#effwon

He describes Daniel as a confidence driver, says when he’s got his mojo, he’s one of the fastest guys on the gird.  He talks about how Daniel stood out in Formula Renault that one time he went to watch him, talks about how Daniel has a very classic, smooth natural style of driving.  He describes it as an almost kind of Roger Federer-style behind the wheel.  He goes on about how they didn’t have much expectations on Daniel as a junior when he came up to the A team in 2014 and then he went on to win 3 races when they had far from the best engine that year

Christian sounds almost flippant when he talks about 2018 and Daniel leaving.  In his own words, he says ‘everybody fucks up at some point.  He had spent a few years outside the family and suddenly realised actually what I had was really good.’ He goes on to talk about how they sat down in Mexico last year and he told Daniel to take a year off and come back to ‘us’ (a little narrative reconstruction, because Daniel had already announced his sabbatical in Japan, but we’ll give Christian that for the sake of ‘family’)

Anyway 2018 – he says Daniel was upset at the time because of the new contract that they gave Max.  He recounts how at the Austrian Grand Prix, he asked Dietrich to talk to Daniel to make him feel wanted because at that point in time, Marko was already full-on pro-Max.  Dietrich came out after their one-hour long talk smiling and said he agreed to give Daniel what Max was offered, to which Christian said do you know what we’re paying Max? Long story short, Dietrich supposedly agreed to give Daniel the same money because he ‘is a good guy’.

Whether a similar contract was actually offered or not, Daniel was supposed to sign the new contract at the Hungarian GP, but he kept putting it off till he flew to LA and called Christian to tell him he was going to Renault.