"When we put Callum next to Max or Charles, I think speed is nearly the same. As pure drivers, they are generally equal."
Those are the words of Frits van Amersfoort, the man whose team ran Formula 1 sensation Max Verstappen in the F3 European Championship in 2014, and followed that by launching next-man-most-likely Charles Leclerc in the category last season. This year, Van Amersfoort Racing has arguably completed a hat-trick of fielding F3's most-exciting talent - and by 'most-exciting' we don't necessarily mean the driver doing all the winning, but instead the most tantalising - in the form of 17-year-old Brit Callum Ilott.
And yet this is the same Ilott - who with two race wins is well in the hunt for second in the championship - ditched by Red Bull junior chief Helmut Marko at the end of 2015.
A glittering karting career brought the Hertfordshire schoolboy onto Marko's radar, and he pushed Ilott straight into a Verstappen-style move to F3 with Carlin, via a 'warm-up' in the Toyota Racing Series in New Zealand. The thing is, Ilott - whose family was all set on making the tried-and-trusted step from karts to Formula Renault 2.0 before he got the Red Bull call - wasn't ready to deal with this, a point van Amersfoort raises.
"There is another quality that is important as a driver, and that's the mental side," says the Dutchman.
"We know the story about Max - the strongest point of Max is Jos, and also his mental strength."
Charles was nearly completely on his own [albeit guided by Nicolas Todt's All Road Management stable], and in the middle of the season he started to get a little bit into trouble and we still think this was more mental than technical. And Callum, I don't mean to criticise but he could benefit from more mental strength - it's a big importance in driving."
Trevor Carlin, whose team first started testing Ilott at Marko's behest in the autumn of 2014, adds: "What people don't take into account is somebody's age and experience."Obviously we have a situation at the moment where everyone is compared to Max Verstappen, so all of a sudden anyone who can't do what Max has done is seen to be a failure or incomplete, which is absolutely far from the truth, because there is and has only even been one Max Verstappen."What Callum should be compared to is his peers. If he'd done MSA Formula last year, then we would be singing his praises because he'd have had fantastic battles with Dan Ticktum, Lando Norris, Colton Herta and Ricky Collard - you'd have had five of the best young drivers of their generation fighting each other."As it happens Helmut Marko decided to put Callum straight into F3 to try and replicate Max and he wasn't quite ready for it. He wasn't as prepared, but even so he did a great job."The thing with Callum is he's naturally superfast, but he possibly found it not as easy to drive our car as Antonio Giovinazzi [2015 F3 runner-up] could drive it - maybe it's a little bit harder to drive, a little stiffer, and he couldn't quite get to grips with it. So he was always in the shadow of Antonio."But as the year moved on he got faster and faster, so it doesn't surprise me that he's doing so well this year. I'm a bit sad that he didn't stay with us because I think he could have been a contender for the championship."Ilott himself has said that he spent much of 2015 chucking the car into corners, without much idea of how it would react, and then dealing with the consequences. He made even driving the dull Hockenheim look exciting, and in the wet at Pau his angles - and speed - were extraordinary.
But if this makes you think 'crasher', then bear in mind the paradox that he was the only driver to be classified as a finisher in all 33 Euro F3 races last season, and finally broke onto the podium in the penultimate round at the Nurburgring, where generally if you overdrive you're nowhere.
Unfortunately, he then undid some of that reputation with a calamitous Macau Grand Prix. When he found a groove, he was blinding, going second quickest in opening qualifying on his first day at the track. But, amid mounting rumours that he was getting the flick from Red Bull, too many sessions ended with a crumpled Dallara.
Carlin believes that Marko "made his decision very early, because the results weren't there as expected at the beginning of the year. I told Helmut not to expect results at the beginning, but sure enough he was pushing for them, and Helmut's one of these guys who once he makes his mind up he's not for changing."I'm sure if he saw what Callum is doing now he'd have been quite happy to keep him on the Red Bull scheme, because he's quicker than the other two Red Bull juniors [Motopark's Sergio Sette Camara and Niko Kari] by a long shot."We believed that he would be fantastic in year two and sure enough he is."
Once he found that he was struggling to match expectations, Ilott changed his thought processes in 2015."It's just that F3 last year was really tough," he says. "There were 35 drivers and a lot of them are doing well this year in F3, GP3, GP2, Indy Lights as well. It wasn't like we had a bad field at all, and finishing seventh, eighth, ninth was quite an achievement."Last year, because I was compared to Antonio I always trying to improve and catch up, so you feel as a driver you're always one step behind. That's hard and very annoying, when you're never good enough. But Antonio is a very good driver."As it turned out, Carlin didn't get his wish and Ilott jumped ship to VAR for 2016. He alludes to the super-rich investors backing VAR (in its case Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte), Hitech and Prema when he talks of "an awful lot of buying drivers. We're not in that position. VAR were in a position to offer Callum the deal of the century and he took it - fair play to him."
For his part, van Amersfoort says Ilott was on his radar even before Red Bull got wind of him. "He was in the group of go-karters around Max," he says, "so even before Max we already heard the name Callum Ilott. He was in our eyes for a very long time already."We talked about him not so much with Max as Jos, because Jos has an opinion on nearly everybody! We sometimes use him as an encyclopaedia about drivers."
What was Verstappen's take on Ilott? "Good talent, big talent," says van Amersfoort. "But since they've grown up in a completely different way that's the difference between the two boys.
"He comes from a non-racing background - he doesn't have a father like Jos who can advise him, and what Jos did for Max is incredible. And so Callum, more or less, and his father and mother, had to do it on their own, and of course that's not easy."In a way, that does make Ilott easy to work with. His parents (dad is a high-flier in the investments industry) keep in the background at races, generally chatting with fellow Brits George Russell's and Ben Barnicoat's families.Unlike Russell and Barnicoat, now that Ilott is off the Red Bull scheme he has neither a bond to any programme nor any management. "He's a great kid, nice personality, quite uncomplicated," adds Carlin. "He just gets on with it really."
On joining VAR, Ilott found himself partnering Anthoine Hubert, Pedro Piquet and Harrison Newey - all with good form in lesser series but all Euro F3 rookies. Contrast that with championship leader Lance Stroll's Prema team-mates, who include established F3 race winners Nick Cassidy and Maxi Gunther."It's quite hard because the others haven't necessarily been to the tracks in F3," says Ilott, "so it takes them longer to figure out what's right for them, and they use my data and I haven't really got anyone's data to work upon, especially in free practice. OK I learn a little bit from people, but they're all learning from me."But I've definitely improved a lot from last year - I think about it now and I learned so much, the right way to drive and push yourself. When you learn from someone as good as Antonio every little detail makes such a big difference - I didn't use that to my advantage last year, and this year I'm trying to perfect it."Even past data from Verstappen and Leclerc has limited use bearing in mind different track conditions, subtle changes in tyres, and the fact that VAR has switched from VW to Mercedes power this year."At the beginning of the weekend we use Max's and Charles's videos to give an idea of what you need to do, and I also know what Antonio did so I can combine the two," says Ilott. "But sometimes I get it wrong and they weren't actually doing what I think they were!"
Harry Tincknell, coaching with VAR at the majority of races this season, is also on board to help. "The thing with Callum is he's got this sort of inner confidence that even if it's not looking particularly great in a certain session, or it suddenly rains or dries, he can go out and smash it," says Tincknell. "He's good enough to do that without looking at anything."Tincknell is also impressed that Ilott doesn't overcomplicate F3, giving him the mindspace he will need when added complexities get thrown at him further up the ladder."You see that in the debriefs," he says. "I've worked with Harri [Newey] and he goes through all the data and videos in quite a particular way and I spend quite a lot of time with him, whereas with Callum sometimes we're in and out in 10 minutes."That's his style - he wants to know where he's quick, where he's slow, what he needs to learn, and that's it, he's off. From our side that's great."Ilott also has an ability to soak up advice and act on it immediately, says Tincknell: "He definitely likes to rag it, but from a coaching side one of the best things about Callum is you tell him to do something once and he goes out and does it on the first lap."That's a great trait to have, because as you go up the levels you're only going to have more and more analysis, feedback, performance engineers, data engineers throwing information at you, so to be able to take all that in and do it straight away is great."This was particularly apparent at the Norisring, where Ilott lost almost all of free practice to an engine failure that left him with three 10-place grid penalties, and meant he went into qualifying cold."He went out in Q1 and he was second," says Tincknell. "And I just said to him, 'Right, one thing on your line in the chicane, and make sure you have clear laps at the end.' He sorted the line out straight away, he made sure he had the gap for the last four or five laps, and he took pole by two tenths, which is enormous at the Norisring."
Ilott stormed from his penalised 12th to third in race one, only to harpoon Joel Eriksson out of the lead while trying to outbrake Stroll for second, and earn himself an even bigger grid penalty."That was in the process of being the best F3 drive I've ever seen," says Tincknell. "The pace he had he would have won it easily. That just shows there is a little bit of rough diamond still in him. He's mature for his age but sometimes you do see he's 17."If you give him two or three years, not only to mature as a man but also as a driver, then those lapses that turn a little mistake into a big mistake won't occur anymore."It was further frustration for a driver who, without that engine failure, might be challenging Stroll strongly for the title."I'd have had a potential 75 points that weekend instead of the 12 points I got," says Ilott, "and it would be a completely different story. Unfortunately these things happen but I've had a lot of it this year."It's just weird - I had the fire [in pre-race testing at the Paul Ricard opener, which forced Ilott into a loaned chassis from T-Sport he used until last month], a sensor problem at Spa. It all adds up. It's not over [the title] but it's quite far away, shall we say."
Van Amersfoort adds: "I must admit and I take now this opportunity: we had a couple of problems this year that played a role in the points Callum has. The engine failure at the Norisring, which was completely due to us, cost him dearly. It could have been a weekend where he won three races in a row like Max did. But it remains a technical sport."Ever more so when you climb the ranks... F1? He'd be fine, but financially he's going to need help to make it there by getting back on a junior programme.
Tincknell adds: "What's quite refreshing for someone so young is that he's already talking about being a professional racing driver, not necessarily an F1 driver, but whatever route he goes down he's going to be a fantastic asset."I can see him being a mega World Endurance driver in LMP1 or GTE Pro - he's got aggression through traffic, natural speed, and as he matures he'll work better and better with the team."He should continue in single-seaters while he can, but if the time does come to make a switch I'm sure there are going to be teams chomping at the bit to sign him up.""I'd like to do GP2 for two years but the money's not there for that," says Ilott. "But to be fair I might stay another year in F3. I just want to keep my options open. The further you go on the single-seater ladder, the further you can go in your whole racing career, but I do want to try different stuff."
A title favourite for F3 in 2017? Van Amersfoort thinks so: "It should be the way that when you think about 2017 you think, 'Ah, that's Callum's year.' Just like this year you have to say it's Lance's year."
Share this article on
http://www.autosport.com/premium/feature/7142/the-teenager-proving-red-bull-wrong
About Marcus Simmons
Marcus Simmons is the deputy editor of Autosport magazine. As a child he was a regular on the chalk banks of Thruxton, before becoming an MSA timekeeper at the age of 17. Shortly afterwards, he started reporting for Motoring News and joined the staff in 1990.
After abandoning a parallel Formula First career – which had been as incident-packed as his childhood equestrian exploits – he moved to Autosport in 1996. Since then he has had two stints as a freelance and a brief spell as editor of Motor Sport magazine, during which the revered green cover was revived, before rejoining Autosport in 2008. He lives in Twickenham with his partner, two daughters, cat and guitars.@MarcusSimmons54More features by Marcus Simmons
Photographic Credits Thomas Suer Photography and FotoFormulaK
