Interview with David Croft - Part One.

Croft (second from right) is one of the Sky Sports F1 mob for 2013.

 'Ah, Daniel Puddicombe, the one who had a photo taken with Natalie Pinkham. If you keep that picture as your Twitter avatar for much longer you’ll be causing a divorce in the Pinkham household’.

I knew it that speaking to David Croft – or Crofty as he is better known as – would be fun, and the above line from him confirmed it. Witty, insightful and always up for a laugh, it was interesting to hear his take on all things Formula One.  In the first of two parts, we talk Mark Webber, Lewis Hamilton and next year's regulations.

With Infinity sponsoring the Lotus Formula One team along with Infiniti sponsoring the Red Bull Formula One team, I wondered how hard it will be for David, as a commentator, not to get muddled up between the two. As it turns out, he won’t have a problem differentiating between the two as he won’t mention it. ‘It’s not going to be at all; I never refer to Red Bull as Infiniti Red Bull Racing and I’m not going to refer to Lotus as Lotus F1 Infinity – in my mind, they’re called Red Bull Racing or Lotus’. 

Right, that’s cleared that one up, then. He continues, ‘you’ve got Lotus the F1 team that’s got nothing to do with the Lotus car company anymore sponsored by Infinity who are nothing to do with the Infiniti car company. So I suppose they need to drag up a few other company names that have nothing to do with car companies and sell it with stickers on the side’.   

Next up, Mark Webber. At the time, we didn’t know where he was going, but now we know that he’ll be joining Porsche’s LMP1 programme, but that of course leaves a Red Bull sized open door for someone to step in to. Who will that person be? ‘If he left Red Bull [which we now know he is going to do], who would be the best candidate? Kimi Räikkönen has been talked a lot purely because he’s the best driver out of contract and you can understand why people would put Kimi and Red Bull together as they sponsored his rallying commitments for Citroen, but I’m sure that Lotus will want to keep him and will have said “look, come and stay with us”, but let’s face it, he isn’t exactly unhappy at Enstone at the moment’.

 Webber's chariot for 2014, but who will drive next year's RBR alongside Vettel?

‘Of the Red Bull drivers that are coming up, John-Eric Vernge is starting to get together and Daniel Riccardo is another good driver who is showing better form this year and has shown consistently better form in quali and therefore, in the races on Sunday afternoon. They’re both handicapped a bit because the car that they’re driving isn’t as competitive as the Torro Rosso that Vettel drove for when he was driving for the team'.

Lewis Hamilton was high on the agenda again – at the Sky F1 Media Day, Croft revealed that he doesn’t like dogs, and therefore Roscoe – but this time, minus the chat about his pet pooch. ‘I think we’re slap-bang in the middle of a Vettel era’ he said on Lewis’ comments that he fears he may not win a world championship again.

‘McLaren didn’t really give him the car, and circumstances helped him not to add to that one world title, but will we see Lewis Hamilton win again? I think we will, I think he’ll be world champion again, because next season we press a reset button on Formula One and we’re coming to the end of the V8 era, and next year it is going to be all about which power unit is the best and might not be that Red Bull have got the upper hand and it might be that Mercedes design a very good power unit and it’ll give Lewis an excellent chance to go out there and challenge again but, because of the reset, and because of that I don’t think Lewis should worry too much – at times in his career he will have the car and he has the talent to challenge for a world championship and I don’t see any reason why he couldn’t be a two or three time world champion’. 

A pause. ‘I remember when I was on Five Live in 2008 when he won his first title, I was asked live on air how many titles I thought Lewis could win and I said “when he retires, he’ll be a three-time world champion”, and I still don’t think we’re running out of time to see that’.

Moving neatly on, what are his thoughts on next year’s regulations? ‘It’s a bit of a hole, isn’t it Daniel?’ David answers with a laugh. ‘But I can understand the need for a change and Formula One should be pushing the tech, pushing the boundaries and should be coming up with coming up with a formula that can be equated to road cars and tech that can be equated  to road cars, which I can see nothing wrong with, but did we need to change the V8s to V6s, does it keep the manufactures happy, it might just do that – we’re seeing Honda come back into the sport and V6 turbos are what Honda do, so from that point of view, I don’t see a problem with it’.

These things - next year's power units - have caused a lot of discussion.

Croft continues: ‘there is a lot of money being spent on these power units, it may be a reset button and it may be that certain teams are disadvantaged because of their power unit and they’ve got a year to put it right before 2015. I don’t think share the view that it will sound horrible – you’ll still be able to feel these engines rattling your ribcage as they go past as that’s part of the thrill of going to see Formula One’. 

  

He adds a cautionary note though, ‘but to have a reliance for 33 seconds [a lap] on energy recovery systems, I hope they’re going to work and we’re going to have enough testing so we don’t have multiple retirements in races, because nobody wants to see that’. 

But are the regulation changes worth it? David sums it up perfectly: ‘In my heart, I think it is a bit of a shame that we’re losing the V8s at a time where the stable rules and regulations have actually given us some really exciting racing in recent years’. A pause. ‘But do you know what Daniel? It might be that we’ll sit here this time next year and think “Blimey, these new engines are great, aren’t they? These new energy recovery systems are fab and it gives people the chance to overtake” I hope that’s the case, but we’ll have to wait and see’. 

Look out for part two soon where we’ll talk Silverstone, sausages (yes, really), next year’s calendar and a whole lot morebesides.

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