Q&A: Gary Anderson - Part 3 - EXCLUSIVE.

by Russell Atkins:

Following a nigh-on 30-year career in the top flight, former Jordan and Stewart designer Gary Anderson has been there and seen it all, and with Melbourne now only a matter of hours away that puts him in the perfect position to cast his eye over the current grand prix grid.

While firmly believing we are in for one of the most exciting, open and unpredictable campaigns in years, the Irishman is adamant there is still a long way to go if Formula 1 is to re-attain its dwindling fan base. Here he looks to 2007, and beyond...

Q:
Gary, what do you think we have to look forward to in Formula 1 in 2007?

Gary Anderson:
I think really one of the best seasons we will have had in a very long time. The tyre rules obviously are going to negate any benefits that either Michelin or Bridgestone had, so that's a good thing. I don't think Ferrari will really have any advantage from that. For sure they will be strong but I don't think it will be because they've had a relationship with Bridgestone for so long. Most of the teams are pretty clever and will get on with it pretty quickly. I do like competition, but seeing it from the outside now the change will definitely simplify things.

The driver changes are very interesting. We've got Fernando Alonso at McLaren and Lewis Hamilton - who I think is an absolute star - coming in. That will be great because he is now paired up with the man who is classified as the best in the world. He has got the best tutor anybody could ever have and as long as he takes that the way I think he will - completely open-minded and willing to learn - I think he will do a great job and I wouldn't be surprised to see him even shock Alonso a few times along the way.

Then you've got Kimi Raikkonen at Ferrari. With Ross Brawn having left the team has changed quite a lot, and it's going to be quite interesting to see if they can keep themselves together. Ferrari has often had a habit of retreating into its Latin temperament with Italians flying out of control before Ross and Michael Schumacher joined and stabilised it. Now they have both left there are changes afoot, so maybe Kimi just happens to be going at the wrong time. I think they will still keep their competitiveness for a while, but Kimi will need to get on with it pretty quickly at the start of the year and try to build a relationship with the people there like Michael did. I'm just not sure he's that kind of person.

As for the rest there's a real mix-up. I would be surprised if the Alonso-McLaren combination doesn't come out on top of the pile at the end of the day. I feel McLaren is a big enough structure. They've been without Adrian Newey for a year now and will have had time to regroup. I think 2006 was the most difficult year for them. Adrian had designed and conceived the car and then somebody else had to develop it. Now they will know which direction they are going in. I do think Raikkonen and Felipe Massa at Ferrari will give us a few thrills along the way though too. Renault with Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen is going to be a tough one. When you look at the past two years, both times Alonso beat Fisichella seven-one in terms of race wins with far more points. I don't see why Fisi will now suddenly put the lights switch on. I truly did think he had it - when he was with us at Jordan I thought he was the man if only he had the opportunity. He has now had that opportunity but didn't really make it work. Kovalainen, though, is a new force, and I think he is very, very good. The new drivers coming in are really going to mix things up. I think it is going to be one of the best years we have seen in a very long time.

Q:
Do you think that with all the driver changes and now just one tyre manufacturer it will provide a more level playing field than has been the case in recent years?

GA:
It will do. The tyre change will help make it more of a level playing field, but we saw last year there were five teams on Bridgestone tyres, one of them good and the other four not so good. It was the same with Michelin, and you will still get that with a one-tyre rule. It will just now be a problem for the teams to deal with. It will no longer be a case of blaming the wrong tyres, like when Ferrari's Bridgestones were not as good as the Michelins in 2005. They couldn't do anything about that, but now it will be up to the teams to make the tyres work well. The teams are now in control.

The new drivers coming in are exciting. I think at the moment Formula 1 cars are too easy for a young driver to just jump in one of them and do a decent job in it. We have seen that with Robert Kubica, Nico Rosberg and any one of the new Friday drivers last year. To actually win a race, though, is pretty difficult. Rosberg is into his second year now. You can't say he is inexperienced anymore. He has a lot of experience - he has been racing since he was able to stand up. Yes it's only his second year in Formula 1, but he has to be classified now as somebody who should be doing a good job.

The young drivers coming in can really mix it all up a bit in their first year. I think if either Hamilton or Kovalainen can come in and qualify inside the top six and maybe just nip at a rostrum now and again they will have done an absolutely fantastic job. If they can win a couple of races, and not just by luck, then they will be megastars. That's what we have to judge it on. There's the wily experience of someone who has been around for a few years like David Coulthard, Rubens Barrichello or Mark Webber, even Alonso, up against the new guys who will just be going out there and giving it a bit of a fling. That's what we like to see. I love the new drivers - they really have a go and that's the important thing.

Q:
Talking of Lewis Hamilton, obviously this year he is being thrown in right at the deep end in one of the top teams and with, as you say, the reigning double world champion as his team-mate. Ron Dennis has been making some noises about how he hopes Lewis may win a race in his debut season. Do you think that's something that's achievable or do you think having Alonso as a team-mate will put a lot of pressure on him?

GA:
I think it's very achievable. I've watched the guy over the last two years. He has been backed by McLaren for a long time so I knew this type of thing was going to happen. He has been very successful. In GP2 he won the championship, and in some races he was right at the back of the grid for various races and had to come through the pack. He had that pure determination and he deserves his drive at McLaren.

A lot of people are saying it's a year too early and that he should have had another year's testing first, but I think that's absolute rubbish. As I said, the cars are reasonably easy to get in and do a competitive job in. He has the best tutor in the world in Fernando Alonso, and he has the strength of mentality to allow him to learn from Alonso. He should take the opportunity with open arms and get on with it. He has got a great opportunity to become one of the best Formula 1 drivers in the longer term.

Has he got the talent to win a race in 2007? Yes he has indeed. But does McLaren have the ability to handle a new driver coming in? That's the question mark. I think I would turn the question around, and say if Lewis Hamilton doesn't win a race in 2007 it will be because McLaren will have let him down, not because he is not capable of it. McLaren are not renowned for their ability to bring on new drivers. I think Michael Andretti back in 1993 was the last time they took on a Formula 1 novice, and that didn't work out too well. I think if Lewis doesn't win it will be McLaren who have let him down.

Q:
McLaren and Renault have both gone for a mixture of youth and experience on the driving front, whereas Ferrari has two established stars. One of the main ingredients that made Ferrari so successful when Michael Schumacher was there was his work ethic, and one of the major criticisms of Kimi Raikkonen in recent years is that he has been a bit too lazy almost, whereas Felipe Massa was coming on very strong towards the end of last year. How do you think that will all play out?

GA:
I like Massa. I know him reasonably well personally and he is a nice guy. I think he has the advantage. He has done two years with Ferrari - in 2003 and racing last year, and he should have learned from Michael's work ethic and now use that to his advantage. Kimi gets in the car at the weekend and just drives the wheels off it. If it's quick he will be quick for sure, and if it's not then he will do the best job he can with it. But then he walks away and doesn't think about it.

Michael Schumacher was one of those dedicated people who was committed to the whole picture, not just driving on a race weekend. He slept on it, thought about it, phoned up about it and all that sort of stuff. I think if Massa has picked up just a little bit of that and the way Ferrari operates he will use it to his advantage. I think Massa will come out on top, albeit with Raikkonen being the quickest driver on a given weekend. If they can achieve what Kimi wants out of the car and are happy to accept this visiting weekend warrior who gets in and does the job but isn't Michael Schumacher in-between race weekends then he could be very strong. It's all a matter of Ferrari's expectations and the car they give Kimi to drive. I think they will give him a good car for sure, but whether it will match what Kimi wants we will have to wait and see.

Q:
Giancarlo Fisichella as you said you know very well from your time together at Jordan. He was rather in the shadow of Alonso over the past couple of years, and now he has a rookie team-mate in the shape of Heikki Kovalainen coming in. Do you think this is his last chance to prove himself, and will he be able to step up to the game?

GA:
I think it's definitely his last chance to prove himself. I think Renault is more capable than most other teams of giving their two drivers an equal opportunity. For Alonso to have beaten Fisi seven-one on race wins in each of the last two years is a pretty big difference, but then Alonso's vision is completely different. His ability to buy into the team strategy and the way they operate is so much stronger than Fisi's. This is his big challenge now.

Kovalainen is certainly quick but has he got that vision that takes you to the end of a race in front of everybody else? Alonso had the vision to win world championships. He has done it two years in a row, and in a lesser car than the McLaren and Ferrari he beat in those years. He had the vision to see it through, race hard and drag in the points when he needed them. I'm not sure Fisichella has that. If Kovalainen starts off strongly and can beat Fisi I think we will see the shoulders go down and he will know himself that it's over.

Q:
2006 was memorable for Jenson Button achieving his first grand prix victory. His Honda team has always seemed to be more thereabouts than actually there. How do you think they will fare this year?

GA:
It's a tough one. They ended 2006 looking very strong. They won in Hungary and yes you could say it was a bit of an advantageous win but we have all had them. The team ended the season as a very strong points-scorer. The problem is this year is a new car, and it will need to be better than the old one. Everybody goes off and does wind tunnel tests to make the chassis lighter and all sorts of different stuff. I've done it for many years myself. You end up with what you think is a better package and then go out onto the track and just pray the stopwatch tells you the same thing. If it's not you have to go off and do your research and find a solution.

If they can start out with a car that suits Jenson and is as good as the one with which they finished 2006 then I think they will have a strong chance to be competitive and knocking on the door at the front end. Jenson does drive a car differently to other drivers though. He brakes early, gets into the corner and keeps the minimum corner speed high. He relies on the balance of the car for a higher percentage of the lap than other drivers. A lot of other drivers brake late, dive into the apex, turn the car quite quickly and accelerate again. They rely on the balance of the car for a very short time over the course of the lap.

I think when the car is not good that's when we see Jenson dropping away, because he relies on it a lot more than purely for braking and accelerating. If the car can keep its balance and if it can last for him then he can be very quick. That's why we often see him up at the front of the grid in qualifying, because new tyres add to the balance of the car, but as the race goes by we see him dropping away a lot of the time. The team seemed to be on top of that by the end of 2006, so maybe they can carry it over into 2007.

Rubens Barrichello is a good friend of mine and I worked with him for many years. If they listen to him as to how he needs the car to work, and if Jenson buys into a bit of Rubens' driving style, then I think as a team they can go forward very well. I think they are doing all that, the question is whether they can do it quickly enough for 2007. You need to start the season well as Renault have shown over the past two years, get yourself a commanding points lead and then just maintain it. Honda has not done that lately, but if you can come away from the first three races either leading the championship or knocking on the door it will give you so much momentum. They need to do that to really stake their claim.

Q:
Two other teams that could potentially threaten Honda this year are BMW and Red Bull Racing, who both expect to take a huge leap up the grid in 2007. BMW seem very focussed since they left Williams and took over Sauber, whereas Red Bull now have Adrian Newey and arguably the strongest driver line-up in their history. How do you see those two teams faring this year?

GA:
Red Bull Racing obviously have Adrian Newey, somebody I would classify as the best of his kind in Formula 1. Adrian is the visionary of the group. He can see the package he is trying to create and where he is trying to take it to and I have no doubt he can do that. Behind Adrian they have Mark Smith, who was one of the original Jordan guys. Mark is a very well-organised technical director, keeping the company together and going in the right direction. My only worry would be that they have grown too quickly - they've got a lot of new people all trying to knit together and build a package.

David Coulthard has won 13 grands prix. He might be getting on a little bit now but I think if the car is there he has still got it in him to be up at the front. Everybody raves about Mark Webber, and he is a very competitive driver, so they can't really ask any questions on the driver front, and it's the same for the budget and manpower. They've got the best in the business in Adrian. The reality of it is they should be winning races this year and knocking on the door of the world championship. If they are not somebody really has to ask the question as to why, because it's so easy to grow too quickly and not be able to work together, even though you have everything you could ever need.

Toyota is an example of that. There's a team with unlimited money, unlimited manpower, unlimited personnel and can get anybody they want, but it just doesn't work like that. You need to grow slowly. I don't think Red Bull has done that, but it may just happen it works for them. They have everything there to do it. They have Renault engines, which they wanted - they got what they wanted, not what was left. They should be winning races this year, and if they do that they will have achieved what they set out to do.

BMW took on the old Sauber operation. They had a very positive first season to be honest, starting it as Sauber and ending it as BMW. That was probably true of what was going to happen. It all takes time. They have got a good vision and are trying to get somewhere. Sacking Jacques Villeneuve two-thirds of the way through last season and taking on Kubica as a race driver was a great thing to do because it showed 'we are going to do what's right for the team'. I think that's correct, and a lot of other teams could learn from that type of attitude.

They've got a route on the wall for where they are trying to get to and I think they will get there. Are they going to be in big contention to win races in 2007? I don't really think they will be ultra-competitive right at the front end, but I do think they will be in there biting at the heels and knocking at the door. I think they will need another year or maybe two to stabilise, take the next step and slowly bring in some other people. At the moment they have good guys but they don't have great guys, and in Formula 1 you need great guys to do the job.

Q:
Your old Jordan team too has not had much stability in recent years, with a number of changes of ownership. The team now seems to have finally settled down a bit as Spyker. How do you see that panning out?

GA:
It's tough there. They have tried very hard to keep it together. At the end of 2004 when he just couldn't hang onto it anymore Eddie had to let it go. It was a very sad day for me and I'm sure it was an even sadder day for Eddie, but they needed to move on. The Midland group took it over and we felt that was a good, positive step forward but you have to spend money in this business. You can tread water forever, but you are not going to go anywhere that way and one day you are going to drown. Midland treaded water in 2005 and 2006.

Spyker have come in now. If they start by treading water they are going to be buried and will go down - you can't put off that inevitability. Every day you develop the car a little bit you learn something new, and if you are going to put that all off for one big pile of development you are going to fall so far behind that you just can't catch up. You can't rely on luck.

Spyker have to be extremely careful. They need to actually get on and show some positive steps of development to take them up the grid. Super Aguri was the only team that wasn't as good as them last year. Spyker finished tenth in the championship. This year they need to climb up to be a solid eighth. They don't have to go very far, but that would show the necessary motivation to the company and sponsors. They need to take those little steps. Nobody is asking them to win races, but they have to show they are trying to move forward. If they don't they will just be treading water forever and one day you will get cramp, sink and it will all be over.

Q:
Finally, as a general overview, one of the major concerns for Formula 1 in recent years is that fans have been switching off in their droves, and one of the principal reasons given for that is the lack of spectacle or overtaking. What do you think is needed to bring that back to the sport again?

GA:
For sure I think the racing is good, but that is looking at it from the inside. If you are sitting there, not really as a motor racing enthusiast, and you turn on the TV to watch a spectacle then Formula 1 isn't that good. I suppose a big percentage of the viewers are people who just want to switch on during the course of a Sunday afternoon and see something on TV.

I genuinely believe the cars and regulations have gone the wrong way in the last few years. The cars are not good at following each other - they lose too much grip. You have the fastest car at the front in qualifying and the slowest car at the back, and then on Sunday we somehow expect some miracle to happen that means a slower car passes a faster one on a dirty part of the track when the grip level on the racing line is always better than that off it. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to work out that ain't going to happen. Really and truthfully, there has to be a change. We need a change in the regulations to provide either more or less downforce or no traction control, or iron brakes instead of carbon brakes.

What we have to do is create racing. In my opinion we should have reverse grids; the guy leading the championship should have to start at the back, and the guy who is suffering at the front, and as you score more points that naturally will change. It isn't artificial. If you can win the championship that way it will truly be because you have beaten all the others. Not only do you have to be the fastest driver but you also need to be a clever driver; you have to understand the strategy and actually overtake people. It adds another challenge. Look at the races involving good drivers who have won world championships, when they had problems of some sort in qualifying and ended up starting at the back of the grid. If they came through and either won or finished in the top three, those are the times they really say 'Jesus, that was the best!' Those are the races they remember and get the biggest kicks out of, so why not make it part of racing?

Yes you could make things better by changing little bits and pieces - brakes, aerodynamics and the like - but even if you changed all that stuff it wouldn't necessarily generate closer racing. You could guarantee it if you had a reverse grid situation though. How is that wrong? It isn't. It's real racing. If a driver won a race from the back he would be pretty satisfied with that at the end of the day, and that's what it's all about. A great racing driver should be great at every part of it, and that includes overtaking.

Q:
There is a raft of technical changes coming into place for 2008. Do you think they will help matters, or do they not really go far enough?

GA:
It's a long way to 2008 in Formula 1. I've looked through some of the proposals and haven't seen anything I would be excited about to be honest. Around 2010-2011 there are bigger plans, but again I wouldn't lose any sleep over it yet because it's too far away to even consider. It will all change a thousand times before that. At this point in time I don't see anything that will make Formula 1 better for the public.

They want to see more racing, drivers side-by-side, five overtaking manoeuvres a lap. We should only know who the winner is going to be when the chequered flag comes out. That's really what the public wants to see. It needs to be gripping, keeping you on the edge of your seat. I've seen races like that in other formulae and they are great, but I don't see anything in these changes that will make Formula 1 do that over the next five years. Somebody has to sit back and think about that a little bit, because with the amount of money that Formula 1 costs now, we need to have people turning on the TV to watch it.