BELGIAN DRIVER STOFFEL VANDOORNE will be one of many millions of people lining up this week to watch F1 The Movie, Hollywood’s take on the elite series – which is set to be a box-office smash, given not just how deeply the production was immersed in the sport for more than 18 months, but the Top Gun: Maverick team behind it, in legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and director Joseph Kosinski.
The movie, which is released to cinemas this week, was filmed at Grands Prix all over the world with the help of the sport, and features an A-list cast – led by Brad Pitt, who plays Sonny Hayes, a washed-up former racer who comes out of retirement to mentor young gun Joshua Pearce, played by Damson Idris.
And Vandoorne, who raced for McLaren and is now reserve at Aston Martin, a role that he dovetails with a Maserati MSG Racing drive in Formula E, thinks the movie’s release is great news for motorsport in general.
“I haven’t seen it yet, I’ll definitely watch it at some point,” Vandoorne says. “But I think it’s good for motorsport in general to have something completely different in terms of a movie – how they portray the sport. So, I haven’t seen the result yet, but I think it’s good anyway that there is more and more traction behind it.”
Vandoorne understands just how much of a roller coaster motorsport can be, with the Belgian racing a Peugeot hypercar at the Le Mans 24 Hours in France, where he finished 11th overall with his teammates Loïc Duval and Malthe Jakobsen – and then straight onto Indonesian capital-Jakarta last week to drive for Maserati MSG Racing in Formula E.
Men’s Health spoke with Vandoorne in Jakarta, where he sadly crashed out, to hear all about how he manages to make that mental shift between elite series.
Men’s Health: You’ve come straight from Le Mans. How are you feeling, and what’s your life been like since the chequered flag on Sunday?
Stoffel Vandoorne (SV): “Ah, yeah, it’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks to be fair because we had Shanghai [in Formula E] and then yeah, 10 days in Le Mans, basically and now straight to Jakarta. So it’s been busy a lot of different time zones, different Championships. And obviously, yeah, Le Mans is a pretty exhausting week. But yeah, I mean, so far so good, I was back into simulator already on the Monday after Le Mans, to prepare for this event, so I felt a little bit rough on the Monday, not gonna lie. But, yeah, I’ve been able to rest since and I’m feeling fully fit again for this race.”
MH: How do you maintain your focus in these maximum pressure moments, with such little time to relax between events?
SV: “I think the main importance between kind of all these consecutive events is to find the right moments to actually rest, because during I mean we do most of our training kind of preseason and postseason, let’s say; whilst during the year, it’s about kind of maintaining your energy. So I think that’s yeah, that’s kind of a key element to manage. I try to not distract myself with anything else, whenever I have opportunities to rest, if I don’t, you know, need to go out to a dinner or an event somewhere I won’t really go. Especially in the buildup of these races, and then here it’s, it’s one of the most physical ones. It’s very very hot and humid, so yeah, hydration, very important beforehand especially a couple of days leading up to it.
MH: Peugeot had a great showing at Le Mans, with you leading the squad’s efforts in the number 94 car with Loïc Duval and Malthe Jakobsen. Tell me about your race, and sharing the cockpit with them?
SV: “Yeah, I mean, it was a difficult week for us we were kind of just generally lacking a little bit of pace. So the objective for us was to have a clean event, to make no mistakes, to just operationally be kind of excellent, and also from a driver’s point to make absolutely no mistakes, which is which is actually what we accomplished, we actually had a Had a kind of a perfect race. We didn’t put her foot wrong, operationally we did well, we had a good strategy. But we were just ultimately, yeah, kind of lacking pace. And then, you know, the race, they weren’t that many incidents, there weren’t many interventions, so yeah, that wasn’t really any opportunities for us to fight higher up.”
MH: So now getting back in the zone for Formula E, how do you manage the shift?
SV: “Yeah, so simulator I think that’s, you know, kind of the main tool to reset and to get back into the Formula E world, let’s say, but they’re both so different as well, that it’s actually kind of quite easy to switch between one and the other so you can’t really confuse yourself between them. Yeah, one thing that is nice for me is that the simulators is back at home in Monaco for me. So I didn’t have to travel somewhere else. So I yeah, I was back home on Sunday night after Le Mans, same after my sim day I could just sleep in my own bed so that was kind of yeah, a nice thing before flying out here.”
MH: You had a win in Formula E this season with Maserati MSG Racing in Tokyo. How do you feel about your season?
SV: I think the seasons has been alright, it could have been a bit better. But I feel like I’ve settled in well. We’ve had some great results, some not so great. And I think that’s what we’re kind of having to work on a little bit is the inconsistencies – we’re, you know, sometimes very competitive, sometimes we’re a little bit off. And especially kind of qualifying, which is more important this season. We’ve been too up-and-down, I think we’ve been very strong in the races. We’ve always managed to be competitive and to kind of climb back through the field, but we’ve been lacking a little bit of the one lap pace, so that’s uh, yeah, that’s a point for us. We need to improve a bit.
MH: Formula E goes to some amazing destinations – including Jakarta – what are some of your personal favourites as travel experiences?
SV: “Yeah, we’re back in Jakarta. We didn’t come here last year. I mean, it’s a tough race here for everyone. It’s quite a particular track. It kind of keeps turning, there’s not a lot of rests around here. And then some of my favourite locations I used to love Rome, to be fair. Unfortunately, that’s not on the calendar anymore, but that was yeah, that was definitely one of my highlights.”
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