From the F1 scrapheap to WEC glory

Sebastien Buemi is very clear on one thing; becoming a world champion in sportscar racing doesn't instantly clear his disappointment in the manner in which his Formula 1 career came to an end.

Buemi's story isn't one of redemption, or revenge, or getting even with the motorsport gods. Instead it's a story about picking yourself up after a life-changing setback, re-focusing, re-aligning your goals, and then going out and getting the job done.

It's about going from the Formula 1 scrapheap to the World Endurance Championship title with Toyota in three short years.

"Clearly I feel as though I achieved something big [by winning the WEC]," Buemi says.
"But my objective was the win the Formula 1 championship, and that did not happen.

"It doesn't take everything away, but it's very good to be world champion and to win something, something as important as that.

"I'm very realistic. I love the WEC; it's a great championship and a great opportunity for me, and it's going to keep getting better. But Formula 1 remains the pinnacle of motorsport."

Scrapheap is actually a harsh word to describe the state of Buemi's F1 career. In his case, the F1 scrapheap was (and still is) actually a reserve-driver role at Red Bull, a gig that plenty of young drivers around the globe would trade any number of body parts to have.

Buemi spent three years at Toro Rosso before being dropped © LAT

But for Buemi it wasn't the job that was the problem, it was what it meant when he was appointed that role at the end of the 2011 season. After three years in a race seat at Toro Rosso, a test-driver gig wasn't the switch to the primary Red Bull team he was hoping for.

It was a clear message that, after years of funding, grooming, and being part of the 'family', he actually had no future in F1 with Red Bull.

That was coming off the back of a 2011 season in which he scored 15 points and finished 15th in the standings. Team-mate Jaime Alguersuari finished 14th, nine points down the road. In the end, Red Bull decided that neither had done enough to warrant another chance, and announced that Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne would slot in at Toro Rosso for 2012.

Buemi was given the lifeline of the test-driver role, but he immediately set about attaching an actual race seat to his programme.

And that's where the WEC drive with Toyota came into play.

"Looking at the past, clearly it was very disappointing after 2011 when I had to move into being a reserve driver for Red Bull rather than being a race driver anymore," he explains.

"But this is sometimes life, and it's motorsport, so you have to live with it and move on. It was very important to look ahead at what was possible, and which direction I needed to go to get the best out of possibilities.

"Very quickly the WEC became a possibility for me, together with Toyota. The best kind of car that was available for me at that time was the WEC. It has shown this year how quick the cars are, as quick as a GP2 car, so we're in a very professional environment.

"For a driver who has experienced Formula 1, that's very important. Red Bull accepted the fact that I wanted to do it, and since then it's worked very well."

Buemi dovetails his WEC duties with a test driver role at Red Bull © LAT

Of course, it wasn't as simple as just switching from F1 to the WEC. Until that point, Buemi had dedicated his entire professional life to grand prix racing, and to becoming an F1 world champion. The realisation that it was now very unlikely to ever happen was difficult to deal with.

"It was hard, yeah," he says. "Your confidence is given a hard time. You don't know what to do, because you dream of Formula 1 your whole life, you work your way up there, you get into Formula 1, you score points, and you only see Formula 1 in your head.

"All of a sudden you realise you have to look at something else. And you don't want to stay home, you don't want to do things that are not really interesting."

While the WEC didn't immediately fill the F1-shaped hole in Buemi's career aspirations, it did give him a new focus: "In 2012 I just did Le Mans, where Anthony [Davidson, team-mate] had the big accident. Then in '13 we finished third in the championship and second at Le Mans.

"And this year we won the championship. So everything seems to go step-by-step better, and as a driver it's a great feeling to bounce back in the way that I did after what happened in the past."

That Buemi got to share a breakthrough triumph at world championship level with Davidson is also significant. Like Buemi, Davidson never quite reached his potential in F1, and he struggled to turn promise and pace into career longevity.

According to Buemi, that the two could share a triumph like winning the World Endurance Championship was a special feeling.

"It was great," he says. "I was always amazed by the fact that he didn't win anything big before, considering the talent he has and how quick he is.

F1 refugees Davidson and Buemi have excelled in the WEC © XPB

"Clearly I'm very happy for him, and he deserves it very much. He's shown his talent and speed, especially in sportscars, but even in Formula 1. He deserves what happens to him now.

"It was a good match, a good combination, because we were at a similar... I wouldn't say stage, because he's 10 years older than me, but we were both around for a long time, had never really won anything big, so it was good to win this first big thing together."

As much as winning the WEC title can't and won't replace Buemi's disappointment that his Formula 1 dreams never came true, the hard knocks over the past three or four years have taught him to be a realist.

In other words, he knows that he's got a good thing going with Toyota, and admits that it would have to take one heck of an offer from a front-running team for him to risk what he has to head back to F1.

"Today, I would not think twice about driving in a team where you know there isn't a great future, or the car is no good," he says.

"I was in a good team with Toro Rosso for three years, I scored points, but I wouldn't want to go back there just to say I am doing a few more races in Formula 1.

"I have a great situation with Toyota, looking towards the future, winning races - so clearly Formula 1 would have to present a great opportunity [for me to leave], because the WEC is fantastic."