Stoffel Vandoorne Interview: How Setbacks Built a Formula E Frontrunner
Stoffel Vandoorne prepares to leave the pits at Valencia testing, November 2020 (copyright & under licence, FIA Formula E)
It took a long time to come, but Stoffel Vandoorne won his first Formula E race at arguably the most opportune moment to do so. The Season Six title was already won by Antonio Felix da Costa, and Mercedes-Benz EQ Formula E were not in that conversation after the early races in Berlin. Titles were not the goal of the season just gone, but a statement win certainly would have been, as much as Ian James and the team played it down.
The coming season is a different matter, though those who have worked for Mercedes a long time will remember that it was a victory for Mika Hakkinen in the final round of the 1997 Formula One season which presaged the domination of 1998, and while everything has changed in motorsport since those days, the concepts of momentum and of morale do not change much. Formula E is not a category given to domination, but for Mercedes, having had a season fact-finding through HWA Racelab in 2018-19, and then another as a full works team, things get serious now.
“It’s a very difficult category to come into - with all the technology it’s not easy,” Vandoorne said, in summer 2020. There are few drivers who, on their day, make it look as easy to master that technology as Vandoorne does. The Belgian’s status as one of the favourites for the upcoming Formula E title is testament to the principle that careers take unpredictable turns, and good things sometimes don’t come in packages we expect them to.
Before he was even considering driving in Formula E, Vandoorne was meant to be the future of Formula One; that was the idea in the mind of Ron Dennis when he signed him to McLaren’s junior programme when working his way through the formulae. Discussed as a potential World Champion at the time when McLaren’s slide from the top was seen as a brief blip, Vandoorne’s seven victories in his 2015 GP2 title-winning season didn’t do anything to quell the idea that we were looking at an epochal talent. A point on debut in Bahrain for McLaren, in the final dog-days of the Dennis era, cemented the feeling.
A win in the final race of Season 6 was perfectly-timed for Mercedes and Vandoorne (copyright & under licence, FIA Formula E)
What followed wasn’t in the script. Vandoorne endured two miserable years driving, first, the final McLaren-Honda, and then a Renault-powered McLaren which demonstrated that, contrary to what the team had been saying for the previous year, even with a new power unit, the chassis was not up to winning races, or even to looking like it.
The other difficulty Vandoorne had to content with, along with a challenging car and a lack of power, in his F1 years, was the ousting of Dennis before the start of the 2017 F1 season. With Zak Brown running McLaren in a very different way, and managing Lando Norris, Vandoorne looked like the previous regime’s man, and while 2017 was a good first full season, 2018 was unhappy and saw a Vandoorne lacking in confidence and feeling his team were not prioritising him. Much of this was due to Fernando Alonso being given primacy within the team (something for Esteban Ocon to be concerned about for 2021), but for Vandoorne to leave F1 entirely at the end of that season seemed a sad squandering of enormous potential.
Like any of us when forced to look back on a dream job that did not turn out as well as hoped, Vandoorne does not enjoy looking back at the end of his time in Formula One. Nonetheless, he is not bitter towards McLaren.
“It made me a better person and a better driver. The situation I was going through was just not the right time in the right place, the team was obviously struggling, there was reshuffling in the management, and things happening that did not go in my favour, let’s say, but ultimately they [gave] me a chance in F1, and if you look, things were perfect before I went there, but yeah, it was just wrong timing in the end, and that’s something I couldn’t really control; it happens sometimes.”
“I’m not feeling upset about it - I know I’ve had my chance, and I learned a lot about mistakes that I’ve made and mistakes that the team made too, and how I handle those [kinds of mistakes] in the future.”
Formula E, by contrast, seemed something of a safehaven for a driver looking to find his enjoyment of his craft once again. The 2018-19 season was far from easy - both he and teammate Gary Paffett struggled for pace in their Venturi-powered cars at times, though a first pole position in Hong Kong was a high point.
(Copyright & under licence, FIA Formula E)
“In the first couple of races I had really good pace, but I also had a couple of crashes, and that led me to figure out what risk and reward I could take, if you like. Once I figured it out, I got a couple of podiums, and a pole position [the season before last]. Formula E cars, they’re tricky, they’re some of the most complicated cars I’ve ever driven, because everything is so on edge, basically, but you have to push it to extract the most out of it. It’s interesting, I enjoy it, and it’s what makes this close racing so unpredictable to watch.”
“It was a completely new team. The team, the mechanics, there was literally no experience. Me and Gary were very close, and still are very close. Gary is a good guy on the technical side, I had a lot of experience of the F1 side, Gary of the DTM side, and we were able to set up a good baseline for the official Mercedes team.”
As an engineering operation almost totally new to Formula E got used to the unique demands of the Gen2 era, so too it was possible to see Vandoorne expressing himself behind the wheel again, showing a robustness in wheel-to-wheel battle that many ex-F1 drivers have not when transferring to electric racing. He had to alter his driving style to get to a point where he was delivering to his own high standards, but adaptability is one of Vandoorne’s strongest suits.
“I would say the thing I’ve had to work on the most is the braking - the regen side of things, because in all the series I’ve done before like F1, the idea is to press the brake pedal as hard as you possibly can, but in Formula E I was pressing it hard and locking up tyres, so I had to learn to calm down and treat the brakes more gently, because it didn’t feel natural at the time. Now it does, but at the time it was something I was focusing on a lot.”
The first formula E podium for Vandoorne came with HWA Racelab, in Hong Kong in Season 5 (copyright & under licence, FIA Formula E)
The following season, HWA ceded its place on the grid to Mercedes EQ Formula E - a separate operation, but carrying over many of the same people. Vandoorne remained, and he would work alongside Nyck de Vries, forming a team of Dutch-speakers. With de Vries also having won Formula Two (after it changed its name from GP2), and also having previously been a McLaren junior driver, the similarities in the drivers’ career paths were easy to see, and Vandoorne acknowledged them.
“We’ve known each other quite a long time,” Vandoorne said just before the Berlin 2020 season finale. “He’s put in some very impressive performances, and he’s learning fast. I also made sure to try to bring him up to speed as much as possible with the technical side, because every little detail in Formula E, it’s important to get it.”
“It’s always important to have good results. We started the season well with the podiums in Saudi, then everything in-between was a run with ups and downs, but there was always a lot of promise and we showed flashed of pace, but we were never really able to capitalise on them, or put things quite together, we were a little bit unlucky at times, but [in Berlin] we got what we wanted.”
The Venturi-powered HWA had good races, but was not a consistent frontrunner (copyright & under licence, FIA Formula E)
Last season was effectively a free hit for Vandoorne and Mercedes. This time around, there will be a whole new kind of pressure, with fans, media, and the board in Stuttgart all expecting a title challenge. Added to that, the ever-aggressive de Vries will not give any quarter as he looks to establish himself and take his own first Formula E victory, and potentially challenge for the ultimate prize.
It’s a lot for any driver to carry on his shoulders, but Stoffel Vandoorne feels he is a wiser person and a better driver for the test he has been presented with in his career. Now, it’s time to prove he’s equal to the challenge of leading a factory team to a World Championship, in arguably the most competitive form of motorsport.
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