“F1 drivers have so much awareness and mental capacity to know exactly what’s going on, and when extra rules get thrown into the mix, they use the guidelines to get an advantage,” says Herbert.
“This whole apex thing: the race is just to get to the apex first.” As for abusing track limits, Herbert admits it was less of a problem in his day when you had “kerb, grass, gravel”, or even “kerb, grass, catch-fencing” instead of acres of run-off.
Since this interview, the drivers met at the Qatar GP to discuss tweaks to the guidelines in response to the questions raised by recent incidents. There’s irony in the Verstappen spat, given how much and how often Herbert has expressed his admiration for the Dutchman, whom he classes along with Lewis Hamilton in the “super-human” racing driver bracket.
In fact, he’s deeply impressed by most of today’s generation. “F1 drivers have evolved. They are more complete than any from my era, including Michael Schumacher, because there are more tools for them to be perfect,” says Herbert.
“Max is unbelievably near perfect. Lando will improve: we haven’t seen the best of him either. It’s been a good season for him to learn about the games when you come up against the very best. It’s a really good time.”
Herbert draws a line from the greats of the past to those of today: from Stewart and Lauda, to those he raced against – Senna, Prost, his old team-mates Häkkinen and Schumacher – to Hamilton and Verstappen.
What he doesn’t say, but we can, is he could have been among them without that F3000 crash at Brands Hatch in 1988. I was there that day, just turned 14. I’d seen him win the Formula Ford Festival against the odds at Brands in ’85 and watched him blitz the ’87 British F3 championship. Many of us in the crowd felt sure he was a nailed-on future F1 world champion. Then it all went quiet. I’ve never felt so depressed leaving a race circuit.
Life-changing
Long before the internet, it was only the next day we learned he was still alive. “My life changed so dramatically,” he says. “When I was lying in hospital, I didn’t think so. Mentally, I felt the same. But the physical side had changed.” The two feet-on impacts, one with a concrete bridge parapet on the left, the other into a steel barrier on the right, disintegrated the front of his Reynard.
