Strength under pressure

Where does character come from? Where do you go to mine rich seams of determination? How do you channel testosterone-driven youthful aggression and forge it into steely speed? What part does a ruthless streak, a killer instinct play in the psyche of the top race driver? And how do you meld all these traits together?

Did anyone ever wonder how Ferrari and Michael Schumacher put together such a devastating run of successes in Formula One, I wonder. How much did Michael learn along the way and how much was already there in his character, just waiting to be brought out by environment or opportunity?

Musing on the current crop of young hopefuls currently banging wheels in FIA Formula 3, I see some answers and also some cautionary tales.

Exhibit number one: the list of superlatives and ‘firsts’ that cluster around Marcus Armstrong.

– First Kiwi inducted into the Ferrari Driver Academy.

– First Kiwi to win at this level – effectively GP3 – since Richie Stanaway in 2014.

– First Kiwi to win an F3 race since – actually since Marcus Armstrong in 2018.

– Top rookie at Macau last year.

In two short years Marcus Armstrong has matured into a focussed, fast, pin-sharp race driver whose most recent result has tightened the fight for the FIA F3 Championship title and given rivals cause for some worry as they prepare for the next round.

Cautionary tale

Consider Dan Ticktum, recently ejected (or self-propelled?) from Super Formula in Japan. Here was a driver rated highly by many and in a hurry to garner SuperLicence points ready for the big jump to F1. The story runs the full gamut from “promising star on the rise” through “crazy man takes out F Ford rival under yellow flag” to ‘nothing’s my fault, the car was crap/my rivals were cheating’’.

His recent career path goes from racing ‘traditional’ Formula 3 this time last year and bumping ‘our own’ Marcus Armstrong out of the championship lead, through an ill-advised social media sparring session under the influence of 15 shots of spirits to abandoning the Asian F3 Winter Series part-way through when it became apparent the series wasn’t full of easy-beats and that the Super Licence points were going to other young ‘names’.

Next thing he’s taking his Red Bull Junior self away to Japan to race in Super Formula, where he’d be placed with Team Mugen and go up against the likes of our own Nick Cassidy (among others). He’s clearly not coping – in one race at Sugo in June he’s lapped and finishes 15th, and his team-mate spins off into the kitty litter in the wet while fighting for a podium placing.

By contrast Ticktum’s fellow Red Bull Junior Lucas “Luggi” Auer has had a strong rookie season in Super Formula at the Motopark squad – the Austrian finished third at Sugo to continue his progress after four years out of single-seaters competing in the DTM with Mercedes.

Perhaps Ticktum could have done with a couple of seasons of finishing school at our own Castrol Toyota Racing Series. Luggi came down, thanks to the hard work of talent spotter and ace driver  manager Greg “Peewee” Siddle, and was very much improved for the experience.

But back to Mr Ticktum. A handful of Superformula races later, no results to speak of, he disappears. He’s simultaneously dropped by Red Bull.

This is a guy who won two Macau Grand Prix races. One was a lucky result, the other a genuine hard fought win.

Now consider Estonian Juri Vips, who completed the first part of this year’s FIA F3 Championship second overall and has simply excelled at every level. This is a guy who has retained his Red Bull junior programme status, and rightly so. Vips began competing professionally on the karting scene in 2011, and he took a handful of major titles in his five years in the sport.

In 2016, Vips made his single-seater debut in the Italian F4 and ADAC Formula 4 championships with Prema Powerteam, where he claimed a victory and took the title of Italian F4 rookie champion in 2016. In 2017, Vips continued with Prema in both championships, claiming the ADAC Formula 4 title ahead of teammate Marcus Armstrong who won the Italian F4 title.

Two years later, Vips joins Hitech GP and is picked up by Red Bull Junior Team.

Lawson: what’s going on?

All of which makes Liam Lawson’s current form an enigma. The guy’s got talent, no denying it. He’s infused with the brashness of youth, for sure. He has a robust funding clique behind him. He battled Marcus Armstrong all the way to the final flag-fall (and subsequent stewards’ decision) in this year’s Castrol Toyota Racing Series. He can podium in regional F3 effortlessly.

On paper, his stats are right there with any of his contemporaries.
Yet he languishes in the dirty air of the rearward half of the F3 grid, suffering the ignominy of mechanical faults and setup errors that should not be occurring.

In fact, coming back to the opening of this article, would Michael have struggled similarly if saddled with an engineer or team that didn’t ‘get’ him?

FIA F3 was never on Liam’s dance card for 2019, and was only considered when Formula Masters fell over, by which time the ‘good’ F3 drives were all sold, signed and sealed.

Now, Liam has Richard Verschoor and Simo Laaksonen as team-mates.
On the occasions when everything is right in pit lane and right with the car and the weather, he excels and can claw through to podium finishes – as at Silverstone, where he scored a third place.

It’s just that those instances are rare this year, and even though the move was guided by forces outside his camp he’s quite likely being judged on these results. Not fair on a kid from Pukekohe? Sure, but in that respect the playing field is level – everyone has the same chance. It’s about being in the right team, having the right data and the right engineer – and then bringing the perfect car to the grid in time for qualifying.

It is to his credit that Liam is tenth of 30 in FIA F3 at the break point, but a title is out of the question this year. His team-mate Verschoor – who was very quick in TRS here in New Zealand – is 15th having been in the points twice, while Laaksonen is 20th, having scored points in just one race.
At the risk of bringing out the lynch mob with their pitchforks and flaming torches, I’ll ask the question of the fans: was it a year too early to make the jump to ‘new’ F3, and what can Liam salvage from the year?

Talent to burn at the sharp end of the grid

There’s no shortage of talent in this year’s inaugural ‘new’ F3 championship: Russian Robert Shwartzman currently leads, Vips of course is second on points and Jehan Daruvala is third. Two of those three have raced TRS here in New Zealand. But the biggest move of the closing races was that of our own Marcus Armstrong, the third arrow in Prema Powerteam’s F3 armoury.

Armstrong turned 19 just days before the Hungaroring round, and is looking to do better than last year in F3, when his team-mate Mick Schumacher swept all before him. Very fast in pre-season testing at the Hungaroring, Armstrong fought through to a hard-won eighth in the opening race at Hungaroring, having launched off a horrible P13. That result handed him pole for the second semi-reverse sprint race and it was all on for young and old in the opening laps. Starting alongside Armstrong was Leo Pulcini,  a young charger desperate to make a name for himself and score some badly needed points.

Into the first corner he’s up alongside on Armstrong and even edging in front, but Armstrong’s having none of that and stays the line, into turn two the cars are wheel to wheel, rubber is flying off their tyres and it’s looking like the impetuous Pulcini may take them both off – a horrible flashback to the Ticktum-Armstrong duels of last year which always seemed to go against Armstrong.

Marcus’ take on the duel? Having thoroughly enjoyed battling up through the field the day before, there is no way he’s going to let Pulcini have the best of this. It is lucky, he says, that they rubbed tyres exactly in the right alignment to enable both cars to stay on the track, and thus the fight for the lead was resolved in Marcus’ favour.

With nothing in front of him, Armstrong then gives a clear demonstration of his speed, disappearing into a 12 second lead – the biggest of the championship so far – and winning on the trot, pole to flag. He set fastest lap, too, grabbing the most points possible from that one race. Did he have to win by so much? Of course not. But there was no need to save the tyres beyond the chequered flag lap and I get the impression he’d been wanting to do that for so long.

Also, imagine what that does to Pulcini’s psyche next time they spar. In fact, imagine what it does for the heads of the top six drivers in the championship. Marcus Armstrong’s performance that day now tightens the points table so that effectively the three Prema drivers and Juri Vips are the only real contenders for the title. What a birthday present for the lad from Christchurch!

Timing is everything, and that one race result is perfectly timed – rivals get to go off into the break worrying about their own pace and their own points tally, but unable to do anything to address the challenge. For a couple of weeks it’s going to nag at them. The next round is at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium at the end of August. It’s a circuit Marcus says he absolutely loves, rain or shine; a mad rollercoaster ride that brings out the best– or worst – in any driver.

Racers by the numbers

Statistics gathered from the driverdb,com website

Marcus Armstrong

Races entered 157

Wins 24

Podiums 73

Lucas Auer

Races entered 253

Wins 23

Podiums 81

Jehan Daruvala

Races entered 166

Wins 10

Podiums 38

Liam Lawson

Races entered 134

Wins 34

Podiums 71

Mick Schumacher

Races entered 171

Wins 29

Podiums51

Robert Shwartzman

Races entered 157

Wins 15

Podiums 57

Dan Ticktum

Races entered 122

Wins 12

Podiums 30

Juri Vips

Races entered 132

Wins 10

Podiums 37