DAVIDSON: I WASN’T PUSHY ENOUGH FOR FORMULA 1 FUTURE
The trajectory of Anthony Davidson’s career seemed like it was only heading in one direction in the early part of the century.After shining in the junior formulae he should, by rights, have had a long and successful Formula 1 career.
An epic Formula Ford Festival win in 2000 helped him climb the ranks through to grand prix racing, but the building blocks never quite slotted into place for him. He was at the cutting edge of some of the finest F1 cars as a test and development driver before a half-chance on the grand prix grid with the underfunded SuperAguri team in 2007 and ’08. But that was it.
His future was directed towards sportscars and, despite cruelly missing out on victory at Le Mans on several occasions, he won the world title in 2014. Nowadays, he is known to a modern generation of motorsport fans as the man who operates the Skypad in the channel’s TV F1 coverage, a role he is perfectly suited to and one he enjoys immensely.
He took time out of his schedule to have a walk down memory lane with MN and answer some of the readers’questions.
Question: There was quite a glut of talent that you were racing against in your karting days. There were drivers like Jenson Button, Dan Wheldon, Matt Davies and others knocking around at the same time. Did you realise at the time that you were part of a special group of drivers?
John Charles Via email
Anthony Davidson: “We definitely recognised the talent in that group even back then. You could look up and down the age groups that were racing, the younger and older ones, and you could see that we had some special people up against us. When we got to, say, 11 years old, we could look back and we could look forwards. It is always easy to assume that the year you are driving in is particularly challenging but we knew. I think my dad actually said to motorsport journalist Marcus Pye years ago, right in the early stages when it was Dan, me and Jenson, something like: ‘there is a Formula 1 world champion among this group’. Apparently, Marcus replied:
‘some kind of soothsayer are you?’… “We knew what we were looking at in terms of talent, it was pretty obvious that it was a special clique of drivers and we all pushed each other on so much.”
MN:And you got on well, didn’t you?
AD: “As well as you could. I think we got on better than the dads did! We could sense that there was quite ferocious competition between the dads. It was definitely the dad’s sport. We were good at what we did and we were having fun, but there was always a tension there too – we could tell it meant more than just a weekend hobby. There was a bit of intensity to it.”
MN: So who would you say was your nemesis in karting?
“It was Dan Wheldon from the early days in the Cadet class – from the age of eight until 12. He was slightly older than me,
