You Ask The Questions: Emerson Fittipaldi

You raced against some great drivers in Formula 1. Who was the best that you competed against, and why? – Michael Sturm

Emerson Fittipaldi: “Well, I was so lucky to race with three generations of drivers.

“In the beginning, my first few years of Formula 1, who was extremely impressive to me was Jackie Stewart. Jackie was fast; when the car was not handling well, he was fast. He always respected his space and my space. I learned from Jackie, it was the beginning of my career.

“In the 70s, there were so many great champions. I had Jody Scheckter, later, Niki Lauda, Carlos Reutemann, Ronnie Peterson. I raced as well Jack Brabham, my first year. Graham Hill. I call them the monsters of Formula 1.

“And then, I raced with Gilles Villeneuve. And then, when I went to the States, IndyCar, I raced with Mario Andretti again, Michael [Andretti], Jacques Villeneuve. I was lucky to race with three different generations, but it's always difficult to see one [driver], it's a difficult answer.

“But, most of the top guys who I raced against, wheel to wheel, driving hard, they would always respect. Because, at that time, if you put the other guy on an awkward position, he could get killed. It was not just driving, overtaking. You know, a crash at that time, you could kill the other driver.

“Like with Niki Lauda, I always raced many times wheel to wheel, no problem. Most of the good guys, no problem.”

You raced in an era when the cars were incredibly dangerous and the consequences of a mistake could be enormous. Was there ever a moment in your career when fear genuinely made you back off – and if so, what happened? – Martin Vellenoweth

EF: “Well, it would be my fourth grand prix, in Monza. I was very young, I’d just started. I was the third driver for Lotus, and then Jochen Rindt got killed.

Fittipaldi (far left on this picture) was deeply shocked by the untimely death of Rindt (far right)

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Getty Images

“We had breakfast together. He invited me to replace him in Formula 2. I accepted, I shook his hand, and a few hours later he got killed.

“To me it was the reality of Formula 1. It was a big shock to me, to my family. And we knew at that time the risk was there. But I had so much wish to race, so much passion for the sport. When I walk into the paddock, I want to give 100% of myself, driving the car. And I give the example: when I left the pit, I took the plug out of the wall; I’m just myself, the car and the track, and enjoying driving fast a race car.

“But it was a very difficult time, because I lost many, many friends, colleagues. I saw Jacky Ickx three years ago in Spa. He came to me, he hugged me and said, ‘Emerson, we are survivors’. I said, ‘Yes, thank God we are here’.”

What was the most important thing you learned being thrust into the role of team leader at Lotus so early in your F1 career? – Will Metcalf

EF: “Well, it was to work as a team, a team effort. Colin Chapman was like a mentor to me. He was teaching me everything about racing, with all his experience. Peter Warr, who was the team manager, was a very good team manager.

“And then, people don't realise that when you are a leader of a team… I was very young. I told Colin, when he called me, ‘I was expecting to get someone experienced to be number-one driver for Lotus after Jochen’. And he said, ‘Emerson, you will be our number-one driver’. I said, ‘Colin, I don't have experience’. He said, ‘We are going to support you 100%’.

Fittipaldi did not reckon he was up to the task of replacing Rindt, but Chapman believed in him

Photo by: Victor Blackman / Getty Images

“And then I was always trying to perform, to deliver the results the team expects. But I felt a lot of responsibility, so young – replacing Jochen Rindt, who was a fantastic driver, and very good, he helped me a lot in Formula 2 racing. Because I was racing Lotus, Formula 2, against him. And he was the king of Formula 2, the master of Formula 2, he was winning everything.

“And then I had the full support from Colin for the whole team. But I feel, when you are the leader of a team, like Lotus was, I had a lot of pressure. ‘Welcome to the pressure world!’ Maximum pressure. And I always was able mentally to take the pressure in a positive way. And then, thanks to that, I was able to perform. And I had a fantastic team behind me.”

You mentioned Colin Chapman. What was he like to work with?

EF: “Colin was a genius. At that time, there was no electronic on board, no computer. I would describe the car from corner to corner. And then he would put the two fingers, he would think a little bit; go back to the garage, change the whole car, and the car was faster. He had like intuition to prepare a car. He was a fantastic man.

“People don't realise how much he suffered from each driver he lost. One day, end of ‘72, after winning the championship, we were doing commemoration with different sponsors in London; he came to me, looked to me in my eyes and said, ‘Emerson, I don't want to get very close to you, I am afraid one day I can lose you’. And that shows how much he suffered.

“I mean, the worst for him for sure was Jimmy Clark. Jimmy was like a son to Colin. It was an incredible relationship. And Colin suffered a lot.

“People don't realise, but it was a very, very human relationship. Like when I won the British Grand Prix in Brands Hatch, ‘72. He hugged me like [he energetically waves his arms] you are so happy, you know.

Clark's and Rindt's deaths scarred Chapman, but he and Fittipaldi still shared moments of joy

Photo by: Victor Blackman / Getty Images

“He was a fantastic human being. To the outside people, everybody thinks he was very cold and didn’t care about drivers. He was the opposite. Very good. I’m still very good friends of Clive Chapman, the whole Chapman family. Very good people.”

Lotus 72 or McLaren M23? – Niall Courtney

EF: “Lotus 72. Not only against McLaren, but I always rate, for all the cars I drove, Lotus 72 was the best.

“It was consistent. I talked to the car, the car looked to me, knew how I was going to drive. We helped each other all the time. It was a fantastic car for sure. It was advanced at the time, as engineering, as design.

“Second best was the Penske 1989 that I raced in Indianapolis with Pat Patrick, Chip Ganassi. It was very good. Similar: every track, it was consistent, easy to drive, forgiving.

“Two top cars. Then I'd say McLaren M23, number three.”

Fittipaldi and his Lotus 72D were at one

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Getty Images

How difficult was the transition from F1 to CART? – David Gossett

EF: “It takes time, because it's a different technique of driving. The speeds are too high, you have to respect the speeds. It's not forgiving.

“It takes time to get more and more speed on the ovals. The way the car is set up, the way you turn, even the rotation on the cylinder.

“Turn one, Indianapolis, you have to know exactly where to start turning, how much steering you put at the beginning of the corner. You cannot upset the car with power. You can change immediately the pitch at that speed, because you are close to 400km/h. I mean, on the Mercedes engine [which he raced with Penske in 1994 and 1995] I got 420km/h top speed at Indianapolis.

“Very critical to the pitch of the car – if you back off a little bit, it means you change the pitch and you disbalance the car. And then you have to know, even being smooth with the throttle, if you back off, how much you back off. Try not to move the car at the superspeedways.

“On the shorter ovals it was difficult too, because it's the most adrenaline driving in the world to any race, in my opinion. When you start 28 cars, one mile, and you only have three, four seconds each straight, and then everything is cornering, and the leaders hit the backmarkers after six, seven laps… It's crazy. The drafting, the traffic, how to drive, where to drive, how can you pass and win with the pressure of trying to win the race.

“For example, Al Unser Jr. On the short ovals you go up next to the wall and pass! And I could never do that [he chuckles]. You have to learn, but they do this, American drivers. Al Unser Jr was a fantastic driver.

“And the one in Phoenix. Suddenly he goes up, I say ‘He's going to crash’, and he stays up very fast! The car on the marbles, close to the wall and still fast. A lot of adrenaline.

“We were getting at the time 4.5G, 5G, because big wings. Full tank. There was so much downforce and so much grip that you had to turn the steering wheel. If you have to go opposite lock, you overdo it for sure. It was just like solid steering, incredible race, on short ovals.”

IndyCar required some adaptation skills from Fittipaldi

Photo by: Al Bello / AllSport

So it was much more physical as well.

EF: “Very physical. You know, my last few years of IndyCar, I had to have a physical coach. I had to have a diet, a new diet, to keep up with the young guys. Not easy.”

If you had to do it again, would you leave McLaren to found Copersucar? – Michel Boisvert

EF: “It's difficult for people to understand – it's a good question.

“Since I was 14 years old, I prepared my bike, I was racing a 50cc bike in Brazil, I was my own mechanic. When my brother started racing, karting, I was his mechanic – I was underage, I could not race. And myself and my brother, we built Formula Vee, we built karts in Brazil, we built the fastest prototype in Brazil, we built the Volkswagen twin engine.

“We always had this love to build cars, to understand cars. And we saw the opportunity, my brother, to build with a very good engineer, a young engineer called Ricardo Divila, a Brazilian. He was very clever, very intelligent. We built our own car.

“And that was... I was not changing from one car to the other car. I was changing from the top grand prix team, a winning team, to a new team, a new challenge.

“And I knew it was going to be tough for four or five years. You don't build up a Formula 1 team very fast. It takes quite a long time to be successful. But it was like our next challenge to me. And I know the race fans were very disappointed. But that was coming from the inside. I wanted to do it with my brother.

“It was difficult to get good people, but the last year I had a very good team. I had Peter Warr; Harvey Postlethwaite, chief engineer; Ricardo Divila, second engineer; and Adrian Newey, third engineer. On the new car. And Keke Rosberg as team-mate. We had everything for ‘81 to have a good team.

“And July ‘80, the marketing guy from [title sponsor] Skol called me and said, ‘Emerson, we are not continuing for next year, because the Brazilian press – not the racing press, like the regular press who doesn't understand racing – are criticising us so much, we are not sponsoring next year’, and we stopped the team. It was my brother's life, the team, myself, but that's life.

“And then I enjoyed. The best result was in Brazil. We finished second in the Brazilian Grand Prix with Brazilian car, Brazilian drivers. A big commemoration.”

Fittipaldi took his final two top-three F1 finishes with his own team – including a popular home podium at Jacarepagua

Photo by: LAT Images via Getty Images

What would you say was the main challenge with your own team?

EF: “Most of the time I was only racing one car. We didn't have two drivers giving the information. It was more difficult.

“To operate, to build the car in Brazil, the logistics was very difficult the first three years. The factory was next to Gate 7, Interlagos. Normally the car would be ready to drive 100 metres into the track. But to import the engine, the gearbox, to clear customs, everything was so complicated. It was a lot of struggle.

“The last year was our best year because we had the right people to go forward. Because a Formula 1 team and a Formula 1 design depend on who is behind the team. And then you have the results. You have to have good people to have results. We had good people from the beginning, but not much experienced people. It took four, five years to get top people in the team.”

What category do you wish you had raced in? – Nick Green

EF: “I never raced in Le Mans. I think it was the only one that I miss now. I drove a few times prototype when I was in Formula 1. I drove once the [Porsche] 917 in the Buenos Aires 1000 Kilometres with Carlos Reutemann. It was fun. We had a clutch problem, had to retire.

“And then in ‘74 I raced the Porsche Interseries in Nurburgring to learn the track. It was a fantastic experience. It was an incredible car. It was a semi-works car from Willi Kauhsen and Porsche, and it had 1,300 horsepower.

“But I missed not racing in Le Mans.”

So was there never a real opportunity for you?

EF: “Once it happened. In 1991 or 1992, Jochen Neerpasch was team manager for Mercedes and he wanted to do, like, Indy team drivers. He wanted Mario [Andretti], Michael [Andretti] and myself in one car. It would be fantastic. I asked Roger [Penske], Roger gave permission, but it unfortunately was the same weekend as Portland. When it comes to the calendar, we couldn't do it. But I would have loved to have raced it, yes.”

Emerson Fittipaldi joined us in Baku’s scenic Formula 2 paddock for our 30-minute chat

Photo by: Akhil Puthiyedath

Did you ever try to land a NASCAR ride for the Daytona 500 or any other stock car race? – Chad Feller

EF: “I raced the [International] Race of Champions. The first one was Porsche, and then the second year they made the Camaros. I raced in Talladega, I raced in Daytona and Michigan Speedway.

“It was a great experience. At the time, it was Bobby Allison, Richard Perry, Dale Earnhardt who were top. It was in ’90s.

“But to race NASCAR you have a core procedure. You have to learn how to draft, slipstream each other, how to use the turbulence of the other car. They are extremely talented, NASCAR drivers, on superspeedways. I went to AJ Foyt’s race once, and AJ explained everything, it was very good.

“And then Al Unser Sr in Daytona. I started from pole because it was flat out. He came before the race: ‘You start in front, I come behind, I’m going to push you on the straight. When you’re just before the corner, you raise your arm, I back off, you do Turn 1-2, and then I push you and we go away from everybody’ – and we did, for like six, seven laps, going away the two of us, because I was following exactly what he told me to do. But then I look in the mirror, they made a train of four cars and they catch us!

“NASCAR is fantastic to watch, but if I have to race, I would have to practice, practice, practice a lot with these guys, they’re very good. I have a lot of admiration for the NASCAR guys, the ambiance is good, very friendly, very nice people. I like it, I watch many NASCAR races there.

“The Coca-Cola 500 in Charlotte, Emmo was one year old – my son – and they are preparing to go out on the grid before the race start. I’m holding Emmo on the other side of the pits, and then one of the NASCAR guys sees me and says, ‘Emmo, come on!’. I’m walking just before the start of the race with all these cars and drivers, and that’s how friendly they are. It’s different. The public is next to the cars. I would say it’s the most friendly racing – and IndyCar as well is friendly to us, to the public. I was very impressed.”

Fittipaldi greatly appreciated NASCAR hospitality when he attended a race with his son Emerson, currently an F2 driver

Photo by: Rusty Jarrett via Getty Images

What is your view on current racing? If you had the chance to jump back into an F1 car, would you be tempted? – Paul Messenger

EF: “I was in Australia, there was too much difference between the cars, and we didn’t know technically. Now, it seems that they’re very close to each other, much better racing now. For racing fans it’s good, I like it.

“Formula 1 now is on a global level that it’s never been before. I love it. There is a lot of female public, a lot of girls watch Formula 1. Before it used to be the son, the boy – ‘Daddy, take me to a Formula 1 race’ – now it’s the girl, ‘Daddy, I want to go to a Formula 1 race to watch these guys’, it’s fantastic.

“And the races are much better now. Mercedes is fast. Kimi is doing a fantastic job. McLaren is back again strong. And someone I like lot and who is doing well is Lewis Hamilton with Ferrari. I like Lewis Hamilton now because last year they criticised, ‘He only went to Ferrari because he got so much money’. Now he’s there, very impressive with Ferrari. I like it.

So, would you like to drive a current F1 car?

EF: “I would love to test, yes. With no pressure, on a safe track, with time, just to feel the downforce. The last Formula 1 car I drove was the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen in Paul Ricard. I really enjoyed it. I did like 17, 18 laps on the short circuit, but it was fantastic. It brakes so deep, so much downforce, so much grip compared to my car.”

What do you look for in a young driver? Are there certain things that make you think, ‘Wow, this kid is great’? – Matt Gehlhoff

EF: “Well, first the passion and talent. And then the talent shows immediately. Today, racing since karting to Formula 1, it’s getting more difficult to analyse the driving, because it all depends more on the engineering, more than in my time. But I always see the difference – when the flag drops, the bullshit stops. And then you see who is a racer, gains positions, goes for it. That, to me, makes a difference for the young guys who really challenge in a race.”

Fittipaldi has been keeping a close eye on his eponymous son’s career

Photo by: Joe Portlock / LAT Images via Getty Images

Which young driver made the best impression on you in the past two decades?

EF: “For sure Verstappen, very impressive. Some quite good drivers. I don't know, 20 years ago… How long has Fernando Alonso been driving?

Well, it was 25 years ago, but you could say Alonso.

EF: “Twenty-five! “And Lewis Hamilton. Verstappen, Lewis, for sure, very impressive. And now Kimi [Antonelli], Lando Norris, Piastri. And now there are some young drivers we have to analyse the next two years to see how good they are.”

Including your compatriot Rafael Camara?

EF: “Yes, he’s good, very good. Let’s see how he goes in Formula 1.”

When was the happiest moment in your career? – Rogério Alberto da Fonseca

EF: “When I won the first world championship in Monza, because I won the grand prix and won the championship on the same day. It was a blessing from God.”

Fittipaldi will never forget 10 September 1972, the day he took his sixth grand prix win and became a world champion

Photo by: David Phipps / Sutton Images via Getty Images

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