Book Review: Alex Yoong – The Driver’s Line – Part 2

I guess IGNORANCE is the best word to sum up Alex’s frustration towards Malaysian F1 so called “follower” during his life in Minardi. Malaysians are very new to the sports (F1) and they expect Alex to take on the giants of racing legend e.g. Michael Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello, Kimi Raikkonen etc! Alex penned down his emotion really well in this book and at times when I read, I do really feel for him. In fact, it’s the Western press that was doing Alex real justice. Those Western press are experts in the area and their comments/reports are well justified.

Alex’s life in Minardi in my opinion can be summarised into three sections (1) getting in the groove, (2) the lowest of low and (3) there always clear sky after the storm.

(1) Settling in the middle of the season is not going to be easy. It doesn’t do any good when you are in (with all due respect) a Minardi and partnering Fernando Alonso! But Alex did a good job by managing to qualify despite issues with the cars. Both Fernando and Alex qualified in the spare car which was setup for Fernando. That’s a good debut effort. After those 3 outings, Alex felt that he lacked the physical strength needed to drive an F1 car. I guess that contributed largely to the several downfall in Alex’s outing in 2002.

(2) I guess lots of people underestimated the difficulty of driving an open wheel racing machine needless to say F1. They thought driving those machines is just like driving a normal car! Most people don’t see the reason why these F1 racers need to keep fit constantly. It’s the G-force! For those who still can’t comprehend it, just sit yourself in a roller coaster. And imagine you are at 3-4 times the speed (depending on the speed of the roller coaster you are in) and you need to negotiate corners, watch out for other racers and do that for almost 2 hours! I myself had the experience and this is in a closed wheel racing car! That itself, I couldn’t handle. After 2 laps, I felt like vomiting and my whole body were stretched to the max inside the car. I felt like I was going to be thrown here and there whenever the car is taking a corner. Now, imagine doing it in an open wheel car! Just imagine that!

I was driven by the Porsche GT racing driver

Go….

Travelling at 230kmph.

Alex was struggling physically and it caused him mentally too. That’s the reason he didn’t do well that caused him to not be able to qualify 3 times in 2002. It was a dark day in his F1 career.

(3) I guess those two races off were a blessing in disguise for Alex. Anthony Davidson, who has tonnes of mileage in F1 car as BAR F1 test driver that replaces didn’t seems to be that wow-ing (from the book, not from me). So for Alex who didn’t do much F1 testing prior racing doing equally the job as Anthony (with no intention of disrespecting Anthony) had made Alex doesn’t look that bad after all. I thought Alex did a much better job when he returned from his “break”. If you follow his lap time during Practices/Qualifying/Warm Up, he was quite often better than Mark. I guess a clear sky is always there after a storm best illustrate Alex’s final few runs with Minardi. However, his earlier season’s issue had given him a second chance. But only those who followed him closely would know that Alex had improved really a lot.

Life is likewise. You have your time to get in the groove. You had hit you lowest point and you know there is always a clear sky after a storm. In the final part, I will post about Alex post F1 life and put my 2 cents on the whole F1 with Alex.

Advertisement