championship: four race wins made me the championship runner-up to Kolby. I was in with a chance of winningthe European championship too: I had tasted pole position and victory at what would become one of my favourite circuits, Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. However, Ralph didn’t let me compete in the last rounds of the championship because he wanted me to focus on the Formula Ford Festival. The European Championship was on the same weekend at Brands so we could have entered but we didn’t want to risk the car – or me – before my second tilt at the festival.
Take it from me, that’s a hard meeting to win, even when you have enjoyed a successful first crack at it, as I had the year before: it’s a lot easier to lose than to come out on top. Michael Schumacher and Kimi Räikkönen rocked up once upon a time and did nothing – that’s the Formula Ford Festival for you.
There were some very fast Formula Ford drivers there and some had been testing on the track for a full week, up to 500 laps in preparation for the racing itself. The track is only a couple of kilometres long, and to get an advantage round there is very, very difficult. It’s Chinese whispers all week about set-ups, tyres, pressures, so you simply try to keep it tight in your own team and figure out what you’re going to use, your gear ratios, your engine. You can’t go there thinking it’s going to be a walk in the park.
Still, I was confident. There were five or six key rivals, the guys to keep an eye on in the heats and semis; I made sure I stayed with them and didn’t give away any grid positions to them. It isn’t a race where you want to be doing too much passing because you only expose yourself to the dreaded DNFs (Did Not Finish), so I wanted to start as far up as possible. There were, as always, a few hotshots fromEurope to contend with, but I qualified on pole position for my heat, and I won that. My race was dry – during the other race there was a bit of a sprinkle so their times were slower – and I found myself on pole for the final.
Pretty soon after the start it was back to normal service: Webber makes a terrible start, drops back to second, it’s a wet race … Yet I knew everything was going to turn out well because it was all happening in slow motion. That feeling comes when you are so in control of the car and yourself that there are no surprises. You really are ahead of every scenario: everything is in hand, as if you’ve been here before. You act instinctively; it’s a matter of muscle memory and reflex. I knew I had the other guys covered, all I had to do was make sure I didn’t stuff it up.
I made it safely through the first lap and I was just starting to line up the race leader. I got a good run out of Clearways on to the straight; he went out wide, I covered that move as well, then thought, ‘I’m going to go round you.’ I got to the middle of the corner – and there were yellow flags everywhere. Someone’s gone off. No! Why has the old bloke upstairs done that to me? So I had to let my man back through again. I put my hand up, let him past, slotted back in behind him, passed him again, built up a lead of more than two seconds – and the red flag came out to signal that the race had been stopped. Restart!
We pulled up on the grid again, I lined up on pole, Jacky van der Ende from Holland was second, Vítor Meira from Brazil fourth or thereabouts. This time, surprise, surprise, I didn’t make such a bad start, but Vítor made an awesome one. So Meira was now leading – but not on aggregate over the two starts, so I was cool with that. I was happy just tostay in touch. We were quicker than anyone else and I knew that if I stayed there the win was mine. I wasn’t going to go anywhere near Meira, there was no point. I’d done the hard work and I was leading the race overall. On the second or third lap after the restart, Vítor outbraked himself and crashed. After that I was on a test run, happily driving
Take it from me, that’s a hard meeting to win, even when you have enjoyed a successful first crack at it, as I had the year before: it’s a lot easier to lose than to come out on top. Michael Schumacher and Kimi Räikkönen rocked up once upon a time and did nothing – that’s the Formula Ford Festival for you.
There were some very fast Formula Ford drivers there and some had been testing on the track for a full week, up to 500 laps in preparation for the racing itself. The track is only a couple of kilometres long, and to get an advantage round there is very, very difficult. It’s Chinese whispers all week about set-ups, tyres, pressures, so you simply try to keep it tight in your own team and figure out what you’re going to use, your gear ratios, your engine. You can’t go there thinking it’s going to be a walk in the park.
Still, I was confident. There were five or six key rivals, the guys to keep an eye on in the heats and semis; I made sure I stayed with them and didn’t give away any grid positions to them. It isn’t a race where you want to be doing too much passing because you only expose yourself to the dreaded DNFs (Did Not Finish), so I wanted to start as far up as possible. There were, as always, a few hotshots fromEurope to contend with, but I qualified on pole position for my heat, and I won that. My race was dry – during the other race there was a bit of a sprinkle so their times were slower – and I found myself on pole for the final.
Pretty soon after the start it was back to normal service: Webber makes a terrible start, drops back to second, it’s a wet race … Yet I knew everything was going to turn out well because it was all happening in slow motion. That feeling comes when you are so in control of the car and yourself that there are no surprises. You really are ahead of every scenario: everything is in hand, as if you’ve been here before. You act instinctively; it’s a matter of muscle memory and reflex. I knew I had the other guys covered, all I had to do was make sure I didn’t stuff it up.
I made it safely through the first lap and I was just starting to line up the race leader. I got a good run out of Clearways on to the straight; he went out wide, I covered that move as well, then thought, ‘I’m going to go round you.’ I got to the middle of the corner – and there were yellow flags everywhere. Someone’s gone off. No! Why has the old bloke upstairs done that to me? So I had to let my man back through again. I put my hand up, let him past, slotted back in behind him, passed him again, built up a lead of more than two seconds – and the red flag came out to signal that the race had been stopped. Restart!
We pulled up on the grid again, I lined up on pole, Jacky van der Ende from Holland was second, Vítor Meira from Brazil fourth or thereabouts. This time, surprise, surprise, I didn’t make such a bad start, but Vítor made an awesome one. So Meira was now leading – but not on aggregate over the two starts, so I was cool with that. I was happy just tostay in touch. We were quicker than anyone else and I knew that if I stayed there the win was mine. I wasn’t going to go anywhere near Meira, there was no point. I’d done the hard work and I was leading the race overall. On the second or third lap after the restart, Vítor outbraked himself and crashed. After that I was on a test run, happily driving
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