Racing Driver Principles that Trump Results

I often ask kart team owners what they would like to change about a driver, because that helps me to get a good picture of where the driver needs help.

A common complaint from very straight talking karting people is

‘they aren’t nasty enough’

Now, I know what they mean, it isn’t that the driver lacks these:

• Aggression

• Determination

• Ruthlessness

• Bravery

• Killer instinct

They mean something darker than that. Even with killer instinct, it can be done without nastiness. The killer instinct can be robotic where the driver can say ‘don’t hate the player, hate the game’.

Nastiness, and the various other ways they describe it to me using four letter words, means that they want to see more malintent from a driver.

In their defence, the team is only describing what they have seen in previous great drivers. So it’s not a preference as much as a comparison.

What they have seen in drivers considered great is often animalistic hatred. Pettiness and bitterness that manifests in brutality and personal spitefulness.

I talk a lot about drivers being noble, higher calibre individuals, yet here we are toying with the idea that maliciousness is in fact a necessary attribute.

Bit awkward isn’t it!

But it’s unavoidable when you look at the drivers who are considered great. A high proportion of them have displayed a kind of malevolence that borders on the criminal.

Senna

I don’t think there’s much debate that Senna wasn’t going for a gap against Prost at Suzuka 1990, but that he was deliberately taking him out at the first opportunity. Now, the speed of that crash tells me Senna wasn’t just being ruthless and doing what he needed to do to win a title.

I reckon he was prepared for Prost and himself to face the possibility of serious consequences. It’s really quite sinister!

And by the way, Prost still turned in. Speculation from me again tells me he decided, ‘nah mate, I’m not having this - let’s see what happens now’.

So this is Ayrton Senna, who we all revere as the closest thing to a god we can have for motor racing, and that dark side doesn’t seem to diminish that worship.

Schumacher

I think Schumacher is deeply respected as a driver these days, considered probably the best objectively speaking, and he certainly had his moments where you see the requisite nastiness I’m talking about here. There are loads of incidents where he has been called dirty and ruthless when a championship was at stake, like with the various tangles with Damon Hill.

But my favourite moment with Schumacher (and btw, I know it’s weird to call this a favourite moment which is kind of the point) is after his prime, when he pointlessly took his old buddy Barichello to the wall.

This one was for nothing, and that’s where the clue lies as to what these drivers are about.

Hamilton vs Verstappen

2021 Silverstone. I remember watching the build-up to this massive crash as Verstappen was taking the mickey out of Hamilton with a few cheeky moves. I think it was the period when I started to first worry that Hamilton had been losing too much of his mojo for too long.

But, on this day I think he snapped. I think Hamilton had enough and sent his car in on Verstappen at Copse corner knowing it was a 50/50 at best. With his experience he probably knew it was more like 60/40 in favour of being a very big accident in the making.

But he went in anyway.

With this one I’m not certain of the complete maliciousness, but I believe the darkness required to take that chance escaped from Hamilton’s conscious control and dictated that Verstappen was about to get humiliated by a mega pass, but more likely get sent into a wall at 150mph.

My own experience of that incident, despite being a Verstappen fan was to cheer Lewis for coming back to life, and then seeing Verstappen hit the wall and thinking ‘oh dear, this could be serious’.

So even #grateful Lewis Hamilton, in my opinion, has the level of nastiness in him though he seems to be holding it down.

Does Verstappen have it? I think that’s obvious, and he seemed quite unconcerned when he parked his car on Hamilton’s head at Monza a short while later.

Where Does this Leave us, Endorsing Psychopathic Behaviour in Drivers?