The Red Bulletin F1 Daily UK 03/21

SATURDAY, 3 JULY, 2021

AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT F1 NEWSPAPER

THE SECRET HISTORY OF TOTO WOLFF The Mercedes boss‘ days of records, rallying, and racing with Red Bull

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Sensational days in red-white-red: finally, there are fans in Spielberg again, Max Verstappen (pictured) is hot favourite, and teammate Checo Perez is driving his 200th GP.

CLOCKWORK

ORANGE After last week’s successful Styrian GP, this weekend’s Austrian GP is all about setting a record: if Max Verstappen can repeat his victory from last Sunday, he will be the first F1 driver in history to win four times at this track.

In yesterday’s two free practice sessions the Dutchman posted excellent lap times, showing he has no intention of letting his rivals have the slightest say in his role as boss in Spielberg this weekend.

“Don’t let the lion stand around in his undershirt.” Can’t understand a word we’re saying? Maybe reading our columnist on page 6 will help.

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We’ve been waiting for these pictures for over a year: well-filled stands, and it’s only Friday. 100,000 spectators are expected for the weekend.

No more records: from the race after next, it will barely be possible to stop in less than two seconds due to a change in the pit stop regulations.

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WERNER JESSNER

“Is rain coming?” “Not today.

But probably on Sunday.”

Christian Horner and Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto are certainly talking shop about the weather here.

Warning, track limits: yesterday, the drivers repeatedly lost lap times because they drove over the yellow “sausage kerbs”. This could also be an issue in today’s qualifying.

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The Red Bull Skydive Team already jumped in yesterday for their big performance at the GP on Sunday.

Impressive rookie Yuki: still racing in F2 until this year, Tsunoda in the AlphaTauri was in the top 5 for long stretches yesterday.

Australian with an affinity for football: Daniel Ricciardo, here on the podium in 2017.

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WERNER JESSNER

From the hunted to the hunter: after years of dominance, Mercedes is no longer the favourite. It’s good for the sport.

GRAND PRIX OF STYRIA 2021 06.– 08. AUGUST | RED BULL RING

MOTORRAD GRAND PRIX VON ÖSTERREICH 2021

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PIT BITCH: HELEN PARADYCE

Fish eggs, baseball bats, clown cars and underdressed lions. Our confused columnist reckons 2021 is shaping up nicely, if a little strangely…

C

an a year have passed since we were last here, bursting with hope and expectation that a full season of Formula 1 lay ahead of us? The hastily commissioned team-branded masks were barely fit for purpose, but we didn’t care, we were about to go racing and could see the light at the end of the tunnel, except the light turned out to be the oncoming train transporting the second and third waves of the pandemic.

However, as always in F1, the sport took a look at the regs, found a way to navigate around the problems and beat every other sport to the competitive punch. Staging a whopping 26 F1 races in 52 weeks is a unique, unbelievable performance, except that ‘unique’ and ‘unbelievable’ are generally words I use when having to think of something non-committal to say to actor friends after the opening night of a terrible show.

I just don’t think F1 needs to be rammed down our necks at a rate surpassed only by the number of times everyone has to be deep-throated with a cotton bud, to prove viral purity. If you are constantly fed a diet of caviar, eventually you see it for what it is – slimy, salty fish eggs.

Here in Austria there is nothing fishy about food preferences, best summed up as ‘veal is life’. And if it’s not schnitzel, they love a bit of a dairy, to the extent they actually have a cheesy libation called Lattella, something I assume would only appeal to fans of Daniel Ricciardo’s shoey.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be here, because the delights of an Austrian double-header bring back memories of the fun I had as a chalet girl in Kitzbühel. Of course, after the holiday romance wore off, double headers gave way to back-to-backs and then, when regular partners decided it was all a bit unsanitary, the inevitable one-time assignations with desperate old flames looking to rekindle a dead romance. Yes, we’re looking at you Istanbul Park.

Going back to caviar, it has to be said that the current season is the finest Royal Beluga, as we’ve finally got the Max-Lewis fight we’ve been craving. Lewis is still Lewis and Max has matured into a calmly confident driver, who no longer tries to win every race at the first corner of lap one. It also helps that he no longer looks quite so much like Alfred E Neuman off the cover of ‘Mad’ magazine.

Mercedes’ troubles haven’t been helped by Valtteri Bottas’ woes, the normally ultra-reliable Finn sometimes looking about as

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HELEN PARADYCE

competitive as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest. I refuse to feel sorry for F1 drivers, given the life they lead, but a bit of sympathy for VB might be in order. I remember Eddie Irvine comparing being Michael Schumacher’s team-mate to waking up every morning and being hit on the head with a baseball bat.

This year’s great racing hasn’t got in the way of gallons of ink being wasted in the media on what really matters – wobbly wings, exploding tyres and comedy trackside hazards. Fans just want to see the drivers racing hard, not Coco driving his Clown Car, with the mirrors and doors popping off and the steering wheel coming away in his hand, as he honks his horn after hitting a Sausage Dog kerb.

Looking back at the Styrian GP, I can’t believe Verstappen didn’t win Driver of the Day. The last time I paid attention, all of the Netherlands was duty bound to vote for Max after every race, even if he retired on the formation lap. Then I realised they were all too busy packing their caravans with all the orangery they can find – scarves, shirts and of course the lion costume – ready for this weekend’s full house. They’ll be here in their colourful thousands singing their strange songs with lyrics such as “Laat de leeuw niet in zijn hempie staan”, which as you all know translates as: “Don’t let the lion stand around in his undershirt.” No, me neither.

TIM MARRS (COVER), YANN LEGENDRE

‘If you are constantly fed caviar, eventually you see it for what it is – slimy, salty fish eggs.’

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3 July, 2021 The Red Bulletin

Toto Wolff as we know him: in command, on the Mercedes pit wall.

THE SECRET LIFE OF

The world knows him as Mercedes’ commanding team principle. But TORGER CHRISTIAN WOLFF used to be a very different type indeed. A glimpse into the secret Red Bulletin archive reveals a multifaceted racer who didn’t shy away from drama.

Words WERNER JESSNER

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TOTO W.

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Helmet on for a drive from hell. “They always say only locals can drive fast here. I drove up from Vienna, practised a bit and now we’ll see what happens.”

The record is gone: 7:03 minutes for 20.8km. Toto said afterwards: “The car seems a little bit dangerous to me.

Anything can happen on the Nordschleife.

You’ll quickly end up in the local hospital in Adenau if you don’t watch out.”

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TOTO, THE RECORDHOLDER

The Nordschleife of the Nürburgring is rightly considered the toughest racetrack in the world. In April 2009, Toto tried to break the lap record of 7 minutes and 7 seconds in a Porsche 911 RSR. He did it on his first attempt: 7:03.28. Then there was the unofficial – timed by a hand-held stopwatch – Niki Lauda record from the 1970s of 6m58s. Toto wanted to break that too. The fact that fingernail-sized chunks of tyre were coming loose on the first lap should have given Toto pause for thought. Hardly, and so the inevitable occurred... He came off at the notorious Fuchsröhre (Foxhole) at 268kph. It took months for him to be able to taste and smell again after the fearsome crash; the deceleration on impact shook his nerves badly.

The Porsche 911/997 was the tool of choice for the attempt to break the Nürburgring lap record in 2009. The 460hp racing car had dominated the 24-hour race on the same circuit in previous years.

Toto’s friend Niki Lauda called the attempt “the most stupid suicide mission I’ve ever heard of in my whole life”.

Porsche said: “It was the worst-damaged roll-cage a driver had ever managed to bring in by himself.”

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Full-on attack: Toto quickly won his way to spectators’ hearts with his uncompromising driving style. And he thought internationally right from the off; in 2002 he even finished a respectable sixth in the N-GT category at the FIA GT Championship.

TOTO, THE RALLY DRIVER

Wolff’s co-driver Gerald Pöschl guided the future team boss through thick and thin during their rally years.

Among the established rally-drivers, Toto was seen as someone who sought his limits at the upper extreme and learned from his mistakes. He is convinced, “I could have made a living from rally driving.”

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Even though he cut his motorsport teeth on the race track, he was just as taken with rally driving. And as Toto probably thought at the time, it would at least provide a lot more fun in a day than you’d get in a long-distance race, which largely consisted of waiting around. He was a latecomer to the rally stages but he learned quickly. And as we know of Toto, he didn’t do things by half measures. From July 2006 to late 2013 he was involved with Austrian Raimund Baumschlager’s elite rallying outfit, BRR, and drove their cars, mostly Mitsubishis. The highlight from that period was second place in the Austrian championship behind team-leader, Baumschlager himself.

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TOTO, THE BULL

ARCHIV DIETER QUESTER

In the early 2000s, Toto took part in the FIA-GT World Championships and in other major long-distance races in São Paolo, Spa-Francorchamps and Silverstone. He racked up class wins over a number of years for Porsche, BMW and Ferrari alongside team-mates such as Karl Wendlinger, Dieter Quester and Philipp Peter. In 2006, he wrote history with the latter pair and German legend HansJoachim Stuck when he won the first Dubai 24-Hour Race wearing blue Red Bull overalls.

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You wouldn’t have thought back in 2004 that this young man with the nice hair and the plastic watch would years later go on to become the successful Mercedes team principal and the toughest rival for his partner of many years, Red Bull.

Legendary… Class victory for Wendlinger/ Wolff/Quester/Zonca at the 1000 Miles of Interlagos in 2004.

And who recorded the quickest lap in the toughest of conditions?

Yup, Toto Wolff.

Toto Wolff, Philipp Peter and Dieter Quester celebrate winning the 2005 Misano 6 Hours in their BMW E46. Virtually like father and son, Toto only contested one long-distance race without veteran star Dieter by his side.

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LEARN AND COME BACK

STRONGER

After a tough start to his F1 career PIERRE GASLY has bounced back in style. And for the Frenchman, the strength of his recovery is founded on the lessons he learned in his earliest years in single seaters. Here, Pierre picks the races that made him one of F1’s hottest properties…

Words MATT YOUSON

P

ierre Gasly has experienced more than the average 25 year-old – even more than the average 25 year-old F1 driver. At the moment, he’s riding the crest of a wave, delivering the sort of electrifying qualifying laps and strong races that mark him out as a top talent.

Of course, Pierre has been here before.

Few drivers will experience the rapid rise, shattering fall, and extraordinary return that the young man from Rouen has been through. But through it all Gasly has shown remarkable resilience, a mental fortitude he says comes from experience.

“You always improve and year-after-year you become stronger. But also you become who you are race after race, building, getting more experience,” he says. “And also, you progress from the mistakes and failures, because that’s how you improve.”

When asked to list the races that have made him the driver he is today, Pierre, perhaps surprisingly, largely opts for formative experiences during his time in the Red Bull Junior Team. He confesses it’s difficult to list only a few when there are so many – but these are the races that stand out for him.

SANDRO BAEBLER

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A member of F1’s elite band of race winners, Pierre Gasly has matured to become one of the sport’s top talents.

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3 July, 2021 The Red Bulletin

2013

Unrewarded in Italy

FORMULA RENAULT 2.0, CIRCUIT DE CATALUNYA, SPAIN, SEASON FINALE. TECH 1 RACING, P6 “My final race in Formula Renault 2.0 sticks in my mind because I won the Championship that day – but it was a very tight battle with Oliver Rowland that went down to that final race. I remember qualifying was going really badly! I had a lot of traffic and yellow flags and just couldn’t do a lap. It was a highpressure situation, I was down in P20 with just one more chance – which had never been something that happened before during that year. I had a clean lap and took pole position.

“I went into that last race of the season leading by eight points.

Rowland tried to pass me on the first lap and crashed into me, trying to win the title. He broke his front wing, and damaged my car. He picked up a drive through penalty, but I was able to recover and finish sixth. It was quite an intense experience but dealing with that sort of thing was valuable later.”

2015

GP2 FEATURE RACE, MONZA, ITALY, DAMS, DNF

“There were a couple of memorable races in GP2 but the one that really stands out is from my first year, in Monza. I took my first pole position Looking back, I remember at the time feeling that I was really fast in qualifying and that in the race we were struggling a bit more – but even so we were leading quite comfortably. And then we broke the driveshaft during the pit stop. I remember it being difficult to digest. It was an important one. It would have been my first win in GP2. For me, I learned to accept that you can sometimes have a great weekend on a personal level but with no reward.”

2016

GP2 FEATURE RACE, SILVERSTONE, ENGLAND. PREMA, VICTORY

An emotional victory at Silverstone

“In 2016 I won the GP2 title, and the weekend that really stands out for me was Silverstone. It was my first win of the season, but it sticks in the mind because it was a particular sort of weekend. On Friday, I was involved in a road car crash. It was a bad one. [Travelling to the circuit, with Pierre in the back of the car with his mother, the car was involved in a collision with another vehicle, and reportedly rolled four times before coming to a halt 50m from the road].

“My Mum went to intensive care with broken vertebrae, broken ribs and a head injury. She was kept in intensive care and it was quite worrying. I went to the track and was fastest in practice, then in the afternoon I qualified P2 and won the race on Saturday. It was odd because my parents were not there at the time to celebrate with me. I was strangely motivated but it was one that, mentally, was not easy: to go through the weekend but still manage to perform.”

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2020

FORMULA 1 ITALIAN GRAND PRIX, ALPHATAURI, VICTORY

Unexpected joy in Monza

2017

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SUPER FORMULA AUTOPOLIS ROUND, JAPAN, TEAM MUGEN, VICTORY More often than not a GP2/F2 champion can find an F1 seat for the following season, but with no seat available at Red Bull’s F1 teams, Pierre was sent to Japan for a year of racing in the high-powered Super Formula championship. He came within half a point of winning the title, and had the final two rounds not been cancelled due to Typhoon Lan, may have gone one better – but the experience was critical. Pierre lists his race win at Autopolis as the stand-out race – because he and his team decided to gamble on the unknown Soft compound tyre. It was part of a larger learning cycle that saw him take a much deeper dive into technical matters – if only to be better understood.

“Japan was a lot of new things for me. When I went to Japan, I had no idea what was going to happen. I built a relationship with Honda and

Japan: wiser and more experienced

was also able to spend more time than usual with my team and understand how they operate.

I didn’t speak Japanese, only one guy in the team spoke English, so there was a lot of potential for miscommunication. I became more involved on the technical side so they could understand what I needed. Great experience. I learned a lot and was much more involved than I’d been in other series where the driver gives feedback but concentrates mostly on driving.”

Pierre’s performances in Japan, learning new circuits and new technology, embedding himself in a different culture and producing results from day one earned him a call-up to Toro Rosso for the final few F1 rounds of 2017 before a full-time drive for 2018. In 2019 a step up to Red Bull Racing resulted in the toughest time of Pierre’s career as he struggled with the RB15 and was eventually sent back to Toro Rosso to build again. In Spa that year he also lost close friend Anthoine Hubert to a fatal crash in Formula 2. It was a dark period for Gasly, but through the next year he channelled the negative energy into positive races, scoring his first podium in Brazil and then last year an incredible first win at the Italian Grand Prix.

“It takes so many things to win a race in F1. When I crossed the finish line I just thought of my team, my family — I was so thankful for all of their hard work, their sacrifices,” he told The Players Tribune. “I knew that I was the one who had physically crossed the line, but they had all been there right beside me. That cool down lap ... I wish I could experience that a million times.

The best feeling. The best.”

Reflecting on those years, Pierre says they have made him the driver and person he is now.

“You always have challenges in life, whatever you do,” he says.

“It’s not only myself. Everyone can relate to that. It’s important to face those challenges and I think that’s also what shapes you as a person – as a driver, as a human. This period of my life shaped who I am today and even if it was tough I never gave up and I always had a clear idea of what I want to achieve in the sport.”

And have all of these formative experiences contributed to the success he’s now enjoying? Pierre grins: “Of course! The good days but also the mistakes and failures – because that’s how you improve yourself, how you learn and come back stronger.”

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25.06.21 14:33