How to Be an F1 Driver

by Jenson Button

  Sometimes you’ll get to the point where it feels great, but you wonder if it feels too great. Do we need to reduce downforce? If we did that we’ll be quicker on the straights but the trade-off is that we’ll be slower on the corners. And is that a trade-off we’re willing to make?

  This happened at Spa, for example, in 2012, when I qualified on pole, and went on to win. The car already felt perfect but we still thought there were improvements we could make. Sometimes that can be a bad thing, of course – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – but on that occasion it worked.

  Spa’s probably my favourite circuit – just shading it over Suzuka – and it’s because it’s so smooth and flowing. By tweaking the car to fit the circuit and complement my style we got a perfect synthesis of the two. I’m grinning now, just thinking about it.

  Funny. We never had any involvement with design. The only thing that I would work on was the cockpit. Is it okay to have this switch here? Can we put the fire extinguisher here? Where do you want your CD changer?

  And for me, because I was the tallest driver: are the pedals okay here? Would you like them further away? Narrower? Further apart?

  Aside from that? Nada. You got what you were given. As a driver your input was solely in the cockpit, the simulator and then after practice and testing. It doesn’t have enough rear down-force. It’s oversteery in high-speed corners. I want grip here, I want grip there. My rear’s feeling delicate, matron.

  You’ll spend time in the wind tunnel talking about aerodynamics and they’ll design you a new front wing. Wahey, I’ve got a new front wing, you think.

  ‘It’s going to give us this amount of downforce at the front. You’ll have much more front grip as you turn into the corner.’

  ‘Awesome. So what will happen with the rear grip at the exit?’

  ‘You’ll lose grip at the exit, yes.’

  Not so awesome.

  You really need to keep your wits about you when you’re driving in order to take note of what’s wrong and what’s right about the car; equally you need to become adept at articulating that to the team. You’ll feed back to the engineers and in return you hear, ‘Well, okay, it’s in the pipeline, it’s coming in a few weeks,’ but that might not be soon enough for you, so you end up trading something else you want done in the hope that you’ll get your oversteer sorted a race earlier.

  In short, there are a million things going on at once, developments being made all the time.

  It’s a constant quest for perfection. For the rest of us, it’s about always trying to learn, and if you think you’re weaker than your teammate somewhere, you’re right into the guts of that. ‘Guys, show me why he’s so quick through that corner. Is it the set-up?’

  ‘No, it’s the same car you’re driving.’

  ‘Okay, well what’s he doing differently? I need to see this.’

  So you look at the data – the throttle traces, the braking traces, the steering traces, gears, there’s everything you need to learn from your teammate, and suddenly you’re not so much a racing driver as a detective in a constant quest to be your best.

  7. TYRES

  Question: what do racing divers think and talk about more than anything else? Yes, it’s tyres. And that goes for any class of racing, but especially Formula One. Are we talking about how much we love the tyres? How great they are? No, we’re not. We’re complaining about the tyres.

  In F1 it used to be the case that we had Bridgestone and Michelin who were in competition with each other, meaning that some teams were on Bridgestone and some teams were on Michelin, which meant that the two manufacturers worked night and day to make better tyres, each of them trying to outdo the other, and because of this healthy competition they came up with softer, better, more consistent tyres. It was awesome.

  Old timers like me can remember all the way back to 2004, which was a great year for tyre wars, so the cars were super quick and there was very little degradation of the tyres. They were great tyres because the manufacturers were fighting each other.

  Nowadays – not so good. Since 2011 Pirelli has been the sole supplier of tyres for F1 – and because there’s no competition, there has, in my opinion, not been such an emphasis on development, and the tyres have arguably not been as good. Whatever the reason, I think that every driver in F1 has a whinge about the Pirelli tyres.

  The problem is that nobody really understands them. We don’t get why sometimes you can get it in the temperature working range and it feels good while at other times it just doesn’t work. One race, the temperature for the tyres should be x, and in that range it’s really good. You go to the next race and in that range, they just don’t work.

  As a result the tyres we have now are probably two to two-and-a-half seconds slower than we had back in the golden age of 2004.

  In Super GT, we have four tyre manufacturers: Yokohama, Dunlop, Michelin and Bridgestone, which is great. They’re all trying to outdo each other so you go testing and it’s just non-stop tyres all weekend long. You’ve got brand-new tyres literally being flung at you the whole time (not literally, that would hurt, but you know what I mean) and it’s great; you’re testing 12 different types of Bridgestone all of differing construction. This one’s a bit softer. This one’s a bit stiffer. This one has a different tread pattern. This one plays a happy tune.

  I love all that. Given that much choice you can really tailor your tyres to your specific needs, while the chances are you’ll be on completely different tyres from your competitor. Plus it’s just great fun trying out all these new sets of tyres – until you get to the end of testing and they want your feedback, that is. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? It’s like twelve sets of tyres, how am I supposed to remember all of them?’

  But even if we’re not complaining about tyres, then we’re talking about them: what tyres to use, how warm they are. The tyres we call slicks are the tyres that are made for dry-weather conditions. They have no groove (which is why we’re not allowed them on road cars) and in wet weather you won’t get any grip. The water can’t go anywhere. It just touches the flat surface and you just slide, whereas with a grooved tyre the wet goes through the tyre and you get grip on the roads.

  There are lots of variables, of course. The warmth, which you achieve initially with a tyre warmer and then by getting out on the track; the pressure, although there’ll be a minimum pressure you can run on the tyres, which Pirelli will give you because they don’t want you running it too low and risk damaging the tyre or getting a puncture.

  Also, you have to run two different tyre compounds in the race. Every race weekend you have to run, let’s say, a soft tyre and a medium tyre or, if they’ve brought a medium and a super soft, you have to run one of each in a race. You can’t run just one set of tyres for the whole race, you have to run both, which means that some people might start the race on a soft, some people might start on a medium and then they get to the pit stop and have to swap over. It makes the race more interesting.

  What I really like, too, is how the teams know how much tread is left on the tyre. They have some kind of gadget that actually tells them. It’s amazing. Plus of course you can see for yourself. The thing to look out for is ‘graining’, which is when the tyre is worn or damaged and you get a ripple effect, which in turn means a lot less tyre touching the circuit – because it’s rippled, you get a lot less grip. That happens mainly on the slicks.

  If you get graining on the front, it cleans up. On the rears, it doesn’t often clean up, so if you start getting graining on the rear, you’re in trouble and you would have to pit.

  A lot of it is about looking after the tyres. You might be on a strategy that involves pitting later, so you don’t just go flat out from the word go, because you’ll damage the tyres by lap five, so instead you’re looking after them by braking for a corner a little bit more gently, not putting too much heat into the rear tyre. You’ll exit the corner and the first throttle application will either be a little bit later or a little bit m
ore gentle to stop wheel spin on the rear tyres. Or if it’s a front tyre issue, you enter high-speed corners being that bit more gentle with the steering or go in a little bit slower.

  That’s what I loved about F1. It was always more than just being the quickest from A to B. So if my stint was 25 laps long I’d let the guy in front pull away, knowing that he was going to destroy his tyres. He might pull away and three or four seconds later the team would be, like, ‘Are you okay? Is everything okay?’ and I’d say, ‘Yeah, just looking after the tyres,’ and then towards the end of a stint I would start catching and catching and catching and maybe even overtake him before he stops for new tyres.

  Another thing: marbles. This is what you get outside of the racing line. When the tyre degrades and it slides, you get bits of the used rubber flick off. We call that marbles, and they flick off all over the circuit, meaning that off the racing line there are marbles all over the track.

  This means that if you have to make an overtaking move, it can be difficult, because you get on the marbles and they’re more slippery than the normal circuit. You’ve dived down the inside, you think, Oh, I should brake here, but the problem is the marbles, so you’ve got less grip than you think. Also, if you brake late for a corner, you run wide, you go on the marbles, you come back on, it takes two or three corners before you can clean your tyres and you get the proper grip back.

  It also used to be the case that you could run lots of camber, which is the angle of the tyre affecting the surface area of the tyre that meets the circuit. If the tyre’s standing up straight, i.e., not much camber, you’ll have a lot of the tyre on the circuit on the straight but then the track turns and the tyre is at an angle and you lose grip. If you’re running lots of camber it means you get to the corner and you turn in and you get more front grip. By the same token, if the rear tyres have more camber, it’s more stable at the rear, so you go through a long corner, you get on the throttle and, if you have camber, the rear grip stays good, whereas if the tyres were stood up straight with no camber, you won’t have as much rear grip, so you’ll have oversteer.

  That being the case, in F1 you try and run as much camber as you can, and with Michelin and Bridgestone you could play around with it a lot more; you could run different pressures and temperatures, you could mess around with everything.

  Pirelli? Not so much. They’re, like, No, you can’t do any of that, because they’ve had tyre failures and they don’t want tyre failures. I guess it looks bad for the brand.

  So they’ve limited everything. You can only go so far with the rear tyre camber, front tyre camber; you have to run a certain pressure, you have to run a certain temperature. This was another area we could really play with in F1, and suddenly it’s gone.

  But wait, I’m about to get all fair’s fair and even-handed on your ass, because while there is indeed a lot of frustration aimed at Pirelli, you’ve got to say also that Pirelli is the only tyre manufacturer that’s willing to be there, and despite taking a lot of flak are still there, plugging away. And, after all, I do think they’ve improved. And the fact is, that we’re always going to whinge about the tyres, because they’re the most important thing in a way, they’re the things that are touching the ground, the only things that touch the ground.

  Three Races Where Tyres Really Mattered

  Hungary, 2006

  Driving for Honda, I’d qualified fourth but we had an engine failure in practice and then I got a ten-place penalty, so I started 14th.

  Yeah. I know.

  So anyway, it was wet and it was all about fighting through. It was me, Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso all fighting the whole time because they’d been penalised, too, so like a bunch of naughty schoolboys we all started near the back and fought our way through, meaning that it was a hell of a battle to the front.

  As the circuit dried out, it was about looking after the tyres, but still making the moves when catching the leaders. Then came the all-important tyre change, because once again we moved to slicks at the right time and that was it, I was in the lead and I was radioing in, saying, ‘What’s the gap for the guy behind me?’

  ‘Thirty-five seconds,’ they said.

  I was, like, ‘Wow, okay, that’s quite a big gap,’ and then I just enjoyed the last ten laps of the race. I didn’t want it to end, it went by way too fast.

  The last few laps, I’d backed it off and just cruised in and I was radioing into the team, ‘Is everything okay with the car? Do I need to do anything?’ They said, ‘No, it’s all okay,’ and I clinched my first victory.

  Silverstone, 2009

  This, you will remember, was the Championship year, me racing for Brawn, Silverstone the eighth round, and I was out in front, leading my teammate Rubens Barrichello by 26 points, with Red Bull Sebastian in third.

  I arrived full of anticipation, thinking this could be my year, but we got there and it was cold and it stayed cold all the way through testing. My times were poor, Rubens was beating me, and I couldn’t understand why. How come I was being so slow and he was being so quick? Until the team pointed out that my tyre temperatures were way lower than his. Why couldn’t I get the heat into my tyres and he could? Because of the difference in our driving styles: mine, smooth and precise; his, aggressive. I ended up qualifying sixth (and only by the skin of my teeth). The race then became a case of me trying to work out how to drive on my tyres, which I did, but all too late and nowhere near the podium finish I’d been hoping for.

  Monaco, 2009

  I got away in the lead and pulled a good gap. It was clear that Rubens, in second, would be damaging his rear tyres by following closely, so I just took it easy on the tyres on entry, accelerating gently, limiting wheel spin so that my tyres were in much better condition than his, because he was following so closely.

  By the middle of the race, I’d pulled a good gap and then I backed it off for the last stint and just drove it home. But the funny thing is, however easy you go in Monaco, it’s still proper scary, because of the walls and in Monaco, especially when you’re leading, the circuit just seems to get narrower and narrower and narrower as you get more and more tired. I mean, you physically get tired, but mentally it’s so draining, the focus you need.

  CHAMPAGNE SPRAYING IS ALL IN THE THUMB

  1. THE WINNING

  So, not only have you managed to get signed, bought a boat, a motorhome and have amassed a garage full of cars that cost you a fortune on tax, insurance and storage, but you’ve only gone and won a bloody race. Here’s everything I know about what to do next.

  It’s never a good look to start the celebrations before you’ve actually won

  It’s Canada, 1991, Nigel Mansell is on the home run, cruising to victory, when he starts waving to the crowd.

  ‘Nigel, don’t wave to the crowd too soon there, buddy,’ remarks a commentator, and they’re prophetic words, because Nigel’s revs drop, his engine cuts out and that’s it, his race is over.

  It’s been said that Nigel – ‘our Nige’ – knocked the ignition switch while waving to fans, which would be gutting for him if it were true, although as to whether it is, I couldn’t say. Point being, don’t go too early. Don’t celebrate until you know you’ve got it. Rule One.

  A similar thing happened at the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2008 (yet another race that was very dependent on tyres, in this case, the swapping from wet to dry and then back again). In order to win that year’s Championship, Felipe Massa, in a Ferrari, needed to win the race with McLaren’s Lewis lower than fifth.

  As a result, the race was a proper nail-biter (although my car caught fire, so I had other things on my mind), not least for Lewis who didn’t fare well in the pit stops.

  Cut to the chase, though, and Massa crossed the line in first with Lewis back in sixth, which, as it stood, meant that Massa had clinched the Championship, not Lewis.

  Sure enough, the cameras went to the Ferrari garage, which erupted into the kind of rapturous celebration that shakes the camera because i
t’s being jostled. Except that this was one of those premature celebrations I’m talking about, because back out on the track Lewis was busy snatching back a Championship-winning place. Indeed, on the very last corner of the last lap of the last race, he took fifth, making him the Champion, and not Massa.

  In the McLaren garage they went nuts. Back in the Ferrari garage their own celebration died on the vine, just like that. The blood drained from their crestfallen faces. Their heads went into their hands. One of the Ferrari guys was so pissed off that he headbutted a marketing stand, and it is said that Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo was so cheesed off that he destroyed the television he was watching (although Ferrari still won the Constructor’s, so come on, mate, keep things in perspective, eh?).

  You get out of the car very quickly when you’ve won

  Your steering wheel comes off, safety straps unbuckle, headrest unplugs, you jump out and you’re on the car and you’re just, like, ‘Hell, yeah!’

  At the same time, you’re looking around and you see your team, and they’re going wild and you’re giving them the full beam while at the same time you’re looking for specific people, whether it’s friends, family, whatever, and you wave at them and you wave at the crowd, who are hopefully cheering for you and not booing you (we’ll talk about Monza in a bit) although it doesn’t really matter because you’ve still got your helmet on and nothing could penetrate that bubble of joy anyway. And then you run over to the team, jump on them and they’re all kissing your helmet – your crash helmet – and then you get dragged away to do the rest of your stuff.