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A Formula 1 career cut short
Justin Wilson was quick and popular as a rookie in 2003, but in the end that wasn't enough. ADAM COOPER reflects on the Briton's single campaign in Formula 1
By Adam Cooper
Special contributor
The list of drivers to move from an F1 team based in Faenza to one based in Milton Keynes includes some pretty impressive names. Mark Webber was the first to do it, and since then Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat have made the same journey.
So too did Justin Wilson when he graduated from Minardi to Jaguar in the middle of his rookie season in 2003. It should have been the chance of a lifetime, but it didn't work out as everyone had hoped - and in the end commercial reasons that were way beyond his control meant his F1 career didn't extend into 2004.
It took a lot of hard work from Wilson's manager Jonathan Palmer and a major commitment from team boss Paul Stoddart to make the Minardi opportunity happen. The Italian team had run Fernando Alonso and Webber over the previous two seasons, and Wilson was seen by Stoddart as a natural successor, another talent that he could help send on his way to stardom.
There was one difference - while Justin's predecessors were clear team leaders alongside Tarso Marques and Alex Yoong, he was up against F1 veteran Jos Verstappen, so he faced a much tougher challenge.
Wilson's race engineer that year was Alex Varnava, who had previously run both Alonso and Webber.
"Towards the back of the field you have a high turnover of drivers, very typical for an underfunded team," says Varnava, who is now head of quality (systems and engineering) at Mercedes GP. "You're pushed into a situation where you have to get to know someone quite quickly.
"Where some would be a little bit hesitant, and deal with that kind of scenario differently, Justin wanted to know.
"He wanted to know about me - we'd routinely go for curries in Northampton with [his younger brother] Stefan or a couple of my friends - he wanted to be a part of it, he wanted to learn, he wanted every opportunity to give everything he could.
"What struck me was the level of commitment that he went to, even with the seat fit. His issue was that he was very broad across his shoulders, so the problem was trying to squeeze him width-ways into the cockpit. He'd do anything to fit in the car. There was never a grumble about it - it was, 'Tell me what I need to do, and I'll do it.'
"He was like a sponge, wanting to soak it up. 'How do I get quicker? Talk to me.' He was very thorough, and he wanted to understand everything."
With a minimum of testing behind him Wilson qualified 20th and last in Australia, but he stunned observers by finishing the first lap in 12th. His starts were to become his trademark.
"He was very good at overtaking in general," says Varnava. "He always did it cleanly and fairly, there was never any fuss or bother, it was quite surgical the way that he did it.
"He saw opportunities that other people might not have seen, or they might have been far more aggressive with their approach. Where it really showed was race starts. It was that awareness of what was going on around him."
He was even more impressive at Sepang, where he jumped up to eighth - only to suffer a drinks bottle failure: "We all understand the need for hydration in Malaysia. The first words out of his mouth weren't that his drink system had stopped, it was, 'I'm not sure I can keep going'. It was about what he could give.
"In the end after another two or three laps he came into the pitlane, and managed to get the car stopped. We had to physically lift him out of the car, and he was on the garage floor, on a drip. He would give everything.
"We improved the seating position slightly and took away some material inside the monocoque, just to give him a bit of manoeuvring, really. But it was by no means ever perfect. He always had some sort of compromise, not being able to move his arms properly because of the constraints on his shoulders.
"I can't reiterate enough - it was never a problem. If we could make it a little bit better that would be helpful, but he'd never grumble about it. Everything he did, he was a gentleman all the way through."
Justin continued to catch the eye with his charging first laps, and his pace relative to Verstappen. Then in the middle of the season another opportunity began to open up.
Jaguar had become frustrated by Antonio Pizzonia, who was struggling to match team-mate Webber, and it was apparent that the Brazilian was unlikely to be around in 2004. Nick Heidfeld and Alex Wurz were among the names in the frame, but when the team decided to make an immediate change, it chose Wilson.
"Once he had that good run in the Minardi there was no getting away from Jonathan Palmer, he was on it!" says former Jaguar team principal Tony Purnell. "But that's what you employ a manager for.
"He was not pushing for him to replace Pizzonia; it was much more about the following year, and trying to get his foot firmly in the door. I think when we suggested it could be a bit more immediate that was a little bit of a surprise to them.
"For a little time there he was a bit of a sensation. Especially his starts. The analysis guys said, 'You know, he goes round pretty quickly and consistently.' The Minardi people were pretty complimentary, so the jungle drums were giving us a good message.
"It was definitely worth a shot. Paul Stoddart was, 'He's a helluva guy, there's no way I'm standing in his way, he's done a great job for us. Best of luck'."
With Stoddart's blessing Wilson was able to get out of his Minardi contract, but before his Jaguar deal was announced he had to do a secret late night seat fitting.
"Being so tall I think there was a general worry that he couldn't fit in the chassis," says his race engineer Stefano Sordo, now head of aero performance at Red Bull. "So before announcing it we just wanted to make sure that he would fit.
"He couldn't actually sit in the car, so eventually we removed the seat. He was driving without a seat, resting on the back of the chassis, with a few bits of padding around. I remember we trimmed the cockpit bulkhead, just above his knees.
"It was a balance between the car being structurally safe and him being able to raise his knees past the bulkhead so he could get out. That was not unusual, but it was a larger trim than with other drivers.
"He was definitely tight in the cockpit, very, very tight. It was big chance for him, and it's normal human nature, you try to accommodate everything that the team asks you to do, and you try to be a very nice guy. He would never have complained."
At Hockenheim the team was worried that Wilson wouldn't pass the FIA's extraction test, but in the end it wasn't an issue. Things started well when he was seventh in Friday qualifying, three-tenths behind Webber and ahead of the Ferrari of Michael Schumacher.
"I don't think it was very easy for him, but he gelled straight away with the team," says Sordo. "He was very humble. A very down to earth person, very friendly, a really lovely guy. And he was definitely quick enough to be in F1."
"He was dedicated and utterly professional," Purnell recalls. "Just a sort of ideal team member. No edges, no temper tantrums, really in control of himself. He was good for the team because of that attitude.
"At the time Mark was really on a high, and everyone loved him. To enter that situation is difficult. In fact Justin walked into that pretty well, and he was popular."
Wilson retired early with gearbox problems in Germany, and life got tougher in subsequent races as he found it hard to close that frustrating 0.3s gap to his team mate, who was by now well dialled in at Jaguar. He'd not just changed teams mid-season, but also tyre supplier, from Bridgestone to Michelin.
"He was up against a young Mark Webber," says Sordo. "And also the car at the time wasn't an easy car to drive, it was quite difficult to get the laptime. And from what the drivers were saying the Michelin was a more difficult tyre, and it was harder to get the grip out of it.
"In the races we suffered a lot from rear tyre degradation, so we had a big balance swing between qualifying on new tyres and the end of a race stint on the scrubbed tyres.
"Even when Mark was quicker Justin never complained about the car. He said, 'Well if Mark can do it, it's down to me to try to find the laptime in this corner or that corner'. Most of the time he said, 'Leave the car as it is and I'll try to work on myself to extract the last bit of speed'. It was a very positive attitude.
"He had Mark at the top of his game," says Purnell. "And it's always a problem for a racing driver to sit there and look across, and you know you're in the same equipment, and you're a good chunk off. That's a difficult thing, especially as he came off the wave he had with Minardi.
"I think he expected to jump in the car and go as quick as Mark. He was very much 'the man' at Minardi, and the press was full of him. I think it dented his confidence, the fact that it was a grind to find the speed. There were flashes, but it didn't really come. It was nothing more complex than that, really."
Varnava, who knew Jaguar well having previously worked on its test team, has an interesting take: "The two teams ran their operations very differently.
"Jaguar had much more in the way of resource, much more in the way of data engineers, the way they ran the car over the course of the weekend was very different to the way we ran it at Minardi. We were a small team, everybody mucked in.
"Being his first season he was still getting familiar with circuits, and getting familiar with the way the weekend ran and the car behaved. It was all-new at the start of that season.
"And before you've even found your feet you're back into that cycle after changing teams mid-season. They would have had a level expectation, and he wouldn't have had the experience under him to do it."
Spa and Monza brought more mechanical retirements, the latter coming right at the start. Then in a rain-affected race at Indianapolis, Justin earned what would be his only point with eighth, having run as high as third during the stops. Jaguar struggled badly in the finale at Suzuka, with Webber and Wilson finishing 11th and 13th. It was a low-key end to the season.
In late November Justin tested alongside F3 man Christian Klien at Valencia. The Brit was 1.4s faster, but Klien had an ace up sleeve - not just the promise of Red Bull sponsorship for 2004, but longer term, he brought with him the prospect of survival.
"I remember coming back on the plane from Valencia with Christian and Justin," says Sordo. "We sort of knew that Christian was going to get the drive. To be honest that was a bit sad, if you think about a young driver hoping to retain his seat.
"If money was not an issue probably the team would have kept him for another year and seen what he could have done. The other thing is Mark was very positive about him - he kept saying Justin is quick."
As Sordo says, it came down to cash. Purnell was aware that Ford's support was likely to be pulled at the end of 2004, and Red Bull was his Plan B. After the Valencia test Justin was told that he didn't figure in Jaguar's plans.
"We had him under consideration until the last possible moment," Purnell insists. "Because he had done nothing to make us think, 'Don't even put him in the frame for next year'. He was very much in the frame, because otherwise we would have told him after the last race.
"The decision to drop Justin was not without its commercial drivers. At that stage I was the only bloke in the company who knew what the future was. Although it wasn't at that stage a 100 per cent decision [by Ford], it was high risk, and I knew that I had better think of the future.
"HSBC had definitely decided to quit F1, and the scene with Red Bull was pretty damn clear - you take our boy, and you're dealing with the biggest sponsor that you'll ever see. That's the way F1 is, sadly.
"It was crystal clear to me that, strategically, getting together with Red Bull was mighty sensible. I knew what I was doing. The future of all the staff depended on the right decision.
"I'm quite sure that if Justin had dazzled in the car it would have been different, but you have to chew everything over, and weigh it all up. He took everything with good grace. I never really knew how he viewed his F1 career, but I never got the impression that he thought it was all totally unfair.
"I think it was more, 'I had the chance, it was great, it didn't work out, let's make the best of the new situation'. That seemed to be the sort of bloke he was."
Sadly the new situation did not involve F1, but Justin turned his attention instead to the USA.
"In terms of outright speed, he had it, or he had the ability to get there," says Varnava, whose previous drivers provide a good benchmark. "He'd demonstrated it against Jos, he'd demonstrated it against Mark in F3000.
"OK, perhaps he didn't have the opportunity to do it against Alonso. He had the pace, he simply couldn't deliver it in a Minardi, but he managed to outqualify Jos several times.
"If there was ever anything that was going to stop him being a world champion in F1 it was just that little bit too much Mr Nice. He didn't have the approach of 'I'll have you off just to make sure I get through'. All of the politics, all of the spin, that goes into unsettling your team-mates.
"It sounds strange but I feel that F1 wasn't the world for Justin anyway. It is so self-centred and you have to have an element of that to be successful. It just wasn't the world where Justin should have been.
"It was by no means that he didn't have the pace, he was just too honourable a character. But he had every right to be a world champion."