RFM Front Page News

TORONTO, Canada (July 6, 2007) — Robert Doornbos, who drives the No. 14 Muermans/Jumbo Supermarkets/OzJet Team Minardi USA car in the Champ Car World Series, is a very popular fellow this week. After his storming win at Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, despite changeable weather and a charging three times Champion in both his mirrors, not to mention the entertaining hour-long episode that immediately followed, Doornbos is delighted to be the focus of attention here in Toronto. “This track,” he said, “is a bit of a shock after coming off the natural road course at Mont-Tremblant last weekend; street courses are always bumpy and a little like racing on ice! But the track will rubber in as the weekend goes on, so we are not going to make too many changes in the car until we see how the track comes in.”

Doornbos has, as you know, Formula One experience; he has been and remains a test driver for the Red Bull Racing team, and when Christian Klein lost his seat at the end of 2006, Robert got a three-race tryout in that car to show what he could do. “I outqualified and outraced my more experienced teammate (David Coultard) in all three races,” he pointed out, “although we ran mid-pack; you may be the best driver in the world, but you are only as good as your [equipment]. If you put Lewis Hamilton into that car, he would not be at the front of the grid! I hoped that my demonstration would earn me a race seat, and when they offered me only another testing contract, I suggested that there is life outside F1 and perhaps they could find me some racing in another series. Red Bull agreed that if I could find myself a good team, they would finance me, keeping an option on my services in testing and working around my racing schedule. Mr. Stoddart contacted me and asked it I would like to race for him and I said at first No Thank You. I don’t want to run around at the back of the grid, even though just being out there is quite an honour.” However, after doing a bit more research Doornbos discovered that a team like Team Minardi could be at the sharp end with far fewer people on board if they were the right people, and when Stoddart informed him that he had hired Michael Cannon as his crew chief, that was enough to convince him to come on down. “My dad’s eyes lit up,” he chuckled, “when he heard that I wanted to race – this is his boyhood dream! He has never been able to race, but I did give him a spin in the two-seater in Italy that he very much enjoyed.”

Doornbos is not only an accomplished driver, but a charming and articulate one, and I asked him if Formula One has “charm school” for the drivers (as the Porsche Factory teams do) to teach them how to present themselves. “Not really,” he said. “Team McLaren have one, but I think you could send Kimi to charm school all his life and he just is not that kind of guy. Lewis Hamilton, of course, was a Formula One driver three years before he ever came to them. It has to come naturally to a person, and if it does, you pick up the right of it on your own.”

That led, inevitably, to the end-of-race tempest in a Champ Car teacup at Tremblant. Racing of course is a small world, and Bourdais (who drives the No. 1 MacDonalds car for Newman-Haas-Lanigan) and Doornbos drove against one another in F3000 (now called GP2). So he had already seen what kind of a person Bourdais was likely to be, although he said he was “surprised by the way Sebastien behaved.” It has been observed that in other times and places where well-matched drivers competed on the track, the one with the thinnest skin is the one that comes out worst. Doornbos cited examples from other sports as well as racing, where this technique works. “Ask a guy you are golfing with,” he suggested, “if he breathes out or breathes in when he hits his drive. From then on his game will be rubbish!” He was quite circumspect regarding the interplay that went on during the podium ceremony, stating politely that what he said to Bourdais was for his ears only and if Bourdais chose to spill it to the press, that was his option. But racing, as other sports, includes the ever-present mental games as well as the physical combat on the track, and it is a wise driver that knows how to excel in both. (Even the laconic Raikkonen was heard to observe, following Michael Schumacher’s last attempt to cheat in qualifying and to deny it, that perhaps next time he would like to cover the camera that allowed everyone to see what he was doing before he denied he had done anything wrong.) The closest he came to stating an opinion about the propriety of such behaviour was to muse that it did seem to show a weakness in Bourdais.

When asked about his future wishes as far as racing goes, Doornbos said at once that if he had a chance to return to F1 in a competitive ride, he would likely take it. But until and unless that day came, he is very happy to race in Champ Cars for as long as he has a good drive. “Champ Cars is so relaxed compared to F1,” he marveled. “I don’t miss all the politics and the suspicions over there; here I can go to see any of the drivers, including Sebastien until last weekend, and shake his hand and ask how he is doing and give him a big hug and a kiss! Over there you just keep to yourself. But the team bosses and the drivers in F1 do keep track of what goes on over here, and now that they know I am racing in Champ Cars, they ask me what it’s like, how it’s different, what the other drivers are like and how much I am enjoying myself. So with my contract with Red Bull Racing arranged to allow me to keep a foot in both worlds without conflicts, I am looking forward to a very exciting career in the Champ Car World Series.”

Finally the question of nicknames came up. Americans in particular love to nickname their drivers and it is sometimes possible for a nickname to stick that the driver would not perhaps have chosen for himself. So I asked Robert if he has a nickname that he would like attached to him. “I have heard some people call me Bobby D,” he said with a big smile. And when asked if this wasn’t a little bit NASCAR, the smile got bigger. “I much prefer Bobby D,” he said, “to Doorknobs!” (It is unfortunate but true that the spell checker in Microsoft tries to substitute this unfortunate word for his name).

Robert’s dance card is very full this weekend, so he had to whisk off to his next set of duties then. The cars go back on track this afternoon for first qualifying and we can’t wait to see what happens next. Whatever the outcome of the weekend’s racing, you can be sure Robert Doornbos will have a quip, a quote, a thoughtful analysis or a joke to make about it. We wish him all success this weekend and all the way to the Championship. After all, tied in points with the Champion, he is already halfway there!