Maturity in racing terms and race car

• Author: admin
• Filed under: Auto-cars
• Date: Jun 8,2008

Maturity in racing terms is different than in regular life, he said. It comes earlier than in the past, he added, because drivers now start to race much sooner.
“When they start karting when they’re eight years old and they experience all the highs and lows and the discipline,” Symonds said, “the maturity that they have by the time that they get into Formula One these days at 21, 22, 23 years old is absolutely incredible.”
“But being young, they just sometimes trip over in those little ways that the older person won’t,” he added. “It’s in things like self-confidence.”

Experience and maturity also have a paradoxical downside, according to Patrick Head, a part owner and director of the Williams team.

“Maturity means experience, and with experience usually comes a certain amount of wisdom,” Head said. “But sometimes with that wisdom comes a certain caution, as well. So sometimes as a driver becomes more experienced he maybe loses a little bit of speed. In some conditions, say in wet conditions or difficult conditions, sometimes they lose a bit of speed.”

Most team directors aim for a combination of age and experience, as Toro Rosso has done with Sébastien Bourdais, 29, and Sebastian Vettel, 20.

“You certainly would never want two young drivers in a team,” said Brawn. “It’s too easy to get lost in terms of the direction the team takes. And I think it is important that you have at least one senior driver in the team. That is the optimum: To have that old stagehand and the young apprentice coming through.”
The Force India team hired the experienced Giancarlo Fisichella, 35, to race with Adrian Sutil, 25, who is in his second year of Formula One. Sutil said that Fisichella’s experience not only helps the team, it helps him.

“It’s very helpful for a young driver because you need to learn so much in Formula One,” Sutil said, “and it takes years to have this knowledge, to be a race winner, to be able to win races with your experience.”
He said Fisichella had helped him understand how to work with the tires, for example.
Mature drivers also know how to lose better, and how to work more serenely with the team.
“Two equal drivers - one’s getting on well with the team and one’s being a pain in the backside, you know which one is going to succeed the best,” Brawn said.

It was precisely there that the relationship between Hamilton and Alonso ran into its biggest problem last year at McLaren. Alonso had to learn to cope with a younger and equally as fast teammate for the first time. His animosity broke out in a team dispute at the Hungarian Grand Prix, and it eventually led to his return to Renault.
Brawn said that Schumacher also had hated being beaten by his teammates, but that he dealt with it maturely.