Speaking to Prime Casino, ex-Formula One World Champion, Jacques Villeneuve gives his opinion on whether Lando Norris could catch Max Verstappen, offered his opinion on comparisons between the latter and Michael Schumacher and named his preferred location for a new Grand Prix.
- Lando Norris can catch Max Verstappen
- ‘You can’t compare’ Max with Michael Schumacher
- I want to see a Scandinavian Grand Prix
There has been talk regarding changes to F1 venues within next year. Africa has to be a consideration and Canada might be under threat. Thailand and Rwanda have been mentioned as possible venues, what are your thoughts?
JV - “F1 is global, more than it has ever been, and Africa is a continent that’s missing. So it seems logical that there should be a push to go to Africa. Where? I don’t know enough about Africa to really have a good idea of what would be good ultimately but it is a continent that’s missing.
“I have no idea. Honestly, it’s also very political, where you go. F1 is expensive. You have to be careful with that but I have no idea where. Would it be on a new track or downtown somewhere, like Las Vegas, which seems to be a good trend, to have a good balance. I think Kyalami would need some work being done to it. I tested there when we were at BAR and Williams, so a long time ago. I don’t remember any good breaking points. It was fun to drive but I’m not sure how good it would be with modern cars. Cars have evolved a lot since then. The high speed corners, oftentimes now, have become non-corners. Just dangerous, without any driving.
“Take Spa – Eau Rogue is not a corner anymore but it’s still as dangerous as when it was a corner. Same thing with Blanchimont. When it goes to that point where what used to be a corner, where you had to lift or almost lift, where you really could be on the edge, and now come out of the pits, cold tyres, and already be flat on full tanks then it’s just a 300k corner that’s not even a corner where you need to drive and it’s just becomes dangerous for no reason. That’s when F1 has outgrown a track and at high speed the cars have way too much downforce, basically.”
To add extra races, does something has got to give somewhere else?
JV - “I don’t know. It’s global in the sense that fans travel, so it doesn’t really matter where the race is. You see people from the Netherlands all around the place, not just in Zandvoort, and so on and so on. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s two races in Italy or two in Germany or two somewhere else. It will be packed with international crowds.
“It used to be much more localised in the past where at least half of the crowd were from the local area or the country. The French Grand Prix was a lot of French fans and so on and so on whereas now it’s a lot of international crowds which is what venues and countries want – money from abroad, fans, tourism. That’s what F1 is creating now, so at the end of the day it’s which venue can accommodate an international crowd of a certain level.”
Is 24 the maximum amount of races there can be in a season?
JV - “It’s tough on the mechanics, on the engineers, because they don’t really have a break. They go back to the factory between races and they work. They don’t go on holidays. Drivers could do more races because they’re not testing. That’s not the issue but then you’d need two sets of mechanics, which would be fine. That could work. But is it physically viable? Would it become boring? Would it be too much? Would you get to the point where it’s just another race, OK. That’s also the limit. How much do you want? How much a break do you need? It’s good to be hungry for racing.”
What are your thoughts on potentially losing Canadian GP?
JV - “That would be a shame. It’s like Monaco. It’s one of the good races. It’s downtown. It’s a very different kind of track. But if Montreal doesn’t come up with the goods, and this year it was a little bit embarrassing the way that the roads were – the construction, the way the police force were just blocking the way to the track when there is the most traffic, for no reason, that was a mess. At that level you can’t, not when you’re on the international scene. You need to step up and be at the same level as the other international races.
“I don’t think it’s a money issue. It brings in so much income to the town, to the province. If not, they wouldn’t do it. But it’s like everything, you need to take it away for people to see what they miss sometimes. I think it would be a bigger loss for Montreal than it would be for F1. F1 would find other venues.”
How about losing a race Italy? Imola or Monza?
JV - “I would keep Monza because I can drive there from home.
“I don’t know. They both have such a history in racing. Imola has been giving us a better race in general than Monza for some reason, lately. As a venue? I wouldn’t know. You would have to see how many fans can be accommodated at both and what the turnout was, which is not the numbers I have. Ultimately that is what matters. And what spectacle it gives on TV. What does it bring to the show? What does it bring to F1? So one or the other, ultimately Imola is closer to Ferrari and we’re racing in Italy so Imola has a link there.
“It’s more like a home race than Monza is but Monza is the temple of speed so you could do one each year. You could alternate but if were both were sold out then there’s no reason to remove either.”
Looking ahead to Zandvoort, circus around Max Verstappen starts again this weekend; what will his mindset be? Hasn’t won in four…
JV - “He now knows that he has to work hard for his wins whereas before all he had to do was have a weekend without a mistake. Now he really has to go get those points. It has to come a lot from him unless there was something that was discovered on the car but there’s no reason for it and that doesn’t seem to be the kind of track that would suit the current Red Bull on top of it but there’s been some regulation changes so we’ll have to see who it affects, about the bias breaking – left to right – the steered breaking. It’ll be interesting to see which team it affects.”
Verstappen has to work hard for his wins
Is part of Red Bull’s problem the cost cap, aero restrictions, and testing?
JV - “It is having an effect. That’s why it was put in place. It is having an effect. The turmoil did not help and the fact that Verstappen is a single driver in the team instead of the team having two drivers – that was not apparent when the team were superior. It is now. He’s carrying everything on his shoulders.
“The same thing kind of happened with Mercedes. They were winning everything. They did not have to have good weekends. And suddenly the opposition became better and it took them a while to realise that you know losing is possible, and it takes a while to reinvent yourself and put yourself in form to be able to push to the edge when you’ve spent years without having to push.”
Does Max need a period of adjustment?
JV - “He does have an issue to adapt. You’ve seen it with his driving. But when you have to carry everything on your shoulders, at some points mistakes will happen. You’ll go over the edge. It’ll start taking its toll on you. It will make you tired. It will affect the general atmosphere inside the team. Stress will start kicking in. All of that will have small negative effects that pile up and it could be a tenth here, tiny mistake there, we don’t win, and then it’s a snowball that just rolls down.”
Chris Wheatley is the latest figurehead to leave Red Bull - are they on the way down? Has the turmoil caused him to depart?
JV - “I don’t believe it is the turmoil that made him leave. It’s just a step up in a career. It’s James Vowles leaving Mercedes for Williams. It’s a step up, career-wise. It’s not fully related to that. It might have opened the door but ultimately it is a step up in career, anyway.”
But won’t help Red Bull?
JV - “No, it won’t. But it is a great team. Mercedes seem to have turned the tide. They went to the bottom of their wave and they’re starting to climb the wave again. Red Bull will do the same. It takes more than two or three months. There’s always a delay in the effect.”
Have you ever thought about Red Bull without Max and where he might go?
“There was Red Bull before Max and they were winning a lot so Max is not the answer to everything. He is a huge part of the puzzle. Not an easy piece to replace.”
Lewis is 39 but must be bouncing after two race wins - has he got it in him to be return to the very top?
JV - “It’s not a question of age, it’s a question of hunger. How much are you willing to give and sacrifice to reach your goal and what is your goal? Do you just want to survive in racing because you already achieved everything and just fill up your pocket or do you still have the same hunger to do everything you can to win with everything inside of you?
“He still seems to be hungry. It looks like he still has a harder time in qualifying to get that last tenth somehow but once you get into that race mode, like we saw at Silverstone, when he gets that focus in place and gets a taste of the possibility of winning then the Lewis of old is back. The problem is that it’s not there all the time. But if you look at older winning years there were always downs.
“There was never a season like Max is doing except that with the car they had it didn’t make a difference. You would just win by a few tenths instead of 10 or 20 seconds. Now the difference is very costly but he seems to still have that hunger. It’s still there.
“The champion is still in him. He needs to get that energy flowing before he reaches Ferrari because Ferrari is a tough place to be in.”
Hamilton still has the champion in him
How intense is the pressure in F1?
JV - “It’s very chaotic and it seems to be hard to constantly have the full support, it seems to be a moving ball, and Lewis needs the support. That’s been obvious. Take Max – even without support he’s out there, killing it. Lewis seems to be more sensitive to the support.”
Reports that Bono will be staying at Mercedes… will that be a blow to Lewis?
JV - “Yeah but even an engineer moving team needs to figure out how things work. He’s won with different engineers. He’s won championships with different engineers. It will also depend on who he gets at Ferrari. If he ended up working with Jock Clear, who he’s won with before, that would be an easy ball to get rolling.”
How important is that driver-engineer relationship?
JV - “It’s a paramount relationship because this is the one point of contact and trust for the driver and vice versa. Because a driver cannot think of everything. He’s in the car, he needs to trust the car, he needs to trust the engineer, he needs to trust that his comments are understood and thought about.
“When a driver is told listen this doesn’t work, this won’t work, he needs to believe it, not because some computer told him but because that engineer understands what that driver needs.
“This relationship is something that is built over time and sometimes it just never works out and you can have the best engineer with the best driver and it won’t work out – the chemistry won’t happen, that trust level won’t get into place, and you’ll never get the results.”
Like a golfer and his caddy?
JV - “Yeah, of course. You need a balancing wall. You need to be able to exchange ideas, to talk openly, and to sometimes be put in your place and vice versa. It goes both ways.
“The engineer needs to trust his driver when he makes a call in a race, like Lewis did at Silverstone about staying out or not staying out. It goes both ways. An engineer, a good one, is also – I wouldn’t say a psychologist but can feel where the driver is at in his head, in a race, in qualifying, and what will be needed to give more confidence, to calm him down or not. At that moment it’s the only family that exists for a driver, and when that can be built that’s when the amazing results can happen.”
Who was your favourite engineer?
JV - “I’ve been very lucky throughout my career because I’ve always had, until Jock – because of the age difference – father figures in engineers that I could really lean on, rely on, and I could learn a lot, and I could suck them dry for information and vice versa. There was huge trust when I started in Italy, I was at Prema Racing and it was Angelo, the team owner, who was engineering me and it was easy to work like that. Then in Japan I had the same with an engineer who did not even speak English but the trust, we managed to get it going.
“When I got to the States I had Tony Cicale who was also racing and designing his own cars so he understood the psychology behind the driver – what does a river need to go fast, to trust the car, and so on. We managed to really invent some setups so that even bits on the cars that other people said that cannot work, that’s horrible, we were working together and managing to go in strange directions at a time that worked marvels, and that’s what allowed us to win the Indy500. We would put a tail fin on top of the engine cover and in the wind tunnel it was worse but we kept it anyway because he knew, once you get sideways it will put the car straight, and it worked. Nobody copied us and ultimately it saved me from hitting the wall. I got sideways in one corner where I couldn’t see the side of the track anymore and the car got straight thanks to that.
“Those things you can build with an engineer and when he tells you the corner will be flat, it’s fine, the car can do it, then you can tell your foot: don’t come up, don’t come up. And it helps. And when I started working with Jock at Williams, he didn’t have a huge amount of experience as an engineer but he was also a rugby player so he understood the sports man’s psychology. I brought everything I’d learned, a way of working, with those engineers, which was still pen and paper – sit down, go around the track, go through it, go through feels, what you feel and why you cannot drive this way, what is happening with every bit of the car. You close your eyes so you can visualise the movement of the suspension so you can discuss it with the engineer and Jock was super open and we both evolved together, and we invented a lot of stuff throughout the years together.
“After Jock, that was the last time I had that rapport. The few Nascar races I did, it went back to that work fashion, because there was no data acquisition back then, so I could go back to this “form of working, but after Jock F1 had modernised so much that engineers weren’t willing to work in a very close loop way. When Jock would say, ok now the corner will be flat, then it would be, mainly because I trusted it, and that made it fun.
“I remember the championship year I didn’t want to test anymore at the end of the season, I just wanted to focus on the championship, and we had this one last test at Silverstone and the way he convinced me to come to do the testing was: listen, this is the last test we will ever do at Silverstone with slick tyres – because we were moving to groove tyres – and this is the last time you can try Copse flat without lifting, because then we wouldn't have slicks anymore. That was the one thing that made me go and test just to try and it flat. I spun, it didn’t work out, but at least we tried it. When you built that kind of rapport you can do amazing things.”
Do they have to be strong characters?
“It goes both ways. The good engineer will know when to say no, when to pull back, he will feel what the driver needs and whether the driver is capable, and what is his limit at that time, but then it’s not only the engineers.
“You need a driver who is capable of being told no, and accepting it, so you need two strong characters who are capable of taking something quite aggressive as well. That seems to be what’s happening with Max and his engineer when you listen to the way they talk. Sometimes it sounds like he’s too aggressive but no the engineer knows how to handle Max and vice versa, and sometimes it sounds over the edge but we don’t know what it’s like behind closed doors and it seems to work well that way. I seem to remember in the past there were conversations like this but it wasn’t aired as it is now.”
How many years does Lewis have left?
“Alonso is still quick, he’s still hungry. It depends how it goes at Ferrari. If it sucks the energy out of him or not. That’s all. He could do another 10 years. He’s fit, he’s super fit, he’s strong, why stop? Why not? Unless at some point he’s just had enough and he gets tired. It’s when that kicks in, when you’re just too tired. If you wake up and get to the door and think oh gosh I have to go to the track today – if that kicks in, that’s when you have to stop.”
What do you make of comments from Sergio Perez, who’s been talking about people who abuse drivers?
JV - “It’s the price to pay for social media. Drivers use it and abuse it. Everyone uses it to pump up their image and value and so on. When it backfires you just have to roll with it. You cannot have the positives of it and act as if the negatives don’t exist. It is all our fault the way it’s evolved and it’s as much the stars’ fault – the drivers, the different sportsmen, every kind of area, not just sports, but social media is a way of living and building up your image. It will backfire and that’s just the way it is. Be aware that some day it will come back to bite you and if you don’t like it then change job or close your social media. Everyone was super happy with how much more it brings, OK, it brings a lot more but not all of it is good, and you just have to understand it. That’s just the way it is.
“Same thing, when you do that kind of life where your image is paramount and it's not just your results but your image that gives you your job, and you have fans that dream of being you, meeting you, if you’re having a dinner in a restaurant and someone comes to see you and asks for an autograph you just say yes. You’re not allowed to say it’s your private time. No, this does not exist anymore.
“That’s just the way it is. You chose that life. No one forced you to live that life.”
Ricciardo should carry on
It’s been said that Daniel Ricciardo’s time is up and that he should quit F1 – he’d be a good pundit. What do you make of that?
JV - “If he was made a commentator he would leave two zeroes off his paycheck, even more. So long as he can get a ride in F1, why should you give it up if someone is willing to give it to you?
“These are the most stupid comments. Why should you decide to stop what is the best job in the world? Those comments are ridiculous. Daniel is doing the right thing to carry on. Why should he stop? At some point the lack of results will cut him loose or he starts getting the results. It’s one or the other. You know, the results are black and white. It’s a number. It’s not art. It’s not something you can spin.
“He’s living off his image and it seems to not have been damaged a lot even by the lack of results so if he brings more to the team, even in value than what it costs the team, then it’s worth it for a team.”
In terms of Max and where he is, he’s still the king, reigning champion, but there’s a lot of talk about Norris, Hamilton, McClaren… would that frustrate someone like Max or is it just water off the duck’s back? Is he getting the recognition he should?
JV - “It will certainly push him. He’s a fighter. He wants to win. He will find solutions to be more and more competitive. He seems to always find ways to become better. And to become better you need to be beaten. You cannot beat your own shadow.”
After you finished ahead of Michael Schumacher in 1996, he had a second coming to dominate. Can Max do the same?
JV - “I don’t know maybe Max, when he’s done with F1, he’ll do other forms of racing and online racing. It seems that he will always be driving something. He’s very passionate about racing and racing. He’s tireless. The energy that is being taken from drivers and everyone in the industry seems to feed him instead of suck him dry. It’s weird. The more there is, the more difficult it is, the more he gets in – it’s strange. Where others collapse and get tired he thrives off it.
“He’s not the only one but not all have managed to step up. The training was there. It could have been very damaging and instead it made him stronger. It’s down to the survival of the fittest and he’s the fittest. It’s a brutal sport. He was not raised in the normal way, from what we understand, and thank god he’s become such an amazing driver, because if not it would have been damaging.
“You can’t compare [him with Schumacher]. It’s so different. Everybody tries to compare different drivers from different eras but you can’t. You just can’t. He seems to be cleaner. You can’t compare, he’s a cleaner driver. He’s not nasty. It’s the truth. He seems to have a different ethic on the race track, more old fashioned. Something I respect, that’s the way I was brought up, and that’s how I’ve raced all my life so it’s definitely a way of doing things that I respect.”
Will Oscar Piastri be one of the greatest of next decade?
JV - “We’re heard that about a 100 drivers every time. Wait and see. No idea. He’s not at Norris’ level yet. And he has lots of mileage so he’s not on the level of Norris. Norris stepped up. We’ll see if that victory, even if its not feeling as great as having won by strength, will open up the road to the next step in his development.”
Can Lando Norris catch Max?
JV - “Oh yeah. He can. Of course he can. If McClaren continue on that form and Red Bull still suffer then yes he can. The problem that Norris might have is that he’s fighting too many other cars to get those points. He’s fighting the Mercedes. He’s fighting his teammate. And they will all take points off each other, and that will protect Max.”
Norris can catch Verstappen
How satisfying that we have a proper championship battle?
JV - “It’s fantastic because it was unexpected. After the first few races and really the tide has changed dramatically. We were expecting Ferrari to go for the fight but instead it's Mercedes and McClaren and maybe it's up to the engine as well because it's two Mercedes engined cars that have made a step forward.
“When someone wins, or a team wins, year after year you just want them to be beaten. That’s just the way it is. When Mercedes were winning everything with Lewis it got to a point where it was just please can someone beat them. That’s fun, that’s exciting, whoever it is, consistently. Now it seems that we have two teams and cars that can consistently beat Red Bull and Max. Once again, we have to see this steer break – who will be affected the most.”
People were mocking Mercedes but what do you make of their resurgance?
JV - “If you spent years and years with the best car, you don’t need to go deep into yourself to get the lap time. You don’t need to get the perfect setup. You don’t need the perfect strategy. You don’t need anything to be perfect and you still win. You become a little bit lazy and you forget what’s required to get those last bits, and I think that was a slap in the face for Mercedes but Lewis as well, when suddenly the car was not a second ahead of the field.”
Was there too much introspection at Mercedes then?
JV - “I just think it’s the lack of habit of having to fight for a win. A lot of people in that team did not know what it was to not win. Some, like James Vowlves, were there before they started winning. They understood it. But most of the team, 90% of the team, probably did not understand it.
“Oh, suddenly we’re not winning? How is that possible? That’s a big downer and you don't react in one week. It takes a while to digest it, to understand, and to figure out which way to go.”
If you could pick one location for a new Grand Prix what would it be?
JV - “I would want to go to some really odd place like Iceland. At least one race a year should be not for the money it can bring F1, because there obviously isn’t the population, but to go to just an out there place – Hawaii, Iceland, I don’t know, something funky, fun. That makes it exciting for the season. It’s something that stands out.
“When you go to Monaco some people say it's a boring race but it’s still a special venue. It’d be sad to not have it because it does stand out when you have 23 races that are all similar it's good to have a few ones that are slightly different. There’s a spark. It puts a star on the calendar. It’d be good if once a year it would be great to have a race that moves around the planet to go to an odd place, at the cost of F1 even, to make it more international, more exciting, more fun and original, basically.
“I would go to north Sweden and Finland in mid summer when there’s no nighttime. Do the race at midnight under sunshine. It would be cool. Stuff like that. When you do funky stuff like that it’s fun. You’d just do one or two races like that and keep the rest the same.”
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