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ISTITENE/GETTY
Nasr puts the Sauber
C34 through its paces
in pre-season testing
XPB IMAGES
SEASON
70
PREVIEW
Verstappen has belied his
age with acclimatisation
to life as an F1 driver
XPB IMAGES
Sainz reckons the pressure
to prove himself is less now
he’s made it to F1 on merit
70 AUTOSPORT.COM MARCH 5 2015
WorldMags.net
bothered what or how much people write
about his arrival in F1.
“It’s not something that’s in my head, to be in
a spotlight. All I can say is I’m coming to F1 with
a certain knowledge and a certain understanding,
and I think I’m mature enough now to do it.”
That rookie spotlight is pretty much all on
Verstappen. He’s triggered a fifty-fifty mix of
excitement at the rise of a new talent and horror
at the prospect of a 17-year-old in F1. “Maybe
those people just look at it only from the last bit
when I started to drive an F1 car,” he says of his
critics. “They have to look to my history – how
I got there and how I have prepared. But they
don’t look at that, of course, they just want to be
a bit critical. It’s all right, I don’t care. I just have
to show them I’m different.”
Verstappen, who initially saw F3 alone as a
two-year programme, admits that coming into F1
so young was never on his radar until an unusual
wake-up from Red Bull’s talent guru one Monday
last June. “The day after Norisring [F3 weekend,
where Verstappen took three wins], Helmut
Marko called my dad at eight o’clock in the
morning and said, ‘I want your son in F1 next
year.’ We were like, ‘Whooooaaa. Is this a
dream?’” It soon felt like reality over two months
of split focus between intense meetings over F1
deals and trying to win F3 races, a process that
crystallised into a Toro Rosso contract.
Nasr can’t pinpoint a single defining moment
where his status changed from ‘F1 aspirant’ to
‘signed F1 driver’ either, talking of a long process
between his management and teams, without a
decisive ‘Christmas morning’ where his dreams
came true.
Not so for Sainz. Overlooked in favour of
Daniil Kvyat in late 2013 and then Red Bull
newcomer Verstappen in mid ’14, he was up
against incumbent Jean-Eric Vergne for the
Toro Rosso chance twice denied him already.
Wrapping up the Formula Renault 3.5 title ticked
one box but a test with Red Bull in Abu Dhabi
was the final clincher.
Then it was a matter of waiting for a phone
call, one that his world rally champion father
inadvertently pre-empted. “My father called
Helmut Marko just for another reason, nothing
related to Formula 1. But he used the opportunity
to tell my father and in the end it was actually
my dad who was waiting for me at the hotel to
tell me.” Was that call to Marko really a
coincidence, the day after a make-or-break
test…? “I promise! Sometimes they send wine to
each other… It might’ve been one of those.”
Once you’ve overcome an F1 audition test
successfully, getting down to work as a
confirmed F1 driver is comparatively stress-free,
in Sainz’s experience: “In Abu Dhabi I felt more
pressure, more like I had to nearly surprise
everyone – to do things perfectly, with no
mistakes. At Jerez with Toro Rosso, I was more
calm about everything. It was a test for us to
improve together.
“Once you’re there – and I didn’t expect this
– you feel much more calm, much more relaxed,
you feel much less pressure. You don’t need to
demonstrate to anyone that you must be an F1
driver because now you are one of them.”
Can that serenity carry through to Melbourne?
“It’s one of my targets to be calm in my first
year. If I’m an F1 driver, it’s because they’ve
trusted me, they think I’m ready for this. It’s
not about surprising anyone, you don’t have to
change too many things. Be yourself, use the
same methods that helped you to win the 3.5
title in a good way. That should be enough.