INTERVIEW: The man really in control of Formula 1

IN 1964 a 12-year-old boy wriggled underneath the fence at the Brands Hatch circuit in England so he could watch the British Grand Prix. Probably nothing unusual about that, but that young boy was Charlie Whiting, the man who is now the Formula 1 race director responsible for circuit safety and almost all the rules relating to the most high pressure motorsport event on the planet.

So how did Whiting get from being that 12-year-old fan to one of the most important people in motorsport? He was involved in club racing for many years, moving up through the ranks to a point where he became Nelson Piquet’s chief mechanic, something that led to a highlight of his career when Piquet won the championship.

In 1988 he became the chief scrutineer for the FIA, the organisation that governs F1, but it was in 1996 that a conversation with former FIA boss Max Mosley really kickstarted his career. Mosley asked him to start the races. It is probably this aspect that Whiting is most famous for.

He stands on the platform at the front of the F1 grid for every race and decides when to push the button that sends millions of dollars worth of cars and some of the best drivers in the world into battle.

However, pushing that button is only a small part of what he does. In 1997 he was made the race director, which means everything relating to every F1 race is his responsibility. Now that is pressure.

"I thoroughly enjoy what I do," he said, noting that he manages to deal with the pressure. Most of that pressure comes only when there is an incident during the race. "Things become overloaded when the race is stopped," he said. The 2014 season definitely brought its fair share of incidents.

"Race decisions are very high pressure," he said. Whiting was heavily criticised by Niki Lauda when the British GP was held up for over an hour in order for a stretch of armco to be replaced after a crash. "We do not leave holes in guard rails. It is as simple as that," he stressed. "My first job is to look after spectators. We have to get spectators as close as possible to the action."

That safety aspect is particularly important when it comes to ensuring bits do not fly off cars and that guard rails and fences are secure.

One of the other areas that creates a great deal of pressure is the safety car. For 2015 Whiting is introducing a new "virtual safety car", or VSC, which he says is something between the yellow flags and the official Mercedes safety car itself. Whiting has control over what the drivers see on their dashboards during the race and so can implement a VSC mode from race control, meaning the drivers’ response is instantaneous. Otherwise, "the safety car takes a long time", he said.

The incident involving Jules Bianchi at the Japanese GP last year showed clearly that drivers approach double waved yellow flags in different ways. The VSC will be a full course yellow. When implemented drivers must then travel at a certain speed profile, which will include quicker speeds on the straights in order to keep the tyres warm and the brakes operating properly.

He agrees that 2015 will see fewer changes for the new season than F1 has witnessed for many years.

"There was no need to change anything in 2015," he said, although he has restricted changes to nose cone designs on the cars. The nose changes this year are for safety, he stressed, but said that they are "much better looking. The 2014 noses looked absurd."

On the subject of design, he congratulated Ferrari on the design of its F1 concept that we featured a couple of weeks ago, saying it is a "stunning looking car". However, he said it is "hard to know if a car would be quick like that".

Whether Ferrari gets its way in terms of design remains to be seen but there are some major changes yet to come in F1. "There is not too much wrong with F1, but the drivers are not breaking a sweat." He plans to change all that in 2017 when the car will be "a more aggressive car that will be harder to drive". Currently an F1 car produces around 600hp, but Whiting says that figure will increase to 900hp (671kW) for 2017.

He says the manufacturers should have to develop less and that more components will be frozen during the course of a season, meaning fewer in-season changes. This is to help keep the costs down. "The cost of F1 can’t continue to escalate," he said.

Given the move by many automotive manufacturers towards low or even zero-emission vehicles, does F1 as it currently stands have a finite lifespan? "Only time will tell," he said. He is confident that there is room for both F1 and the recently introduced Formula E electric race car series.

"Formula E is doing a job, but one is not challenging the other."

Finally the question everyone wants to know — will F1 be returning to SA? Whiting was in the country to inspect the planned changes to the Kyalami circuit, which was bought last year by Toby Venter, the CEO of Porsche SA. His presence will obviously raise speculation that F1 is coming back to SA but sadly that still looks unlikely.

"There is nothing to stop a race happening," he said "If a potential promoter was able to do the right deal with the commercial rights holder (Bernie Ecclestone) the circuit itself, especially the one that they are extending, would be suitable, or could be made suitable for sure."

However, he stressed that the "stumbling block is a financial one". It is a stumbling block that will be hard to overcome, with millions of dollars required just to say you are interested in hosting an F1 GP.

That will be sad news for F1 fans, but Whiting, like so many others, hopes that one day there will again be a South African Grand Prix. For now though, he is focused on the first race of the 2015 season which gets under way this weekend in Melbourne with the Australian GP. On Sunday, like hundreds of Sundays before, F1 will not run until he pushes that famous button.