Breakfast with ... Jos Verstappen

They say you shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, but Eric Silbermann risks the wrath of Mrs Manners by having breakfast with a pot-pourri of paddock people.

Remarkably, talking to Jos Verstappen on the Friday of the Malaysian Grand Prix didn’t jinx his son’s superb qualifying performance 24 hours later. Verstappen senior pretty much disappeared off the scene when his F1 career ended, not choosing to pick up the commentator’s microphone or to hang around for the sake of it, so it’s good to see him back now in the role of proud father.

When was the last time you were here in Sepang?

2003 I guess.

Am I right in thinking your best race here was 2001?

Yes … I watched it yesterday, with Max actually. I started in position 18. I think after turn 1 or into turn 2 or 3, I was in sixth position. After seven or eight laps, it started to rain, I got to second position I think, fighting with Frentzen and Hakkinen and unfortunately we had to pit again five laps before the end because the fuel tank was too small! And then I finished seventh.

That was with Arrows. So after all, I was disappointed.

Was that in the Tom Walkinshaw days with Arrows? How did you two get on? Because, let’s put it politely, I would say you’re both very similar, very tough guys, no nonsense. How did that work?

If you do well, he’s very friendly but if you have small things happening, he’s very angry and not so happy but at the end of the day, we got along reasonably. The only big problem we had with each other was that I had a contract for 2002 and he put somebody else in the car so at the end, we had a big fight.

Now that you’re back coming to races, are there a lot of people you remember still in the paddock?

There are still a lot of people around when I was racing, yes.

The main people are still the same from Holland. We have very good support from them for Max, I must say. They really believe in it and they’re very positive. It’s very important when you start your career to have that kind of support, of course.

Are you enjoying being back in the paddock? You weren’t one of these drivers who was always there. Once you stopped racing, we didn’t see you for quite a while.

No, I didn’t have anything to do. Just to be here to do nothing didn’t interest me, I prefer to stay home. At least I’m here to see what’s happening with Max of course and so, yes, I’m enjoying that.

At the FIA press conference, those boring things that you must remember having to do, there were six drivers but all the questions were for Fernando Alonso about his accident in Barcelona. Motor racing is supposed to be dangerous but everybody seems so shocked with this crash. You had some pretty big accidents yourself. Do you think the attitude to safety has changed a lot since your day? Do you think it’s maybe too much even?

It’s too safe? I don’t know if it is but I think in my day, I at least felt quite safe in the car so I was not going in the car and thinking it was dangerous and I think those people now, they don’t think that. Of course, as we have seen last year, accidents still can happen so it will never be safe for sure, but you have to always think what you’re going to do.

‘94 was of course your first season and it was a big reality check and you had a big accident too.

Yeah, but after that (the Imola weekend) it changed a lot with the high cockpit and things like that but of course, still on a Sunday afternoon, something can happen. I think all the drivers know that but they try to hide it. It’s quite a normal reaction.

I guess your views on safety are a bit different when you see your own son in the car.

I think when I saw him going out in a Formula 1 car for the first time, I was a bit nervous, but once you feel and you see that he has it under control, you have more faith in it and the trust is there. Also, here on the race weekends, I think what he does well is he’s building up to it gradually. He doesn’t want to show in the first practice that he’s the fastest and once you’ve done a couple of laps, it comes all easier and that’s what he understands really well.

Looking at your CV, you drove for an awful lot of teams and that was one of the attractions of Formula 1 that there were a lot of teams. I’m not saying we need Andrea Moda back again… 

I nearly changed team every year and sometimes I had to because I didn’t have a lot of choice. I would say it’s more professional these days. But what I do think was better then was that drivers said what they thought. Drivers should say what they want and if they have a problem with the engine, they should say ‘I have a problem with the engine.’ Today, everyone tries to hide things.

If you have a problem with the engine, you have a problem with the engine. If the driver made a mistake, the driver made a mistake. It’s as simple as that. If the gearbox blew up, the gearbox blew up. Why say something different. It’s part of racing. I mean we all know they push the limits and sometimes they go over it or there’s a reliability problem but that’s it. It’s how it is and I think that was the good thing about it back then. Like Alonso yesterday  said, for him, it was a steering problem and that was the first time it came out. I mean, Ron Dennis said a couple of weeks before it was the wind. The wind doesn’t blow the car off the track. Maybe it pushes you a little bit further when you have a big oversteer but...

Didn’t you race here in Malaysia in the A1 series? 

Yes, it was in 2006. It was a good series. Of course it wasn’t Formula 1. Which is the highest level and it is very professional, the way everything is organised and so on, while A1 was more amateur, so you cannot really compare it, but for the public, it was good because they could get closer to the action. They could come into the paddock and things like that, so for the public it was not bad but for a driver, it was not comparable with what we have here.

When was the last time you drove a Formula 1 car? 

It was last year in Zandvoort just for a show run. It was an old Minardi from 2003 I think. It was fun, but I must say I quite like to be in this situation where I am now. I still enjoy Formula 1 a lot and I miss  the feeling of the competition, but I like to be here to see my son doing his job.

Do you do anything competitive now?

No. For me, it was hard when you have been in Formula 1 to do something else that is less professional. But I did some LMP2 racing and I liked it very much. The series is very professional. That’s what I really liked but then after one year, they stopped it. We won the Le Mans series and we won the LMP2 in Le Mans itself. I really enjoyed that. It was a very good car. I never thought endurance racing would be so interesting but it really was enjoyable. There has even been some talk about doing it again this year, but for the moment, the important thing is this guy (Max.) I want to support him as much as I can. I want to help him and then maybe next year already say he will be saying, “Daddy, you don’t need to come that much anymore’.

But you have to be here to drive the rental car anyway!

Exactly. For this year, yes, that’s my job - as the driver.

Does he sit in the back?

Yes, because his trainer is sitting next to me and Max is sitting in the back. It’s quite normal because when he was little, he always jumped in the back and now he’s still doing the same. When we have the car, it’s normal he goes in the back door so it’s quite funny.

Even if you haven’t driven them, there’s some criticism that maybe a modern Formula 1 car is too easy to drive. People have been linking it specifically to the fact your son can drive one.

Maybe “easy” isn't the right word. But it’s true you can’t really push them all the time flat out, because maybe the tyre drop-off is more, also with the engine you have to be more gentle. I think this is the word – gentle – because you cannot drive them as aggressively as we used to do.

Do you think your generation of drivers were more adaptable? Now you hear the drivers asking for advice on the radio a lot more than in the past. 

Today, there are so many things you have to keep your mind on, so the drivers today need a lot of information, based on all the data. In my day, it was not there. For sure, it’s a different driving style compared to my days and how it is now.

You’ve retired, your son’s in Formula 1. The only thing we need now is a grand prix in Zandvoort to make life perfect really and you to wave the chequered flag.

They’d have to spend a lot of money at Zandvoort and I don’t think it’s there at the moment. I think Spa will be our race.We have a lot of support coming there from Holland and we’re already talking with the organisers. I think they’re trying to organise something for the Dutch fans.