F1 Racing Column: First steps with a new  team - and what testing is all about…

Settling into any new environment can be difficult, even when you think you know a lot of the people concerned. You only find out what they are really like when you actually work with them. Having just returned from my first run with Stewart Grand Prix I can say that I am more fired up than ever looking forward to the 1999 season.

The primary purpose of our run in the SF-2 at Barcelona at the beginning of December was to allow me to acclimatise to the car and engine, and to get to know the people in the team. The organisation seems very friendly and very professional. Morale was good. We didn't try to do any set-up work - basically, I just tried a couple of engines - but it was all worthwhile in terms of building relationships and feeding myself in.

Some drivers hate testing, but I've never had a problem with it provided that it actually means something. I enjoy it, so long as we try things that are useful. At the end of the day my job is to try and get the car to go quicker. What I don't like is when you repeat things which didn't work in the first place. That frustrates me because, if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. Period. Why do it for the sake of it? If you see people making such slight modifications, what's the point?

If I'm told that something looks much, much better in the wind tunnel, that's different. But I've driven for some teams where their guys just go away and rub a bit off here and there and want you to try again. Formula 1 can be funny like that. People get bees in their bonnets. Over the years I've seen many times when a designer or an engineer will fervently believe that something is the way to go but, in actual fact, it isn't and you've proved it once already. Yet they just seem to keep pushing it forward. That frustrates me, because it's unnecessary and wastes time when you should be looking at other things.

So testing is okay provided you are doing things that interest you and which have value. I'd rather go testing and do, say, three days, but three days where it's all very methodically done. Where you do something, stop, talk about it, go on to the next step, talk about that, and so on. It sounds simple. But I've been in situations where a team will just throw things at the car, and where there have been so many things to throw that this pointless process just goes on and on and on. You end up thrashing around for three days, without getting out of the car except for lunch, and half of it is a waste of time because it's all been done before. It's better to do things in a slightly slower manner. There's no point thrashing round doing 180 miles a day if it doesn't tell you something new. And, of course, the golden rule is never change two things at once. That's the easiest way to get yourself bamboozled. This is where-some designer types show their desperation, without coming up with anything new. Nine-and-a-half times out of 10, trying things that way just isn't going to work.

Testing also keeps you sharp as a driver. It's especially important at the beginning of the year that you can just get in a car and learn about what it can do and what you can do to it. That way, come the races, you know what to do to it if you have a particular problem. If you don't get that all-important testing time in the car, then you don't have that chance. You end up doing what your team-mate is doing. And that doesn't always suit you, as I discovered in 1995 with Michael Schumacher at Benetton.

Of course, you have to win races to win world championships, but the real foundation for that success is always laid in testing. That's where titles are really won, because that's where the development goes on, and that development is the key factor. If you don't develop, you don't win. It's an immutable law of Fl.

These GP Columns appeared exclusively in F1 Racing magazine every month.
The columns are reproduced by kind permission of the Editor, Matt Bishop.
With thanks to F1 Racing ©. All rights reserved.
This page prepared 23rd December 1998.