Post-F1 Paths - The cross-discipline

12/12/17 • 4 min

Hello there, welcome to Post-F1 Paths from Sidepodcast, a mini series of seven short shows looking at what options are available to drivers who hang up their F1 helmets and look for a career outside of the paddock. This is the third episode and today we’re talking about drivers who still need that thrill of the race, and so look to other motorsport series’.

Formula One is considered the pinnacle of motorsport, just about, and particularly in recent years, drivers have to be at the peak of physical fitness to get the best out of the car. They restrict their diets, they train every day, they do everything they can to control their bodies so as to save time on track. It’s no surprise that a driver retiring from F1 may still decide they want to race, but just look for the thrill in a series where they can relax, just a little. Maybe have a cake, on occasion, you know?

The two other series with the highest profile that attract drivers are the IndyCar series and the World Endurance championship. As we’ve seen with Fernando Alonso in 2017, the dream of completing the Monaco Grand Prix, Indy 500 and 24 Hours of Le Mans hat trick continues to live large in driver’s minds, and so those two series must seem very attractive for a recently retired F1 star.

IndyCar has similarities to F1, the cars look somewhat familiar and the road courses have right and left turns just as all F1 circuits do. The ovals are something different though, top speeds are higher, cornering speeds are crazy, and it all seems somewhat terrifying to me but to a driver no doubt looks an incredible challenge. Juan Pablo Montoya and Takuma Sato are recent IndyCar converts with vastly different degrees of success. Indy 500 winners include Jacques Villeneuve, Emerson Fittipaldi and Graham Hill.

Over in the endurance series, recent converts include Mark Webber and Anthony Davidson, who adjusted to life in the closed cockpits very well. Whilst the cars are very different in the WEC, I imagine it’s the format of the races that is more of an adjustment for fresh F1 faces. Far longer races than the two hour limit of a grand prix, and sharing the car with other drivers – jumping in and out midrace, perhaps even catnapping to reserve energy for that final dash to the end. It’s a different discipline and one that takes some getting used to, unless you’re Nico Hülkenberg, of course. The current Renault driver took time out of his F1 season last year (not missing any races, though) to take part in and WIN the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with Porsche.

But if you’re not interested in taking that triple crown of motorsport, there are plenty of other options out there for you. Kimi Räikkönen took an F1 sabbatical that saw him turn his hand to rallying – another discipline that shares few similarities with Formula One. Closed cockpits, rally cars, a passenger, single time trials rather than wheel to wheel combat, it’s definitely something different. Kimi seemed to enjoy it at first, but soon came back to F1. Robert Kubica also participated in rallying alongside his F1 career before the accident that postponed his open wheel ambitions.

We’ve mentioned Montoya already in regards to IndyCar but the Colombian racer also had a respectable career in NASCAR: winning races, securing pole positions and generally making a good showing of things. And Paul di Resta came from the German racing series DTM before he joined F1. Many wondered whether he could make the adjustment, as it’s a different path to the sport than the normal karting to feeder series to F1 paddock journey. He adapted well, if not spectacularly, but I don’t think it was a surprise to anyone when he returned to the DTM series, combining it with simulator duties for the Mercedes squad.

As is often said, you can’t teach someone how to be fast, there’s a talent that has to be there to be successful. But if the evidence we’ve looked at shows us anything, it’s that you can learn how to adapt your skills to different environments, with varying degrees of success. Just because a driver’s career in F1 may have come to an end, it doesn’t mean they have to hang up their helmet for good.

That’s all for this episode of Post-F1 Paths, thank you for listening. Do let me know what you think about drivers participating in other racing disciplines, just head to sidepodcast.com/contact to share your thoughts. And do join me again tomorrow when we’ll look at something else a driver can do outside of the car.

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Previous Episode

Post-F1 Paths - The entrepreneur

Hello friends and welcome to Post-F1 Paths, a mini series brought to you by Sidepodcast that tracks some of the options available to drivers once their career in Formula One is over – either by choice or not. Yesterday we talked about drivers who find it hard to cut ties with the sport, but today it’s a group that have turned their attentions to other endeavours – this is the entrepreneur.

F1 drivers live life somewhat in a bubble. They work hard, train hard, drive hard, but spend almost all of their time focused on finding speed – whether it is from improving their own body and skills, or spending time with the team and engineers on patching up the car. The amount of time and effort that goes into a Formula One career cannot be understated, but it can be lacking in the bigger picture, having a view of life outside the paddock. You learn a lot from a career in F1, but it can be hard to translate that to outside interests.

Some do succeed, however, and have managed to put motorsport behind them to focus on building a business in a totally separate walk of life. There are three business options that have appeared to be the most popular amongst former F1 drivers, the first being to open up an airline.

Spending so much time jetsetting around the world must give drivers something of an idea how the airline industry works, and what customers actually want from a trip across the ocean. Niki Lauda quite famously created Lauda Air which he ran for twenty years before selling up to Austrian Airlines. The brand eventually ceased flying in 2013. Thierry Boutsen, an F1 driver in the 1980s, formed a company, Boutsen Aviation, to buy and sell planes, from corporate jets to smaller private aircraft.

Another outlet for the former-racer-turned-businessman is selling cars. Who has more knowledge about a quality automobile than someone who used to race them for a living? Legendary champion Juan Manuel Fangio owned a Mercedes dealership and became a huge ambassador for the brand, eventually being appointed the President of Mercedes-Benz Argentina. British driver Tony Brooks ran a Ford garage for many years.

It’s not just about selling things that already exist, either. Some have the ability to innovate and create products that were never there before. Nelson Piquet Sr, after a successful stint in Formula One, founded the company Autotrac, which pioneered technology that could aid with satellite mapping and tracking on Brazilian freight trucks.

But, perhaps drivers get fed up with the fast pace of life in F1, with the smoke and dust and petrol fumes. That would explain why moving out to the countryside holds such appeal, with Argentinian driver Carlos Reutemann spending his time on a farm, and also embarking on various political endeavours. Jody Schekter’s successful farm produces organic meat for organic burgers that have even been spotted on sale in the Silverstone paddock.

It doesn’t all have to be about business, of course. There’s also the creative side of being an entrepreneur. Many, many drivers write autobiographies about their time in the sport. Most wait until they’ve finished like Mark Webber, but some, including Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, release works whilst they are still driving but have achieved an order of success that would be worth writing about.

Some drivers even turn their talents to more musical pastimes, with Jacques Villeneuve and Jaime Alguersuari releasing albums of a very different nature. Hamilton also dabbles in music as well as books, but has said that his songs are just for his ears only, so perhaps we won’t see an album from the world champion any time soon.

So, although on the surface it doesn’t seem easy to transition out of motorsports to the corporate or creative world, there’s clearly a discipline that allows for F1 drivers to turn their hands to other endeavours. From buying and selling, to farming, to singing, there’s something out there for everyone.

Thanks for listening to this, the second episode of Post-F1 Paths. We have completed two potential second careers for drivers, and have five more still to come. Can you guess what any of them might be? Let me know at sidepodcast.com/contact, and please do send me your feedback about the topics covered so far. I’ll be back tomorrow with the third episode.

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Next Episode

Post-F1 Paths - The boss

Hello and welcome to episode four of Post-F1 Paths, the latest mini series from Sidepodcast that investigates what options are available to F1 drivers once they have decided to step out of the car. So far we’ve covered a few options for those wanting a clean break from F1 but now it’s time to go back to the paddock with a new challenge – being the boss.

We haven’t seen it so much recently, but one of the options awaiting a driver when they decide it’s time to hang up those racing gloves is to become the boss. A wealth of experience of driving, managing race weekends, understanding what it takes to win and living the crazy jet set lifestyle that comes with Formula One is a good grounding for taking over a team. Or is it?

There are plenty of examples of drivers making the step up to team owner, F1 history is littered with them. Some, such as John Surtees, opt to own the team and continue to drive at the same time, which must make post-race debriefing sessions odd – the boss telling himself off. Others, such as Alain Prost, wait until after they’ve retired to grab the reigns.

Prost bought the ex-Ligier team in 1997 and remodelled it as Prost Grand Prix. They had a handful of podiums in the early days but things went downhill after that and the team went bankrupt in 2002. Super Aguri was a team managed by Aguri Suzuki, and they become quite famous for being a backmarker squad, eventually running out of money part way through a season.

It’s not always bad news though. Jack Brabham had considerable success with his Brabham outfit, they scored both constructor and driver titles before the team was eventually sold to Bernie Ecclestone, you might have heard of him. And the most famous and long-lasting of all, of course, is the team founded by one Bruce McLaren. Still running to this day with lots of great results behind them, a huge heritage and plenty of respect throughout the paddock – even if the current McLaren era isn’t exactly going to plan.

As I mentioned at the start, the driver-turned-owner dynamic isn’t something we’ve seen more recently, perhaps because the costs of getting into F1 and the barriers to entry are so high. What we do see more of these days is the driver turned ambassador – someone willing to associate their name with a brand, lend their expertise to a team that needs it, basically give them some gravitas in the paddock.

The most obvious example of this at the moment is Niki Lauda, who has become a stalwart of the Mercedes garages, stalking through the paddock ready to give his opinion at the mere hint of a microphone. There’s a vast amount of talent and experience within that team already, but having someone with Lauda’s CV on board should be a help when things get tricky.

One of the things I assumed having an F1 driver as part of the executive team would help with would be driver management. Someone like Niki Lauda knows what it is to disagree with your teammate, to be caught up in the heat of the battle, to want to win at all costs, regardless of what it does to relationships... and yet still have to make those relationships work. That’s why the fight between Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg was even more fascinating over the past few seasons – they must have had plenty of advice from all angles to help them through but still the atmosphere just got worse and worse.

It can’t be easy being on the sidelines once an F1 star has decided to give up the day job, and I imagine you have to have a certain attitude to be able to watch the action in the garages or from the pit wall without wanting to elbow people out the way and jump in the car yourself. But for those that can make it work, it must also be a very rewarding experience – using everything you’ve learned in your driving career to turn around and make a new set of drivers, and perhaps even your own team, ultimately have their own success.

That’s all for this episode of Post-F1 Paths, thank you for joining me along our path this series. I’d love to hear what you think about the success or failure of drivers that have turned team boss, manager or ambassador – is it a good idea or are they better suited behind the helmet? Let me know sidepodcast.com/contact. I will be back tomorrow with another episode, please join me then.

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