Why Max Verstappen Will Be the Driver to Watch at the 2015 Belgian Grand Prix
Fernando Alonso, as ever, kept his cards close to his chest. Valtteri Bottas was looking forward to heading back home to Finland and a month with "no travelling."
Marcus Ericsson? Five days in Croatia would do the trick.
Daniel Ricciardo spoke of working "on this tan" in St. Tropez, presumably referring to the holiday resort and not the stuff you'd find in a bottle on the shelves of Boots. Rob Smedley, meanwhile, seemed thrilled at the prospect of being dragged to Disney World by the kids.
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Toto Wolff and Eric Boullier, for very different reasons, were counting down the minutes before they could switch off their phones and forget the world. Adrian Newey discussed his imminent 10-day visit to Seychelles, the kind of trip you would expect of a multiple championship-winning designer enjoying semi-retirement.
And poor, poor Paddy Lowe explained how he would spend three weeks kicking his heels, making a nuisance of himself and waiting for his wife to arrive home from work.
The video produced by the official Formula One website at the beginning of the summer break, in which several paddock figures revealed their holiday plans, humanised those who live in the most dehumanising of environments, who become cardboard cutouts when plunged into press conferences and who are known, principally, as names on a page.
It offered a timely reminder that there is more to life than podiums, points and championship positions, that these people have families, partners, children and commitments ranging far beyond those with whom they travel to hotels and racetracks around the globe.
Most fascinatingly, though, it revealed how they unwind from the day job, where they find relief and how they escape the F1 bubble.
It was, then, with interest that you listened to how Max Verstappen, as the youngest-ever driver in F1 history, would spend his very first mid-season break.
Having not only made it to the pinnacle of motorsport but secured his best-ever result with fourth place in July's Hungarian Grand Prix, surely he would make up for the time he lost when forging his racing career as a child and spend four precious weeks living as a normal 17-year-old?
No chance.
"(I will be) spending a lot of time with friends and I like go-karting," he said in the video, "so for sure I will spend a lot of time building up go-karts and driving them myself."
With the exception of Esteban Gutierrez, who performed a street demo in Mexico City ahead of November's race, Verstappen was the only participant whose plans remotely included motor racing.
For him, Formula One is not a profession but a hobby, and time spent away from a circuit is, to all intents and purposes, time wasted.
His enthusiasm to spend time on his vocation, when his rivals and peers were all going on their vacation, was the latest indication that Verstappen is destined for great things. Despite possessing all the natural talent a driver could wish for, he still dedicates his weeks off to constructing and driving something in an everlasting pursuit of self-improvement.
Yet, before he was released for the summer and let loose on his karts, Verstappen had an extracurricular activity to take care of.
On the weekend F1's reigning world champion was found following a pop singer around Barbados, Verstappen, per Motorsport.com, was driving in and out of the pit lane at Imola.
Scuderia Toro Rosso's decision to reserve one of their two allocated "filming days" until the in-season period—when most other teams tend to stage theirs during winter testing—could give them a huge advantage in this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, where a new race-start procedure will be introduced.
As reported by Motorsport.com's Adam Cooper, the changes will lead to an overhaul of the clutch bite-point regulations, preventing changes to the bite point from the moment the cars leave the garage until after the start of the race and banning the teams from guiding their drivers over team radio.
While it will remain unclear just how the new procedure will affect the drivers until the grid forms at Spa-Francorchamps, AP Racing's Steve Bryan is convinced there will be a significant change to the nature of race starts, telling Peter Windsor in the September 2015 print edition of F1 Racing magazine:
"I think it will be a little more hit-and-miss at Spa. Until Spa, the engineers have had the opportunity to do quite a few bite-point "learns" through the course of a weekend; they can then get the driver to trim those after they've left the pitlane. From Spa onwards, the engineers won't be able to do that any more. There will be no external adjustment of the bite point. The driver can still trim it but the team can't advise him over the radio how to do that.
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Having had only 10 races to grow accustomed to the previous start protocol, it was probable that Verstappen would have been among those hurt most by the sudden change of rules.
Yet those hours spent stopping and starting at Imola, as his competitors hit the beach, mean he will be among the best-prepared drivers in Belgium.
Despite the circuit suiting Verstappen's organic driving style, and his previous record at Spa—he won all three Formula Three races at the venue in 2014—the Belgian GP should, in theory, be a difficult weekend for Toro Rosso, who continue to be restrained by the shortcomings of Renault's power unit.
The accidental masterstroke that was their second filming day, however, will give the team a boost and ensure Verstappen will be the driver most worth watching at the start, the defining element of any Belgian Grand Prix.
From the moment he was confirmed as a Formula One driver 12 months ago to his performance in Hungary, the boy wonder has hinted that experience counts for nothing in modern-day motorsport.
But when those five red lights go out at Spa, Verstappen—of all people—will prove a little preparation and know-how can do no harm.
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