Formula One’s European season opened this weekend with the 37th Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya, located to the north of Barcelona in Montmeló. Hosting the race for the 17th time, Catalunya is a favoured testing venue among the teams, and is a well known entity to the drivers who have all banked considerable mileage at the track over the winter.
Barcelona is a high speed, high downforce circuit, with fast, sweeping corners connected by even faster straights and saw the drivers reach speeds of 305kph along the start/finish straight and fly into corners such as Seat at 240kph. The engines spent each lap of the 66 lap race at 57% full throttle, so top end speeds were important, most crucially on the start/finish straight where the drivers were flat out for over a kilometre. All of this information would have been well known to this weekend’s featured driver, Kazuki Nakajima, the driver who regularly completed the most laps of anyone during the numerous official tests that have taken place at the track during the pre season testing programme, including last week’s four day test at the circuit. His previous experience here includes races in the F3 Euroseries in 2006, as well as his battle to 7th place in the GP2 sprint race there last year for the Drioux-Arnoux Motorsport (DAMS) team. All of this is in stark comparison to his previous four outings in the Williams machine, all of which were a fresh experience for the 23 year old Oxford resident.
Fresh from a three week break since the personally disappointing outing in Bahrain, the Toyota development programme driver arrived at the circuit on Wednesday. During his first interview in Spain, Kazuki spoke of his optimism for the race weekend ahead, announcing to the gathered journalists; ”we have some aero updates on the car for Barcelona, which we spent last week testing, and they should bring us some gains performance-wise”. So far so good, but with most of the teams arriving back to Europe after two months away with new developments for the cars, it was still unclear as to how much the car had improved with the updates. However, Kazuki was also able to reveal his secret motivation for this weekend, saying that he wanted to bring some points home for local resident Xevi Pujolar, his race engineer, and therefore was technically enjoying a home race thousands of miles away from his place of birth of Aichi, Japan.
Friday 25th April 2008
Home race it may have been, but that does not mean that any part of this race weekend was going to be easy for Nakajima, as he found out during the first free practice at the circuit on Friday. After experiencing traffic problems on his way from the hotel Cuitat de Granollers, squeezing past the tens of thousands of Fernando Alonso fans and arriving over twenty minutes late, he came out and set a time of one minute 23.153 seconds in the first practice session, which was only good enough for fifteenth place. This performance was clearly disappointing for both the driver and the team, especially as Kazuki had been able to set a time over six tenths of a second quicker on slick tyres during an official test at the circuit on the 16th April. With the car not being designed to run on such tyres, this time was certainly a surprise for everyone involved, including Kazuki’s team mate Nico Rosberg, who had also experienced an unexpected poor performance on Friday morning. He rounded off the session with a lap time of one minute of 23.003 seconds, good enough for twelfth position on the timesheet. Nico revealed after qualifying on the German television channel RTL that the team had started with an aerodynamic set-up that was simply never going to work and so they were forced into effectively starting afresh for the afternoon session.
Whatever it was that had plagued the team during the morning on Friday had certainly been resolved by the time it came to send the cars out again in the afternoon. Starting again with a more conservative aerodynamic configuration and no doubt very little fuel in order to prepare for the second part of qualifying (Q2) the next day, Kazuki pulled out all the stops and set a time of one minute 22.172 seconds, only 0.237 seconds slower than world champion Kimi Räikkönen, and more than good enough to claim fourth place behind the similarly surprising performance of both Renault drivers, Nelson Piquet and two time world champion Fernando Alonso. Although this time left the young Japanese driver with a sense of optimism for the serious business to come over the next couple of days, it was clear to most involved that this was only a borderline time to get into the final part of qualifying, and in order to achieve a solid top ten grid position, the team was going to have to find at least another tenth of a second before the official qualifying session at 14:00 CET the next day. Despite this, there was something in this session that Kazuki was able to smile about, for he had beaten his far more experienced team mate Nico Rosberg by well over a tenth of a second. This was a massive achievement for Kazuki in his quest to see off his tag as Rosberg’s understudy. He was asked by the official Formula One website if he was content to play such a role in the team, and he admitted that “I am a rookie driver and still have a lot to learn”, however Kazuki also took time to remind all observers, including Nico himself, that “this phase naturally does not last forever.”
Long after the action on the track was over, Nakajima was still working hard at the Montmeló circuit, modelling some retro team
gear for clothing partner, McGregor. Kazuki appeared to be longing to head back to the hotel to relax, and even if the Spanish model provided by the clothing company appeared to reenergise him, it was only until the end of the shoot. After a few more ‘meet and greets’ for corporate guests, the driver was finally released to go and take a well needed break, although Kazuki was even heard to complain about his accommodation for the weekend, describing his hotel as not being ‘the prettiest’ he has ever seen. After heading back and altering his opinion after sampling the hotel’s fine cuisine, the young Japanese driver left for an early night, ready to wake up early to beat the traffic and arrive on time the next day!
Saturday 26th April 2008
Waking up at sunrise on Saturday must have been a pleasurable experience for Kazuki Nakajima, the sky was clear, the temperature was rising, and the young Williams rookie was in the mood for upstaging his more experienced team mate. Overnight the journalists had been trying to sift through Friday’s practice times, attempting to look past all of the different strategies and experimental runs to find out who had a good car underneath them, who was on form and which of the drivers were going to have to fight with their equipment for the next couple of days. ITV commentator James Allen singled out Kazuki and Renault driver Nelson Piquet as two of the drivers who had hit the ground running in Barcelona, writing in his form guide that the results “certainly gave the team leaders something to think about in both cases”.
After arriving at the circuit on time on Saturday morning, in order to attend the usual morning engineering briefing, the FIA driver’s meeting and numerous appointments with press and fans alike, the Toyota graduate started the morning session at the relaxed time of 11:00 am CET with a new found confidence that he could really prove himself to the team that day, and the ultimate goal for them all was to make it into the holy ground of Q3. With so much optimism flowing around the Nakajima camp, it must have come as a crushing disappointment to reach the end of the morning session, only two hours before the start of qualifying proper, and to have only achieved 14th position with a time of one minute 22:189 seconds. Kazuki was once again behind his team mate, albeit by a margin of only fifteen thousandths of a second, and more importantly the Williams team appeared to have dropped back behind their quartet of midfield rivals, Toyota, Red Bull, Renault, and BMW Sauber. The team blamed the resurgence of their troubles on a lack of knowledge about their aerodynamic updates that had been brought in for this race, so instead of providing that vital extra couple of tenths, they were actually affecting the car’s balance in an unexplainable fashion, therefore preventing them from reaching the heights that the team had experienced in the stellar performances in Bahrain and Australia. Friday’s second session pace was, as it appeared, somewhat of a fluke, and the team were now left with a less than concrete idea of how they were going achieve the balance required for stable cornering in the session starting in the next hour.
The situation remained the same for the AT&T Williams team, and they were left to begin the afternoon’s qualifying session treading into unknown territory, relying on the raw pace of the FW30, surely one of the best racing cars produced at the Grove Factory since the heady days of dominance in the mid nineties. This session had nothing in common with that period though, and in the here and now it was down to Kazuki to get the job done. In Q1, the first part of qualifying where 16th position is enough to ensure passage through to the second session, Nakajima achieved a respectable time of one minute 21:690, a vast improvement on what had been seen previously in the weekend, but in comparison to his peers, it only got him through to the second round by a mere 1.2 tenths of a second. Since the previous day Kazuki had managed to lose two tenths of a second to his team mate, who was steadily progressing with a set up that was beginning to work. It seemed as if the natural order of things had returned, and that the press, fans and team members alike were to see another quick time from Nico, and a non inspiring performance from his young Japanese team mate.
This was however not the case. Perhaps somebody put a certain well known isotonic drink into “Nakajak’s” drinks bottle, or maybe it was that final tweak of front wing and a decrease in rear tyre pressure, or simply a case of the young driver stepping up his game, but when it came to the crunch in Q2 he was able to pull that lap out of the bag. Granted, his time of one minute
21:117 seconds had not set the world alight, not in comparison to Felipe Massa’s 1:20:584 in any case, but the time brought him his finest qualifying result to date, and suddenly he was two tenths quicker than his team mate once again. The rest of the world was then treated to one of the most exciting qualifying sessions of the modern era in Formula One, with Kimi Räikkönen clocking up a 1:21:813 to steal pole at the last moment from local hero Fernando Alonso by a margin of just over seventy thousandths of a second. Of course these events will have held little importance for Kazuki Nakajima, who was just happy to have beaten his team mate in qualifying for the first time in his career, something which left Rosberg with plenty to think about. Rosberg aired his frustrations in an interview with Kai Ebel, an Austrian television journalist, who asked him after the session what it felt like to be beaten for the first time by such an inexperienced team mate. An already irritated Rosberg replied that in fact Kazuki had a bit more experience than him on this circuit, and therefore he was able to use his knowledge to gain an edge. This was a bit of an oversight by the young German, so used to being the young gun himself, he must have forgotten that Nakajima moved to Europe from Japan in 2006, Nico’s first year in Formula One. Nico’s race tally at the track is approaching double figures, along with numerous test outings for the Williams team, and yet Kazuki was still able to edge ahead of him on the day, with only 2 race weekends under his belt at the circuit. In a post session interview with Japanese TV he was obviously disappointed with the team’s general performance up to this point, but could not help showing a little grin as reference was made to his team mate’s slip, simply saying; ‘yeah I’m fairly happy about that’. He chose to remain level headed however, and turned his thoughts immediately to the upcoming race the next day, commenting that his chances against the cars a few places ahead of him had actually slightly improved since they were now locked away in parc fermé with fuel restrictions, and he was allowed to choose his strategy to beat those racing in front of him.
Sunday 27th April 2008
Once again as the sun rose to the east of the lively city of Barcelona, Kazuki Nakajima woke up in his hotel suite with plenty to be excited about. Even if the hotel suite in question was not up to a Formula One driver’s standards, Kazuki did not wait around to fill out a complaint form, as he was whisked off to the circuit to fulfil his usual duties as a Toyota, Williams and Japan representative, on top of his preparations for the 37th Gran Premio De Espana due to start at 14:00 CET that afternoon. During the strategy meetings that morning, it was decided that Nico Rosberg would start the race with the exact same set up as Kazuki. Given that he had been beaten fair and square on a split decision in the team the day before, this could either have been seen as Nico pulling rank on his young challenger, or as a case of him admitting defeat before the race had started, as if he was on the same set up he should theoretically run at the same pace as Kazuki, if not faster due to his experience at the circuit. Either way it meant that the advantage developed by Nakajima and his team of engineers over the previous two days had effectively been wiped out in one fell swoop, leaving both drivers to begin the race on an even keel, albeit with Rosberg still due to start three places behind his team mate on the grid. Kazuki was also trackside to witness the impressive performance by the second in line to next year’s Toyota seat, Kamui Kobayashi who professionally chased down the French Red Bull protégé Sebastien Grosjean, who fought so hard to defend his first position that the stewards decided he was driving dangerously and called him into the pits for a drive through penalty meaning that 21 year-old Kobayashi was technically gifted the win. It was however a stunning performance from the young DAMS driver which put the other Toyota scholar Nakajima under even more pressure to provide a result in the afternoon’s race. If all this was starting to get under the skin of Kazuki, he failed to show it on the driver’s parade bus as it headed out onto the circuit at 12:30 CET, he stood next to his team mate and some of the other young guns laughing and joking whilst joining in with the obligatory waving at the adoring Catalonian masses.
At 13:42 Kazuki Nakajima pulled out of his AT&T Williams pit garage for the last time of the race weekend, completing the usual installation lap just behind his team mate before passing him on the grid to take up twelfth position next to Honda’s Rubens Barrichello who, with 257 Grand Prix under his belt has experienced the start line adrenaline rush exactly 252 more times than the young Japanese driver.
Whilst the usual crush of VIPs, team members and grid girls began to gather around car number 8; its driver disappeared for what was no doubt a visit to the men’s room, before returning into his cockpit and remaining there until the start of the formation lap. He may have been calm, but by no means as relaxed as the Ferrari mechanics, who had already placed ‘P1’ on Kimi Räikkönen’s pit board ready to show him at the end of lap one. Soon the buzzers began to sound warning of the imminent departure of the cars, the various guests duly made their way to the side of the track and all twenty-two machines pulled away. Two minutes later the cars were back and slotting into their positions on the grid, and Kazuki pointed his car straight ahead towards the back of the Renault of Nelson Piquet. With the Renault engine having proved itself well in previous races during the all important first few laps, where the engine’s performance is mapped specifically for start line circumstances, things were looking prime for a good start. As it happened, Nakajima’s start was more impressive than that of his fellow rookie, and he did well to avoid ploughing into the back of the car in front of him by making a quick dart to the left, avoiding the Honda of Jenson Button, another fast starter, and finally getting his foot down along the left hand side of the main straight. Unbeknown to Kazuki, as he had been making his way over to the left of the track, Rosberg, the man he longed to beat, had benefited from a lightening quick start and was now flying up the right hand side of the grid, into the inside of the fast approaching right handed first corner. By the end of the second corner, Nakajima had lost two places and was fourteenth, behind the two Hondas of Barrichello and Button, and even worse for Kazuki’s hopes of a dream race, Rosberg’s manoeuvre on the inside had pulled him up from fifteenth to eleventh place in the running order.
The race order remained pretty much the same throughout the first few laps, aided by the brief appearance of the safety car to remove the debris from an incident involving the German drivers Adrian Sutil and Sebastian Vettel. Nelson Piquet’s mistake at the tight left hander La Caixa did however gain Kazuki an extra position, putting him in thirteenth position and chasing down Button, before on lap 22 the popular young Finn Heikki Kovalainen saw something break on his left front wheel during the 240km/h, fifth gear right hander; Campsa. Immediately after the failure the front left tyre deflated leaving the Mclaren driver with no chance of controlling the car as it headed straight on into the barriers at horrifying speed. After coming to rest buried deep beneath the tyre wall itself, Heikki was attended to by trackside marshals and shortly after by the FIA medical team. He was ok, taking his chance to wave to the crowd as he was carried into the ambulance, but it was a scare for observers and drivers alike.
Given the scale of the accident, it was no surprise to see the safety car make it’s second trip of the afternoon out onto the track at Barcelona, this time for a longer period, and after the compulsory two lap waiting period, the pit lane was opened again and Kazuki took his chance to make his first stop of the afternoon. With both Honda drivers pitting in the same safety car period, the timing of the Williams pit engineers was now put under the spotlight, and much to Kazuki’s relief they provided him with a free ticket past Jenson Button who pitted a lap later. Barrichello lost his front wing during his pit stop and had to pit twice, Nick Heidfeld stopped too early and received a ten second stop and go penalty, which effectively ended his race. Along with Kovalainen’s premature retirement these three events all conspired to leapfrog Nakajima up to ninth position by the end of the safety car period, one position behind his team mate Rosberg, who by now was running in the points. In the next few laps the two were lapping at roughly the same speed, although after another 5 laps Rosberg was beginning to develop a lead, which settled at around three seconds. This must have been enough to wind up the mild mannered Japanese driver, given that he had been faster than his team mate all weekend, and now that the race had started, his team mate had simply used his set up in order to beat him where it really mattered.
It was not long before the effects of racing at such high speeds with a track temperature of 39˚C started to take its toll on the driver’s and their machines alike. On lap 35 local hero and two time world champion Fernando Alonso retired with flames licking from the front of his engine, only to be cheered by his loyal fans filling up the tribunes surrounding the 4.6 kilometre long track. This news will have of course been relayed via radio to Nakajima, as he was now running in eighth place, and was on course to earn a championship point. Shortly after Alonso’s retirement, Nakajima was promoted up the running order once again, this time at the expense of his team mate who pulled up on the start/finish straight at the end of lap 42. At this stage Kazuki was 3.8 seconds behind his team mate, and so it must have been a relief to fly past him at 300km/h as he started his 43rd lap. For the next ten laps, Kazuki Nakajima had to focus only what he was being paid to do, drive his FW30 as fast as it would possibly go in order to have a chance to leapfrog Jarno Trulli in front of him, who was due to pit again within the next few laps. Nakajima did in fact record his fastest lap of the race on lap 48, recording a time of one minute 23.549, only the fifteenth best of the day and far off the pace that he had shown during the previous days at the circuit. That he was running in seventh position, whilst in fact running at a slower pace to the cars around him, showed just how much he was aided by the misfortune of others on Sunday afternoon. Despite losing out to Jenson Button once again who had stayed out for two laps longer in the vastly improved Honda, Kazuki retained his seventh place on lap 54 after a communications error caused Jarno Trulli to pit twice.
From this point on, it was simply a case of Kazuki trying to chase down the Honda in front of him, to try and gain that extra world championship point. Both drivers were recording erratic lap times due to traffic, on occasion as low as one minute 24.298 seconds in Button’s case, which would allow Nakajima to catch the Briton, if only briefly, before the Japanese driver recorded a similar lap time one lap later as he came up to the back of the same slow cars. Once they passed through the traffic however Kazuki appeared to close up on the back of the Honda, reducing the gap to 1.4 seconds by the 62nd lap, at which point the team told him to turn his engine revolutions and fuel mixture down in order ensure reliability at the next Grand Prix in Turkey. This was a decision not mirrored by the Honda team, who allowed Jenson to take his new improved model for a spin in the last few laps, before he eventually recorded the fifth fastest lap of the race as he crossed the line 5.2 seconds ahead of Nakajima.
After Kazuki pulled into parc fermé and left his car with the FIA scrutineers, he walked back and celebrated his second points finish with the team this year. After the cheers in the garage, Nakajima walked out of the back door and was immediately confronted by the ever present reporters who asked him how he felt about the result. He responded that it had been a ‘good race’ for him, meaning that he had done nothing wrong but also offering acceptance that he had been aided by his competitors falling by the wayside. He was naturally happy with the final result, and commented on the apparent progress that had been made by the team, even if they were still unsure as to how they could control the car and set it up at its premium pace. He was also quick to point out that ‘five points in my first four races is a good start in my first year’, something that no one would be prepared to argue with. Kazuki left Barcelona on Sunday evening to fly back to Oxford in eleventh place in the Driver’s Championship, only two points behind Nico Rosberg. Having shown that he is capable of beating the German, Nakajima’s next goal must be to not only beat him in practice and qualifying, but to move past him in the championship table.
