Jacques Villeneuve tells Red Bull how to end second seat curse

Jacques Villeneuve has said the driver to partner Max Verstappen at Red Bull should be able to vocalise the feelings they have in the car to “make it his” in the driver’s own way.

It is known as a point of style that Verstappen likes the car to be as ‘peaky’ as possible, which unlocks a higher potential performance ceiling at a cost of making the car more difficult to handle, which has proven tricky for his teammates in recent years.

Villeneuve: Red Bull second driver feedback ability important when choosing a teammate

The 1997 World Champion explained his belief that, with both Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda having struggled alongside Verstappen so far this season, that a driver with advanced technical feedback skills will be more likely to succeed.

He opined that multiple drivers on the grid “don’t know how to work on a setup”, offering feedback on how the car feels but being unsure of the reasons behind it.

With that, he said that a driver good enough to follow their own setup path would have a greater chance of success, as reverting to the setup used by Verstappen “doesn’t help”.

“I think when they put in [Pierre] Gasly and [Alex] Albon, they weren’t ready,” Villeneuve explained on Sky F1.

“They still needed their half a season as rookies to get up to speed, and they weren’t given it. Those two drivers are better now than when they were at Red Bull.

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“[Sergio] Perez at his peak or already at plateau, wasn’t going to get any better, but he was never a World Champion to start with.

“Max is an old fashioned driver, and there’s not many like him anymore. There used to be more, [but] there’s not many like Max anymore, so to find another driver that will work with the team, work on the car to make it his and to help the team progress, it’s not easy.”

When asked if drivers will have the ability to arrive next to Verstappen and make the car theirs, the 1997 World Champion replied: “Of course you can”, but put to him that other drivers are not currently doing it, he added: “Well, that’s because they’re not good enough. It’s that simple.

“A driver that will be good enough will manage to be that close that [the team] feel ‘okay, maybe his comments are worthwhile’.

“But some drivers, and there’s a lot of them, they just come in and they don’t know how to work on a setup. They just say, ‘oh yeah, I’ve got a little bit of understeer.’ Okay, well, why? What’s happening? What do you feel on the ground? They don’t have an idea.

“They just say, ‘okay, if Max does this, I’ll do the same.’ That doesn’t help. During the season, they get further and further away.”

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