Vandoorne got a taste of F1 at Spa this weekend

Stoffel Vandoorne joined the McLaren young driver program at the beginning of 2013, where he debuted in Formula Renault 3.5 against his program colleague, Kevin Magnussen. However, the Belgian driver had contacts with several key people at the McLaren team in recent years before signing with the Woking team.

Vandoorne was put in contact with Matt Bishop, the head of public relations and communication for the McLaren group, thanks to Alexander Wurz, who worked for the FIA young driver academy. The rest came through Sam Michael and Phil Prew as the Belgian revealed in an interview published on the McLaren site: After meeting Matt, I wrote and emailed him my reports from my races in Formula Renault 2.0, and he started forwarding them to Sam Michael [McLaren’s sporting director] and Phil Prew [Chief race engineer]. It was in the middle of 2011, and that’s when my McLaren chapter began for the first time. Then, at the beginning of 2012, Matt invited me to the McLaren Technology Center and introduced me to Sam and Phil – for a general discussion – after which they continued to follow my progress for the rest of the year. I continued to send my race reports from Formula 1, after each race and each testing session, now to Sam and Phil as well as to Matt. And, at the end of 2012, when I won the Formula 2 championship, Sam called me and asked if I wanted to join the McLaren young driver program. I said yes, of course, and I also met Martin Whitmarsh several times.

Even though he has only been collaborating with the McLaren team for six months, Stoffel Vandoorne believes that being part of the world champion team’s young driver program has already allowed him to improve significantly: “It’s a great program. Its goal is to prepare young drivers for F1 from every perspective, and I’ve really benefited from it, especially from a physical standpoint—they know exactly how prepared you need to be to drive a Formula 1 car. In the six months I’ve been with McLaren, I’ve made great strides in this area, and I’m convinced I can improve even more. From a technical standpoint as well, it’s really great to be able to discuss with the McLaren engineers—to really learn about race engineering—while also talking about motorsports. When a driver arrives in F1, they simply don’t have the time to learn all of this, so the main goal of McLaren’s young driver program is to prepare young drivers to be as ready as possible for their F1 careers. F1 is such a tough world that the better prepared you are, the more you can extract maximum performance from your package, and the longer you stay in Formula 1, the stronger your results will be on track.”

With this partnership, Stoffel Vandoorne is preparing to one day drive a Formula 1 car, and the Belgian has only one goal: to become world champion. “Like every single-seater racing driver, I want to be an F1 world champion. For now, it’s still a bit far away for me, I know, but I’m working to try to get there. I’m currently racing in Formula Renault 3.5, which is a very good championship. And this season is going well so far. So hopefully one day I’ll be able to make the step to F1 and then be able to fight for an F1 world championship. But I’m not underestimating the magnitude of the task.”

But before getting into an F1 car, Vandoorne had the opportunity this weekend at Spa to be present in the McLaren garage and thus see how a Grand Prix weekend unfolds. He was delighted with the experience and feels he has learned a lot: « It’s fantastic to be wearing McLaren gear! And of course, it’s very nice to be here in Belgium, in my country, and really show my compatriots that I’m part of the McLaren family. As I said, it’s my home Grand Prix – even though I actually live on the other side of Belgium – and, even though I’m unfortunately not driving myself, hopefully in the future there will be a chance for me to race in front of my compatriots in an F1 car. »

To reach F1, the native of Courtrai put all the odds in his favor by securing the services of Richard Goddard, who is notably the manager of McLaren driver Jenson Button: « Richard [Goddard] is a very intelligent and shrewd man, and he has already helped me enormously. And, besides Richard himself, it’s obviously great to be in the same management structure as Jenson, who is a brilliant driver for whom I have a lot of respect. »