The best car is not just a car which wins for you, but one which gives you the feedback that you need as a driver so you can have total confidence in it. The best car I ever drove was the active suspension Williams-Renault FW14B, in which we won the 1992 World Championship. It was a brilliant car because the only limiting factor was you, the driver. The car could do anything you wanted it to. For example, if you wanted to go into a particular corner faster than you had ever done before, all that was holding you back was the mental barrier of being able to keep your foot down. If you went for it, the car would see you through. I loved that.
SLOWING THINGS DOWN
Any top class racing driver must have the ability to suspend time by the coordination of eyes and brain. In other words, when youâre doing 200mph you see everything as a normal person would at 50mph. Your eyes and brain slow everything down to give you more time to act, to make judgments and decisions. In real time you have a split second to make a decision, but to the racing driver it seems a lot longer. If youâre really driving well and you feel at one with the car, you can sometimes even slow it down a bit more so it looks like 30mph would to the normal driver. This gives you all the time in the world to do what you have to do: read the dashboard instruments, check your mirrors, even radio your crew in the pits. Thatâs why, when I say after I won the British Grand Prix, for example, that I could see the expressions on the faces of the crowd, itâs because everything was slowed and I had time to see such things.
When you first drive a Grand Prix car, everything happens so quickly that you can sometimes frighten yourself. Once youâve had some experience of racing at these speeds you can get into pretty much any racing car and go quickly, provided that youâre comfortable with the car of course. The more time you spend in the car the more in tune you become with the speeds involved.
Sometimes unexpected things happen incredibly quickly and you just have to rely on instincts to see you through. A good example of this is the incident which occurred when I was with Ferrari at Imola in 1990, when Gerhard Berger in the McLaren pushed me onto the grass at the Villeneuve Curve. That was an incredible moment. It was a split second decision as I travelled backwards at nearly 200mph whether to put it into a spin or whether to try and catch it. I took the first option and managed to bring the nose around the right way and kept on going. Although I cannot say that I saw the direction I was pointing throughout the two full revolutions the car made, I was aware through instincts of exactly where I was going the whole time. The result was a spectacular looking double spin and I kept on going. I probably only lost about 40mph in the spin. Because the adrenalin was pumping so hard after it, I broke the lap record on the next lap.
At times like that youâve got to be a bit careful. Your heartbeat gets up to 150-200 beats per minute. You donât think about it, but it is very important that you breathe properly, because you are on the verge of hyperventilating at that pulse level. It is vital that you understand your body and that you manage it as much as you do the car.
DRIVING ON THE LIMIT
Everybody has different limits, thatâs one of the things which differentiates good amateur drivers from great professional drivers. Most top Grand Prix drivers will go beyond their limits at some time in their career and a few really top ones are able to go beyond their limit, if the occasion demands, for a period of time. Ayrton Senna talked after qualifying at Monaco in 1988 of going into a sort of trance, where he was lapping beyond his limit, treading into unknown territory. He stopped after three laps because he frightened himself. While I would not describe the feeling as being like a trance, I have had a similar experience several times, most notably at Silverstone in 1987, when I caught and passed Nelson Piquet after 29 laps of totally committed driving. This experience of mesmerising speed is described in detail later in the book. More usually that feeling comes when you commit every ounce of your strength and determination on a qualifying lap.
When you go for the big one in qualifying, you give it everything youâve got and on certain corners you over-commit. Now this is where the judgment comes in because if you over-commit too much then you wonât come out of the corner the other side. You enter the corner at a higher speed than on previous occasions and if you are able to carry that speed through the corner you will exit quicker than before. You canât do it consistently because the car wonât allow it and something will inevitably give. Of course you have to feel comfortable with the car. If itâs bucking around all over the place and is unstable even at medium speed through a corner then you would be a fool to go in 20mph faster next time round.
Provided that the car is doing more or less what you want it to, you can hustle it around on one or two really quick laps. It then comes down to your own level of commitment and that depends on so many factors. Some drivers become less committed after they have children, others lose the edge after a major accident, others will become more committed when itâs time to sign a new contract for next year!
Mental discipline plays a huge part in driving on the limit. A top athlete in any sport must be able to close his mind completely to extraneous thoughts and niggling doubts and concentrate 100%. If you want to be a champion, you need to be able to focus completely on the job in hand to the exclusion of everything else going on around you. Your brain must have a switch in it so that the minute you need to concentrate, your mind is right there and ready to go. I have been able throughout my career to give a consistently high level of commitment and even my harshest critics would admit that there are few more committed or focused drivers than me.
Itâs a personal thing. You have to be true to yourself and if I thought that I had lost my edge I would stop racing immediately. I am interested only in success and winning races and if my brain and body did not allow me to be completely committed I would know that I was wasting my time. The moment I feel that, I will retire on the spot.
You can only do what your brain and your body will allow you to do. For example, in qualifying for the British Grand Prix in 1992, the telemetry showed that I was taking Copse Corner 25mph faster than my team-mate Riccardo Patrese, using the same Williams-Renault FW14B. In fact over a whole lap I was almost two seconds faster than him. As we sat debriefing after the session, Riccardo looked at the printouts and said that he could see how I was taking Copse at that speed, but that he couldnât bring himself to do it. His brain was telling his body, âIf we go in that fast, weâll never come out the other side.â
Every really hot qualifying lap relies on the brain and body being in harmony and prepared, at certain key points, to push the envelope, to over-extend. That is the only way you are going to beat the Rosbergs, Piquets, Sennas and Schumachers of this world. It goes without saying that once you operate at that level, your self-belief must be absolute.
In all my career I have done maybe 10 perfect laps. One of the ones I savour the most was at Monaco in 1987. To do any kind of perfect lap is special, but when you do it at Monaco thatâs as good as it gets. When you run the film of the lap through your mind afterwards and you examine every gearchange, every braking point, every turn-in and how you took every corner and at the end of it you say âI could not have done that fasterâ, thatâs when you know you have done a perfect lap. You donât need to go out and try to do better. When you get a lap like that you donât even need to look at the stopwatch on your dashboard or read the pit boards. You know itâs quick.
When I came back into the pits David Brown, my engineer and a man who would become one of my closest allies in racing, pointed out that the white Goodyear logos had been rubbed off the walls of the rear tyres where I had brushed the barriers! You have to skim the barriers at a couple of points when youâre flying at Monaco, itâs the only way to be really quick. It sounds frightening, but itâs supremely exhilarating. I never feel more alive on any race track than I do on the streets of Monaco. Everything has to be synchronised and you need to have fantastic rhythm as well as aggression and a truckload of commitment to be fast there. I have always enjoyed the challenge, but I think also that the romantic in me responds to the idea of going well at this most celebrated of Grands Prix.