The Williams junior determined to prove Red Bull wrong

To describe someone as having 'a rollercoaster career' is a well-worn sporting cliche, but it doesn't do justice to Dan Ticktum. The highs - double Macau Grand Prix victory, Red Bull Formula 1 star-to-be, McLaren Autosport BRDC Award - take his rollercoaster above the clouds. Yet the lows plunge it off the rails completely and close down the whole amusement park for months of repairs, before those with faith in this enormous talent help send him back towards the next peak.

To compound this, he can be an outspoken chap. Old bores with gammon-tinted spectacles uphold this as a virtue when eulogising the characters of the 1960s and 1970s, but woe betide any 20-year-old post-millennial whippersnapper with ideas above their station. These youngsters have no idea what it is to live with the hardships of free education, full employment and a flourishing health-care system. How dare they have an opinion? And here comes that Ticktum guy, swaggering in to stir things up like a petrol-powered Greta Thunberg.

Thus it was that the social-media jackals revelled in Ticktum's June 2019 loss of his Super Formula seat and his banishment from the Red Bull Junior scheme. Yet now he's entering the 2020 season - whenever it starts, anyway - as the expected lead driver for reigning Formula 2 teams' champion DAMS, and a protege of F1 squad Williams as an Academy and Development Driver.

Another remarkable comeback.

"It's turned round pretty nicely, you could argue, so I'm looking at the positives now," asserts Ticktum who, when you think about his direct approach off-track and aggression behind the wheel, could just be the reincarnation of Alan Jones and Keke Rosberg that Williams has always wanted.

There certainly weren't many positives last year. In 2018, he'd fought for the Formula 3 European Championship title before being vanquished by Mick Schumacher's eye-opening late-season burst of success, yet bounced back to win Macau for a second time.

Red Bull had also plonked him into Team Mugen's second car for a strong one-off Super Formula debut at Sugo, and this would be his main programme for 2019, bearing in mind he fell just short of the required tally of F1 superlicence points.

In a last-ditch bid to get him over the line on superlicence points for 2019, Ticktum went off to contest the Asian F3 Winter Series with Hitech GP. It was a vain quest because, one round before that finished, it was confirmed that the series didn't qualify to give points. Furthermore, results hadn't gone as expected in a series where the tyres are occasionally known to be less consistent than in European series, and where Ticktum suffered engine problems.

"I was very grateful to drive for Mugen but I have to say I didn't feel they reacted enough in the testing and make big enough changes" Dan Ticktum

"I don't really want to talk about F3 Asia," he says, "but the thing I would like to say is there's a lot of speculation I gave up halfway through when I didn't do the last round, and the reason was that we found out there wasn't going to be any superlicence points for it, and my dad also managed to negotiate a refund for not completing the series. For the people who were saying I gave up, that's obviously rubbish.

"I don't want to go into too much detail about that and the superlicence. It's almost certain to say that I would have been in F1 had I had the points [Ticktum was linked to the Toro Rosso seat that went to Daniil Kvyat].

"That's the hardest thing to swallow every morning when I wake up, that I'm having to fight to get the chance again knowing I pretty much could have had it if I'd had enough superlicence points. A lot of people are running into that trap now [one example is Juri Vips, who is racing as a Red Bull Junior in Super Formula this year]."

Never mind, because he'd surely make his name in Japan with Team Mugen... But that turned to disaster. After three races Ticktum had one point to his name, the same tally his predecessor Pierre Gasly had after three races in 2017. But whereas Gasly turned things around, nearly won the title and had earned an F1 debut by the autumn, Ticktum was dropped by Mugen, and then by Red Bull.

"The team had a very strong set-up with the previous-generation car, and the testing at Suzuka I did was not too bad," recalls Ticktum.

"We were looking pretty good, and making good progress. And then when we got the new car [the Dallara SF19] it became apparent very quickly that to set it up in the right window was very, very difficult - the set-up window was very narrow, so I guess our team applied the similar sort of baseline to the new car and it just didn't work at all to start off with.

"Obviously I was very grateful to have the opportunity to drive for Mugen - they'd won the championship previously - but I have to say I didn't feel they reacted enough in the testing and make big enough changes."

Furthermore, 2018 champion Naoki Yamamoto had left Mugen in order to swap to Dandelion Racing, in response to his Mugen engineer Kazuya Abe departing for Team Le Mans. Yamamoto also told Autosport in an interview last June that some of the leading mechanics had moved on.

"We weren't learning enough in the time that we had basically," continues Ticktum. "That obviously meant that we hit the ground not running when the season started. Suzuka was a big, big struggle. But I managed to race pretty well and avoid lots of crashes and I finished eighth, which is not too bad.

"We went back to a very baseline set-up and we started playing around with the diff - we opened that up basically and changed a couple of other things, and I turned up at Autopolis and we were quickest in free practice one. The qualifying session was a disaster - there were five red flags, and I along with several other drivers didn't even get a lap in. In the race I made a mistake by myself on lap two, trying to go for a move on someone.

"I guess I got a bit desperate in that race - I was trying to get up there as quickly as possible, and I was on a very similar strategy to Yamamoto, and he finished second and I know my pace was as good as him.

"I'm almost certain that I had chassis damage after that race, because the way I hit the kerb it was directly underneath the car. At Sugo for the next race - where I'd qualified ninth the previous year [on Ticktum's one-off in 2018] and I'd never been there, never driven the car, never been to Japan and all the rest of it - I was literally last. That was when I knew something was up - either the car was damaged or something else was wrong. I don't know."

Ticktum was out: "Could I have performed better? Yeah, there's certain things I could have improved. I don't feel like I particularly let the pressure get to me. Did I enjoy being in Japan? Not entirely. I struggled with it to start with, maybe I could have adapted a bit better.

"There's all sorts of speculation and the team saying, 'He needs to get used to Japan, he needs to get used to the tracks there', but at the end of the day it's a track and a race car, you know? It doesn't matter whether it's in Japan or on the moon. I didn't feel like the team had a lot of confidence in me, let's say that. But there we go.

"At DAMS, I knew the people, I felt comfortable in the environment, and I believe that they have a quick car. So that's why we ended up there" Dan Ticktum

"It is a bit strange for a team not to have confidence in a driver that Red Bull put in an F1 car. But it's all done - I've learned a lot from it. People are going to ask, 'Am I still sour about being dropped?' And yeah, of course I am, but I'm in a very good position now."

Ticktum reappeared for two late-season outings in the Formula Regional European Championship with Van Amersfoort Racing - the team needed a driver, and it was just possible to earn some superlicence points if he won a few races, but it proved a tough ask when up against some good drivers who were fully up to speed from contesting the full season.

He then turned out for Carlin, with which he'd made his F3 debut in late 2016, in the Macau Grand Prix - Ticktum's debut in the new-for-2019 FIA F3 car: "I was very quick, but it all went wrong when David Beckmann crashed in FP2 [at Police bend], only a couple of hours before quali."

Ticktum couldn't avoid the wreck on this blind corner: "The FIA didn't give me a penalty, so all the people out there saying I should have paid more attention to the yellow flags, if the FIA thought that they would have given me a penalty, and they didn't because they knew the yellow flags were not visible in any way from the cockpit.

"Obviously the car wasn't completely straight, shall we say, for qualifying. I didn't have my usual confidence round Macau, and also I was out in qually late and I got one half-decent lap, so that was unfortunate."

Ticktum was a victim of the first-lap incident in the qualification race triggered by team-mate Logan Sargeant, who ironically escaped and sailed to a podium in the GP. Ticktum, meanwhile, lined up 26th and came through to 13th: "It wasn't meant to be."

By this point, Ticktum was on the verge of turning out with DAMS in the post-season F2 test in Abu Dhabi. This was the result of a summer of taking stock during his period of race inactivity.

"There were a few people who said, 'Go and do F2', one of them being Christian [Horner, Red Bull team principal]," relates Ticktum. "I had a meeting with him just after I'd got dropped, just to go and say thank you for their belief in me and all the rest of it.

"And a lot of other people said, 'Get back over to Europe where you're relevant, in front of the F1 paddock, show people that you can put a championship together', all that sort of stuff. So we basically approached ART and DAMS, because at that point Carlin already had their drivers."

Ticktum already had a relationship with DAMS from some impressive late-season GP3 outings with the squad in 2017 (below), and team principal Francois Sicard was receptive: "Francois knew me, and Sebastien Philippe from ART knows that I'm very quick. I feel like DAMS were slightly more keen but that we could have got a seat at ART if we'd pushed for it.

"At DAMS, I knew the people, I felt comfortable in the environment, and I believe that they have a quick car. So that's why we ended up there."

But still, having the wherewithal to join DAMS was a surprise for a driver whose moment of madness in British F4 in 2015, which led to a ban that ultimately lasted for 12 months, was partly caused by pressure to impress Red Bull because his father didn't think he could raise the budget for the following season's Formula Renault Eurocup.

Ricardo Gelael, father of Ticktum's DAMS sidekick Sean, is renowned for being a benefactor towards his son's team-mates. But this appears to not necessarily be the case on this occasion.

"My dad is successful, but would struggle to pay for a standard F2 budget in a top team," says Ticktum.

The recent pre-season test in Bahrain prior to what was intended to be this weekend's opening round in the desert kingdom went much better than last December's Abu Dhabi running.

"Abu Dhabi was really more of a test for me to get back in a race car," says Ticktum. "I was getting dialled back in to be honest, but we learned a lot there. We did some race runs and I was pretty terrible at managing the tyres, but we worked really hard over the winter to try to sort that out with all the tools that DAMS have.

"In Bahrain, it's a bit like when all the F1 boys are saying you can't really tell until everybody turns up at the first race, but there are fewer variables in F2 so you know more or less where everybody is. You never know what everybody's doing on fuel and that sort of stuff, but race runs we were very strong. Performance [qualifying] runs we were also very strong but I never really put a lap together.

"I wouldn't say we were the quickest in performance runs, but we were close. Fuel-corrected I was one of the quickest. We're looking strong for the races but I don't want to say much until the season starts, which is probably going to be five months away!"

When it does kick off, he'll find himself up against old F3 sparring partners Schumacher, Marcus Armstrong and Robert Shwartzman. Ticktum copped a lot of flak in 2018 for posting comments on social media about Schumacher's sudden burst of form.

"I feel like all that stuff's been completely put to bed," he sighs. "I saw Mick at the Bahrain test and said hello, and everything was normal."

"I felt wanted, which I haven't really felt like for a while" Dan Ticktum

Even so, the renewal of the competition between the Euro F3 'class of 2018' will be a focal point of F2 for those watching, if not necessarily for the drivers themselves.

"There are a lot of very good drivers in that championship, so I haven't really thought about it at all to be honest," declares Ticktum. "I feel that I've got a bit more of a mountain to climb than the Armstrongs and the Schumachers because they've been racing on relevant tracks [in 2019] in relatively relevant cars.

"I'm not really overly concerned about what they're doing. I may start a bit slower than them, I may not, but I just need to go and do the best that I can and tick every box."

If Ticktum can do that, it will cap a seemingly impossible turnaround in his career. Just a few months ago, it looked all over in his bid to reach F1. But in a world where second chances seem to abound for Red Bull rejects (see Kvyat, Alex Albon and Brendon Hartley), that rollercoaster could be maintained for a jump-off point at its highest peak.

How Ticktum got his Williams chance

At one point over the winter, it seemed that hardly a week went by without Williams announcing a new 'development' protege. While the odd one of them wouldn't be your natural first choice from the list of talent available, Dan Ticktum is different.

Even so, it was hard to work this one out, beyond the fact that Ticktum belongs to the same Infinity management stable as first-team starlet George Russell. But that had nothing to do with it, he says.

"My dad's got a very good friend who is the son of Sid Watkins [the late F1 medical chief]," says Ticktum. "Alistair Watkins [CEO of Influence Sports & Media] is very well connected. Along with helping with all my media stuff, he helped open the doors to all the contacts in F1 teams.

"Most teams said 'go and do well in F2', but there were a couple that were interested to work immediately, one of them being Williams, and I felt that they offered the best situation for me at this time, and I felt... wanted, which I haven't really felt like for a while.

"For this year Francois [Sicard, DAMS boss] wanted me and Williams wanted me, so it's a nice feeling to have. I've got a lot to thank Alistair for really."

While Williams has had ownership of the back row of the F1 grid of late, Ticktum is hugely defensive of his new colleagues: "It really winds me up when you get all these ignorant people saying they're not doing very well, but that's just the last two or three years. If you look at their history they're an incredibly successful team, who should not be knocked by anyone in F1 or indeed out of F1.

"I feel like they're the brunt of a lot of jokes at the moment, which is unnecessary. They are having a tough time, they are an independent team which means that when you get into a hole and try to get out of it again it's difficult, but the environment at the factory is an incredibly positive one, and I feel that they'll be going in a positive direction in the next few months, and hopefully as soon as possible."

Ticktum is another to have faced the brickbats, including those who accuse him of paying for the privilege - something that those who have followed his career would know is not possible. His dad is an affluent man by normal standards, but it was a struggle to take his son beyond karting and F4, let alone into an F1 role. We're not talking Lawrence Stroll or Michael Latifi here...

"In terms of the job I'm doing, I'm doing it exactly how I was for Red Bull, just trying to give the best feedback possible" Dan Ticktum

"That is just absolute nonsense," retorts Ticktum. "We're not paying a dime. If I got to the stage in my career where I was paying to be on a Formula 1 programme, I'd give up probably because I feel that that's just wrong. It depends what deal you've got - if you've got a deal from an external sponsor it's different.

"But if it's your dad having to fork out a load of money for you to pay to be on a programme, that's not what I'd like to be associated with. I'd be exploring other avenues I think. I'm not paying, and I've got a very good opportunity."

Ticktum is a renowned ace in the simulator - that's the role he performed for Red Bull on F1 race weekends, and it's one he is picking up again for Williams.

"I am hoping to be in the car a couple of times this year at some point to help correlate - that will help," he says. "I've obviously got a lot of knowledge from Red Bull, but I want to make it clear that I'm not going in there and telling Williams about the way Red Bull runs, because I don't know a lot about it.

"I'm not giving away secrets because that's just unprofessional, but in terms of the job I'm doing, I'm doing it exactly how I was for Red Bull, just trying to give the best feedback possible.

"I don't necessarily have to be very very quick, although that helps - I just have to be consistent and feel every change that they make and point them in a positive direction. The same job as I did for Red Bull pretty much."