Stoffel Vandoorne: ‘I guess my Mclaren F1 career is a classic case of right place, wrong time’

A hard-earned grand prix career may have ended in tears, but there’s much more to this Belgian star than being just another F1 nearly-man. From single-seater success to tackling Le Mans, he’s enjoying a racing revival

For as long as Motor Sport has been in existence – 101 years and counting – there have always been drivers whose natural talent and work ethic made them eminently well suited to grand prix racing but who, for a variety of reasons, some of them unworthy, enjoyed careers less glittering than they should have been. Stoffel Vandoorne is an example of exactly that kind of F1 nearly-man. Still only 33, always fast, as fit as any racing driver has ever been, and as clever as several lorry-loads of monkeys, he has won races in karts, of course, then in no fewer than six single-seater categories – Formula 4 Eurocup 1.6, Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0, Formula Renault 3.5, GP2, Super Formula and Formula E – which is a pretty tasty tally. Yet in F1 he never had a chance to shine, as you are about to find out.

But first let’s hear about how he got started in racing in the first place: “It was a coincidence really. My father [Patrick] was an architect, and he wasn’t really a fan of racing, but he was asked to design a restaurant for a kart track in Kortrijk [Belgium], where I was born and raised. I was five years old, and my dad sometimes took me with him when he went to the track to discuss the project. And one day the track owner asked me, ‘Do you want to have a go in one of the karts, son?’

“I’m not sure if my dad and the track owner realised that I was talented straight away, but they certainly saw that I was keen. Obsessed, in fact. I absolutely loved it. Straight away I had the bug and I wanted a kart of my own. In the end the track owner must have recognised my talent, because he gave me a kart, my dad marked out a track on our tennis court at home, and I practised on that track as much as I possibly could.

“I can’t remember my first kart race, but it would have been on an indoor kart track. I did indoor karting for a long time, right up to the age of 15 or 16, because it was cheaper, and our family was comfortable but not rich. Hardly anyone pays any attention to indoor karting these days, but it was slightly different back then. Anyway, I kept winning. The other karters started saying I was only winning because I was light, so we put 30kg of ballast on my kart to show them that weight had nothing to do with it, and I still kept winning.

“After that my dad found a bit of sponsorship, so at last I could do outdoor karting. I won the Belgian championship in 2008, then I came second in the world championship in 2009. That year I entered a competition for young drivers run by the RACB [Royal Automobile Club de Belgique]. It was a big deal. Loads of kids entered it, and we were tested in karts, we were interviewed by experts, and everything was analysed. The best six were selected for a shootout in Formula Ford cars at Le Mans. The winner was to be given prize money to help take him on to the next step in his career, and I won.

“With that money I was able to move up to Formula 4 Eurocup 1.6 in 2010. I loved that series. It supported World Series by Renault, and we raced all over Europe. Also it was a very fair competition. The cars were all the same, you couldn’t adjust your set-up, and we could look at one another’s data. I won the championship in my first year and the prize money from that success allowed me to move up to Formula Renault 2.0 for 2011. I did OK that year, and by now I had a place on the FIA Institute’s young driver programme.”

So he did – and that was how I came to hear of him. I was McLaren’s comms/PR chief at the time, and, then as now, one of my best mates was ex-F1 driver and double Le Mans winner Alex Wurz, who was co-running the FIA Institute Young Driver Excellence Academy (to give it its full name) with ex-World Rally Championship co-driver and future FIA deputy president Robert Reid. At Monaco in late May I had dinner with Alex, which we often did when he attended grands prix, and I asked him whether there were any FIA Institute Young Driver Excellence Academy lads whom he rated highly. He umm-ed and ahh-ed for a while, then he said, “I shouldn’t really say, because you work for one of the F1 teams.”

“Oh go on,” I asked, intrigued.

“Well, there’s a very talented Belgian,” he replied, but he would say no more.

“I shouldn’t really say because you work for one of the F1 teams… There’s a very talented Belgian”

When I returned to my hotel room, I booted up my laptop and did some googling. As luck would have it, I found that there was only one Belgian member of the FIA Institute Young Driver Excellence Academy that year: 19-year-old Stoffel Vandoorne. A few weeks later, I revealed to Alex in a text exchange that I’d worked out who his “very talented Belgian” was, and, that being the case, he made so bold as to ask me for an F1 paddock pass for him for the forthcoming German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring in late July. I readily agreed.

“I remember meeting you at Nürburgring in 2011,” Stoffel recalls 14 years later, “when Alex Wurz took me to the McLaren paddock hospitality unit. That was a game-changer. I remember you asked me to write a technical report for you after every one of my races, and to email it to you on the Monday morning.”

“Yes, and you did it,” I reply. “In fact you continued to email me a technical report on every one of your races right up to and including the end of your GP2 championship year [2015].”

“Yes, and in 2012 you began to forward my reports to Sam Michael [McLaren’s then sporting director] and Phil Prew [McLaren’s then chief race engineer], and I was doing well in Formula Renault 2.0 that year, winning a lot of races, so you invited me to the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking. By the end of that season I’d won the title. After that, Sam called and asked if I wanted to join McLaren’s Young Driver Development Programme [YDDP]. That was another game-changer, because the RACB was running out of funds for me, and the next step, Formula Renault 3.5, would have been too much.”

By that time we McLarenites had marked Stoffel out as a serious prospect. Not only did he keep winning races and championships, but he was also courteous, intelligent and hard-working. His technical race reports were excellent – comprehensive, analytical, insightful, neatly typed and on time. But we had a problem, albeit a nice one to have. By that time we had two YDDP members who were beginning to nibble at the edges of F1 eligibility, Vandoorne and Kevin Magnussen, and in 2013 both of them would be racing in Formula Renault 3.5.

“Kevin was in his second year in Formula Renault 3.5 and I was in my first. Martin Whitmarsh [McLaren’s then team principal] told us that whichever one of us won the series would race in F1 for McLaren the next year. Well, it was close, but in the end Kevin was champion and I was second.” In truth they co-dominated Formula Renault 3.5 that year: Magnussen won five races and Vandoorne won four. Kevin duly raced for McLaren in F1 in 2014, replacing Checo Pérez and partnering Jenson Button, but Stoffel had impressed the McLaren engineers every bit as much as Kevin had, more or less matching him despite being a Formula Renault 3.5 rookie whereas Magnussen had done it all before.

“For pure enjoyment, I’d say the Formula Renault 3.5 cars were the nicest I’ve ever driven”

“I loved Formula Renault 3.5,” says Vandoorne. “For pure enjoyment, I’d say those cars were the nicest I’ve ever driven. They were more or less on a par with GP2 cars in terms of performance, but they felt better. They had good downforce, they had great tyres [Michelins, whereas GP2 cars used Pirellis], the series ran on mega circuits and the racing was very close. I won four times, including at Spa, and, although I’d already won a Formula 4 race there some years before, winning at home in such a brilliant series felt really good.”

For 2014 he made a sideways move to GP2 – which, although its cars were only slightly faster than the Formula Renault 3.5 machines that he had raced so well the previous year, was a series to which F1 folk paid more attention, simply because its races were run on F1 weekends. The first GP2 race of the 2014 season was part of the Bahrain Grand Prix programme, and the GP2 feature race took place on the Saturday, the day before the grand prix. Vandoorne’s fellow McLaren protégé, Magnussen, was riding high, having finished a sensational second on his F1 debut at Albert Park and a creditable ninth at Sepang, and having outqualified Button for both races, so the pressure was now on Vandoorne to show that he, too, was a hot prospect.

From Stoffel’s front-row grid position he took an immediate lead, which apart from the pitstop reshuffling he held to the flag, thereby winning on his GP2 debut. “Everyone in F1 was watching and I’d dominated the race. Bahrain is a tricky circuit, and the race strategy was complex. We had to run both prime and option tyres, and the Pirellis demanded a unique approach. Winning that race on my debut was an amazing feeling.

“After that win I walked into the F1 paddock and I chatted with McLaren’s most senior men, Ron [Dennis] and Martin [Whitmarsh], and they were interested to talk to me. I realised that I should work hard to network the F1 paddock over the next few months, and I did. I was also regularly driving McLaren’s F1 simulator, and when I was at the circuits I could sit in on McLaren’s F1 engineering meetings. I was in a great position and I learned a hell of a lot that year.”

He ended up second in the 2014 GP2 championship, winning four races (Bahrain, Budapest, Monza and Abu Dhabi), beaten by Jolyon Palmer, who was racing in the series for an almost unprecedented fourth consecutive year. But in the next GP2 season, 2015, Stoffel was more or less unbeatable. He won seven races – Bahrain again, Spain, Monaco, Austria, Belgium, Abu Dhabi again, and Bahrain yet again – trouncing his nearest challengers in the final points table, including a number of drivers who went on to race in F1, such as Alexander Rossi, Sergey Sirotkin, Rio Haryanto and Pierre Gasly. “I absolutely had to do well that year, because Martin told me, ‘To be considered for an F1 drive for McLaren, you’re going to have to not only win GP2 but win it by a big margin.’ Well, I did what he asked, and for 2016 I was McLaren’s reserve driver in F1, supporting Fernando [Alonso] and Jenson, and I raced in Super Formula in Japan.

“Those Super Formula cars were truly fantastic, actually faster in the corners than F1 cars – they had tons of downforce and super-grippy [Yokohama] tyres – and some of those circuits were just brilliant. Suzuka, obviously, where I won, and Aida, where I also won, but also Fuji, Motegi and Murata. I ended up fourth in the championship and again I learned a lot that year. There was a language barrier that made things more difficult for me and the culture was completely different from what I’d got used to in Europe, but I worked my way through it OK.”

He did indeed. In fact, although he is right to say that he placed fourth in the 2016 Super Formula standings, he is underselling the calibre of his achievement. It was a very close-fought contest, no driver won more than twice, and Vandoorne was one of those who scored two wins. Moreover, but for a retirement at Fuji, he might well have been champion. “How would you rank the three F1 feeder series in which you raced and won?” I ask him.

“I’d have to put Super Formula first, because the cars were so damn fast – as fast as F1 cars in the corners as I say – then Formula Renault 3.5, then GP2.”

How is it that he is able to state with such confidence that in 2016 Super Formula cars were as fast around corners as 2016 F1 cars? The answer is that he raced both. “In Melbourne that year Fernando and Esteban Gutiérrez [Haas] had a massive shunt together, and Fernando’s car barrel-rolled into the barrier. He was OK – he walked out of the car – but when he got to Bahrain for the next grand prix he had a medical check that showed broken ribs [and a pneumothorax – a collapsed lung, which is a potentially dangerous injury]. I was testing my Super Formula car at Aida at the time and my mobile phone rang. It was Éric [Boullier, McLaren’s then racing director] and he said, ‘Get your arse to Bahrain now! You’re racing in the grand prix this weekend!’

“I could hardly believe it. Anyway, I got a taxi straight to the airport, from where I flew to Dubai. You then met me in transit there.” That is true, and we flew from Dubai to Bahrain together. I remember how calm he was – less talkative than usual but as polite as always – and how carefully he studied the contractual and technical paperwork that I had been asked by my legal and engineering colleagues to give him on the plane.

“We landed in Bahrain at about 10am on the Friday morning and FP1 was at 2pm,” he recalls. “We got a taxi to the airport, I had a shower, changed into my McLaren kit, then we went to the circuit. I guess you could say I’d been thrown in at the deep end. It wasn’t ideal preparation, but it was a big opportunity and in a way maybe it helped me that everything was so hurried, because it didn’t give me enough time to worry. I just went with the flow, focused on the most important bits of the job and did my best.

“Even so, it was a great feeling. You know: the sheer rush of F1, driving out of the garage for the first time, all the photographers and TV crews crowding around. But, most important, I did OK.”

Another Vandoorne understatement. On his F1 debut, despite suboptimal prep, jet lag and fatigue caused by his long journey from Japan to Bahrain – plus no testing – he qualified a tricky car 12th, beating his world champion team-mate Button (14th), and the next day he raced it to 10th, scoring a point on his F1 debut.

Afterwards, a horde of journalists and TV folk begged my colleagues and me to arrange impromptu interviews with our young star. “I guess I thought: ‘Wow! I’m finally here! I really can do this! And now you guys have got to give me a Formula 1 drive for 2017!’” Stoffel remembers.

That we did, for Button had finally retired from F1 – although he would race one more grand prix, at Monaco in 2017, deputising for Alonso so that he could guest-drive a papaya ‘McLaren’ (i.e. an Andretti-run Dallara) in the Indy 500. But every rose has its thorn and, for Stoffel, that longed-for McLaren drive in F1 ended up being decidedly thorny.

“Well, 2017 was OK, to be fair,” he says now, essaying a plucky grin. “The car wasn’t great and we struggled with terrible reliability in pre-season testing, which was a real problem because the 2017 cars were very different from the 2016 cars – bigger, faster, with wider tyres and more downforce – but after a while things started to click for me, I began to find my momentum, and the second half of the season was pretty good.” In Singapore and Malaysia, in particular, he drove a difficult car to two excellent seventh-place finishes, his exemplary fitness helping him remain unflustered and unflappable in the extreme heat and humidity.

“I started 2018 well, too. I had three points finishes in the first four grands prix – more or less matching Fernando in both qualifying and races – but the car was still tricky. We’d moved on from the works Honda deal that hadn’t been successful and we were now using customer Renault engines. Also, McLaren was in a state of upheaval. Martin Whitmarsh, Jost Capito and Éric Boullier all left, and Ron Dennis, too, then Zak Brown arrived. Zak and I got on well at first, then that changed. Things started to go south. I began to lose confidence in my surroundings. I felt Zak didn’t want me and I think that was true. It simply wasn’t an environment that you could perform in.

“The shake-up at McLaren had to happen. They had to realise the bad shape they’d got into”

“Suddenly I wasn’t in the position that I’d been used to being in for so many years, confident and winning. Now, instead, I was having to deal with difficult politics and my results began to suffer. I felt lost and, I’ll admit it, I became unhappy. With the experience I have now, I guess I might have been able to handle it differently, but I think that a shake-up at McLaren had to happen. They had to realise the bad shape they’d got into, and they needed a big makeover. In the end it worked. Just look at them now. And I’m glad to see it. I have no problem with anyone at McLaren. They backed me, they supported me, and without that I’d never have got where I’ve got. If I bump into Zak in the F1 paddock, we always say hi. It’s all good. I guess my McLaren F1 career is just a classic case of: right place, wrong time.”

It is a remarkably mature verdict on a desperately disappointing episode in an excellent young driver’s career. But, as many drivers whom F1 chews up and spits out eventually enjoy finding out, there is life after F1. “I’d tried to get to know a few key F1 people during my time in GP2 and F1,” Stoffel says, “and Toto Wolff was one of them. After it became known that I wasn’t going to continue racing for McLaren in F1, he called me and said he wanted me to drive for HWA [a partner team to Mercedes-Benz] in the 2018-2019 Formula E season, and for the main Mercedes Formula E team after that.”

That he did, getting the hang of all things electric slowly but surely in his debut season, then winning races in his next two seasons [2019-2020 and 2020-2021] and winning the Formula E title in 2021-2022. He then raced for DS Penske in 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, and this season for Maserati – and he’s still winning, taking the Tokyo ePrix honours in May.

“Formula E is very different from any other form of racing I’ve ever done,” he says. “OK, quali is the same: you just go flat-out. But racing is completely different. It’s all about energy management, and the way you accelerate and brake has a big impact on how you manage energy. Strategy is everything. It’s very technical. As a driver, you have to really get stuck into the techy aspects. There’s a lot of work on the engineering side. I like it.”

He is also racing in the World Endurance Championship, in a Peugeot Hypercar, in which he finished 11th at Le Mans this year. “Obviously, WEC is all about Le Mans,” he says. “For me that’s the big ambition. But it’s such a complicated race to win. But, yes, that’s my next target over the coming years. WEC is in great shape right now. It’s super-cool old-school racing, yet it’s very hi-tech, too. Every manufacturer wants to win Le Mans, Peugeot has won it before [in 1992, 1993 and 2009], and, OK, we’re not yet absolutely competitive, but I’m extremely motivated to work myself and the team into a position where we can win Le Mans one day. We’ll try again next year.”

He is still involved in F1, as Aston Martin’s reserve driver, a role that he has also filled for McLaren, Mercedes and Racing Point, without ever having deputised for an indisposed F1 driver, despite Lewis Hamilton having tested positive for Covid-19 ahead of the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix. Frustratingly, Hamilton’s suddenly vacant Mercedes seat was filled not by Vandoorne but by Williams’s George Russell, who led the race comfortably and would have won it but for a pitstop bungle. Had Vandoorne got the gig instead and events worked out differently, he might have won. And who knows what kick-start that might have given his then dormant and now deceased F1 career? It is one of racing’s many if-only conundrums.

“I’m enjoying my work at Aston Martin,” he insists. “It’s a massively ambitious project. We have a new factory, a new wind tunnel and a new simulator. We have Honda. We have Lawrence’s [Stroll] ambition and Adrian’s [Newey] genius. I genuinely believe that world championships are possible with this team.”

With which driver(s) though? With Lance Stroll? Stroll is a better driver than his detractors would have you believe, but, even so, a world championship is surely an ambition too far. With Fernando Alonso? He is more than 10 years older than Vandoorne, so maybe a third crown for him is also a tad too ambitious. With Stoffel Vandoorne? Almost certainly not, sadly. That is not the way his F1 cookies have crumbled. But perhaps they should have done.

CV
Born: 1992, Kortrijk, Belgium

• 1997 Begins indoor karting aged five and is backed by the circuit owner.
• 2008 Wins the Belgian title in KF2.
• 2009 Second in KF2 World Cup. Wins a Royal Automobile Club of Belgium talent search, landing a £36,000 prize.
• 2010 Puts the fund to good use, securing the F4 Eurocup 1.6 title with six wins. Joins the FIA Driver Academy.
• 2015 After runner-up places in Formula Renault 3.5 and GP2, he dominates his second GP2 year with seven wins.
• 2016 Mixes a Japanese Super Formula season with his F1 debut in Bahrain.
• 2018 After his F1 dream ends, Toto Wolff invites him to join Formula E with HWA.
• 2022 Becomes FIA Formula E world champion with the Mercedes-EQ Team.
• 2023 Joins Peugeot’s Hypercar programme; Aston Martin F1 reserve driver