? Very, very unlikely, so what’s he doing? Get out of it while you’ve still got a great reputation and a really good career - a fantastic career in Formula One - and go out of it on a high.
It’s the best way to do it. Don’t be hanging on at the back of the grid, moving from where we are here as the third-place team over the next few years down to the tenth-place team and eventually have a microphone in your hand interviewing drivers on the grid. It’s just not good and he deserves more than that.
Are you going to miss him?
Professionally yeah. Part of what I’ll miss is he cracks me up at times, he just says the daftest things and he doesn't know he’s saying it. He’ll think he’s saying something really profound and I will just find it really, really amusing. And he’s like “What are you laughing at?!”
“I’m laughing at you!”
So I’ll miss him from that point of view, yeah. And I’ll miss how good he is. He’s a safe pair of hands, if the car is good enough for fifth and sixth then between him and Valtteri they’ll get fifth and sixth. Of course I’m going to miss him because he’s a bloody good driver. Professionally.
Personally not because we talk every couple of days anyway on the telephone, and as the years have progressed and I’ve become less directly involved with him and we’ve grown as men it’s more usually about earache from the wife or what the kids are up to or where we might be going on holiday and stuff like that. That’s not going to change, when we go on holidays he’ll just have to work it around the Formula One calendar!
