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There was nothing I enjoyed more in Formula 1 than the days when us smaller teams could put one over the big boys. I was lucky enough to be on the pitwall for a few of those occasions when at Jordan and Stewart, so watching Pierre Gasly and AlphaTauri winning the Italian Grand Prix brought back a few memories.
Thinking back to those days, it’s all very nerve-wracking. You’re focused on what’s going on in the race and don’t really have time to think about how you got into that position, but you realise that there’s the potential to do something you don’t get many chances to achieve. Usually, you are just waiting for the big boys to come back at you and ruin it, but that didn’t happen at Monza.
You do need some help along the way. The safety car, Mercedes not noticing the pitlane closed and the red flag all created the conditions for Gasly to do what he did, when you are a midfield team like AlphaTauri you always need some help from the big boys messing it up. Looking back at the wins I was part of, we benefitted from that but also had to do our job well.
We didn’t do anything to make the top teams hit trouble at the Nurburgring in 1999 when Johnny Herbert won for Stewart, but we did run our race right, made some good decisions and avoided the mistakes. It was the same with Giancarlo Fisichella with Jordan at Interlagos in 2003, we couldn’t control who went off but we were able to run a good race and put the car to be in the right place to be leading if the race was stopped at the right moment.
Those days are also good for fans because it shouldn’t just be about winning from pole position. You want the unexpected to be thrown in and for the order to be shaken up, so that with a bit of luck and doing a good job you can get a good result by getting a little help to get to the front.
I’ve criticised AlphaTauri in the past for not being consistent enough and on occasions not getting the best out of what the team has. But more recently it has been good at taking these opportunities because we’ve seen three podium finishers for it in just over a year. You can maybe do that once with luck but what you have to do in a smaller team is make sure you get the best out of what you’ve got and then make sure you are there to capitalise if something happens.
Gasly was running 10th before his pitstop and, in reality, in AlphaTauri’s position finishing eighth, ninth or 10th and getting some points is a good result. So that’s what you are looking at, trying to be where you should be with what you’ve got consistently and then to pick up better results when you can.
For a team to do this kind of thing, you need a good management style and AlphaTauri has that in Franz Tost, who is a racer and used to compete himself with some success. That filters down through the team.
At Jordan, we used to roll the dice when opportunities presented themselves to us, and although you screw up sometimes, often it paid off. You have to do this because these chances don’t come up all that often.
You do sometimes just need that bit of luck to change things. Take Austria 2002 with Jordan. Giancarlo Fisichella was having a bit of a nothing race but after Nick Heidfeld went off and collected Takuma Sato (pictured above) in our other car, we gained track position with a pitstop and Fisichella finished fifth. Once he got up there, he found the speed of a car that could run fifth that wasn’t there before but he needed to be put in that position to find it.
When AlphaTauri called Gasly to pit early he thought it was a ‘joke call’ and that his race was over. When we called Fisichella to pit early in Interlagos in 2003, he didn’t want to – he wanted to go racing for a few laps. When Herbert pitted at the Nurburgring, it was touch and go for which tyre to fit. If anyone had backed out of those calls or changed their minds those race wins would probably have gone to someone else.
But it’s never easy to get these results. Once in the lead what Gasly couldn’t do was to overuse the tyres or overdrive and make a mistake, precision was called for as he would need everything he had for the fight late on – he had to be conservative with the rear tyres, fuel and ERS deployment to try and stay clear and you could see he had a few moments later on with a lack of rear grip. You know you’ve got to get things right to stay there in that situation, and he and the team did it perfectly.
When you are in that situation, you just have to concentrate on the job in hand and not think too much about the rest of it. The race is an evolving thing so you’re always working on it and you don’t just win when the chequered flag falls – that’s the confirmation that you’ve done it and the moment that you can celebrate.
It’s unbelievably exciting when this happens. Winning a grand prix is a great thing for a team, but when it’s so rare and you have no way to expect it, it’s something even more special. But the problem is that this is F1 so you take a deep breath, remember there’s another race coming up and get on with that one as this one is done and dusted.
It would be easy for Gasly to have been a bit more careful, settle mentally for a podium finish and then it’s very easy for your level to drop and suddenly you’re back in third place
So you might have a glass or two of red wine to celebrate, but you have to understand why you won the race, what you could have done better and also make sure you realise that it’s probably not going to happen again for a while. But these are really great days because you know you’ve managed to be better than the bigger teams with more resources on that day. It’s a great thing to be part of.
These days usually pop up out of the blue and they are great memories. I’ve still got photos on the wall from some of those days and they are a big thing for me. And you always get reminded about them by people because they remember them as well. Those oddball results are rare, but everybody enjoys them.
But it’s not only the wins. When we finished second and third with Jordan behind Jean Alesi in Canada 1995 (above) it was a great day and there were other moments like that as well. Those are really good races and you know you’ve done a decent job – but you also have to realise when you’ve done just as good a job finishing fifth or sixth, or even 10th.
What you have to be willing to do is go for it though. It would be easy for Gasly to have been a bit more careful, settle mentally for a podium finish and then it’s very easy for your level to drop and suddenly you’re back in third place. But he and the team were determined to win and we had the same thing from Carlos Sainz behind, which is what made the race so great to watch. But once you are in that position, you can’t afford to put a foot wrong because you don’t have the extra margin that a top team will have to recover.
Everyone at AlphaTauri will remember that day for the rest of their lives because they are so special. It’s what makes it worthwhile going racing. And there’s no better feeling than when you get to the end of the day and you realise you have put one over the big boys.
Gary Anderson’s podcast, the Gary Anderson F1 show, is released weekly and available free to download from all good podcast outlets, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
