Two years ago this weekend Jaime Alguersuari became F1’s youngest-ever rookie driver. Much has changed since then…
Who’s the youngest driver in Formula One? Sergio Pérez, perhaps, or Daniel Ricciardo? Surprising to some the baby of the grid is still Jaime Alguersuari, despite this being his third Hungarian Grand Prix and the second anniversary of his debut.
At the grand old age of 21, Jaime isn’t exactly the elder statesman of F1, but he’s been around for long enough to be able to recall his dim and distant debut with some affection.
“What I remember most is that it was very, very difficult! I hadn’t driven a Formula One car on the track, so the weekend was about learning the controls and just trying to be fast, to improve myself and get to the end of the weekend. The race itself was physically very, very tough.”
Having won the British F3 Championship in 2008 Jaime was a marked man, and spent the first half of the 2009 season splitting his time between the World Series by Renault, and shadowing the Red Bull teams in Formula One as an official reserve driver. But even so he still maintains he wasn’t expecting to jump into a Formula One car for anything other than straight-line testing or a show car run that year.
“I got the call a week earlier, and was told I would be driving for Toro Rosso in Hungary. At the time I was in Germany – I was preparing for a kart race. I don’t know if it’s better or worse to have that week or to be suddenly thrown in on a Friday or Saturday morning. Certainly it was difficult to know how it was going to be, but I definitely spent all week thinking about it.
“It was a crazy year, because I never expected to be where I was, when I was. I’d won British F3 the year before and was looking at doing another year in F3 actually, when everything came together and I went straight into WSR and an F1 team. Crazy.”
'It was a crazy year, because I never expected to be where I was, when I was'
One thing that sticks in the mind from that weekend was the general level of scepticism emanating from the paddock and the press. Jaime’s youth wasn’t questioned so much as his lack of experience. Though other drivers had come into the sport having skipped a few years of their education (Kimi Räikkönen and Jenson Button spring to mind) all had the benefit of testing; Jaime arrived in Hungary never having done a lap in a Formula One car anywhere.
It lead to one British tabloid labelling him ‘The Most Dangerous Man in Motorsport’. With the usual sledgehammer subtlety of the paddock, it went up on the office wall. “Oh yeah, I remember that one. Funny! But definitely not a problem for me. I’m actually thinking of writing it on the back of my next helmet. ‘Danger Man.’ The team were very good, and the advice I had from Franz Tost and Giorgio Ascanelli was very simple: ‘Just bring the car home. Drive. Learn. Don’t worry about anything else, take it easy, and take your time.’
Jaime crossed the line 15th of 16 finishers after an innocuous, trouble-free debut, exactly as he had been asked.
The Hungaroring is a physically demanding circuit of few straight lines and many tight corners, and historically tends to be the hottest European race of the year and frequently the hottest of all. Add in the fact that an F1 race is twice the duration of F3 or WSR and unsurprisingly Jaime admits to finding the experience draining.
“Friday and Saturday were OK, but the race was very, very hard. It was warm and seventy laps around this place is very difficult. I think I had a good debut overall, but I remember it being very hard work. We had the summer break immediately afterwards, but I had no break at all. I was just training. Training, training, training. I needed to be in better shape for the next race. I knew what I needed to do, so I set about doing it.”
'It’s easy to think that the best race is the best result, but it isn’t like that'
The other struggle, and one which Jaime still admits to finding sometimes baffling, was the nuances of set up. “Yeah, I did struggle with that, because F1 cars are technically very sensitive. I didn’t have a reference for how much a front wing change would do, ride heights, set up changes, tyre compounds, understanding the degradation. Very difficult. It took probably a year to get me up to the right level.”
39 Grands Prix on, there isn’t, says Jaime, one race that stands out as a particular favourite, though perhaps surprisingly he does say last week’s 12th place in Germany was one of his best. “It’s easy to think that the best race is the best result, but it isn’t like that. The Nürburgring was really good because I know I got the maximum out of the car. This year Barcelona, Istanbul and Canada have been good too, again because I know we’ve done the maximum. And doing the best you can with the tools you have available. That’s the thing.”
The next stage, says Jaime, requires more from the car. “The target of the team is to improve the car and stay in the points. If we want to keep our position in the championship or battle Force India then we need to develop the car, it’s as simple as this. The other drivers are not overtaking me, the cars are overtaking us – and that’s the way it is in Formula One: it’s an engineers’ championship: with the right car, you’re fast; without it you’re not.”
The 2011 edition of Jaime Alguersuari is confident that he’d beat his younger self hands down, even in the Formula 3 cars where he made his name. “I think I’m a much more complete driver now than I was then. That doesn’t mean I was a bad driver, it just means I’ve gained experience and with the time I’ve had in F1, I’ve learned a lot. You always improve with this, it’s just how life is.”
Want more?
- Read Jaime's Twitter feed
- Head to redbull.com's Hungarian Grand Prix event page
- Check out the Toro Rosso official site
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