Persberichten - Interview with Petu92, team manager and major shareholder of WilliamsF1

Interview with Petu92, team manager and major shareholder of WilliamsF1

This interview was made after the Australian GP, but I haven't been able to publish it until now, so some data is not updated. The season was just starting at that point, so we will see if our guest was right on his opinions or not. Let's go for it!

nicorz: Today, we've got the chance to interview Petu92, team manager of Williams F1 Team since season 21. Not forgetting of welcoming him, let's first talk about your driver, Mikael. How is everything going for him? How did he do at season 36 and what is he racing or planning for season 37?

Petu: Hi Nico. Mikael is talented young driver, who learned a lot from Supercars serie in season 36. Salo had 18 top10 finishes in S36, which is probably bit less than what I expected. I briefly had few busy months in my real life work so I didn’t always have as much time as a manager for Mikael as I would have wanted so few race results probably bit suffered but nothing serious. I think the main thing is Mikael gained some good rating points and will continue working on it in the future too. Salo is currently 2nd in U21 aged rating.

Mikael will experience stock cars this season by participating to the NASC Gold Cup Series. I have a goal in mind for Mikael not to fall too far behind the Top 10 and maybe get few really great races for 21-year-old rookie driver. As a manager I have only once before participated Gold Cup with Voitto Ritari achieving 3 podiums so it will be bit of a learning point for me as a manager too. So I am motivated and excited to manage Mikael Salo in the Gold Cup which is one of the toughest series in the game.

N: Do you think he will be able match your old driver, Voitto Ritari? Are you using things that you learned by having Voitto or that you think you should have done on its moment but you didn't?

P: By the time I started Ritari’s career I had gained some information of the then best role models I knew in the game: looni & Gorilla. Voitto got a great start for his career and was in a time the best rookie of his generation. But after looni became more inactive and Williams was for sale in the auctions that I ended up winning with the help of other Finnish managers and MRC rulebook, Ritari took a serious hit for his personal career because I had to invest both time and Ritari’s budget to help running the team. So to answer a question I have no doubt Mikael Salo will be much better in his personal career than Ritari ever was. This career is much more about personal driver than running the team so I have tried to learn from my mistakes with Ritari.

N: What are your short and long term expectations on his career?

P: Winning much more races. Ritari had the problem to start every serie well but ending up 2nd in the final races. With Salo I want to achieve every trophy I possibly can. Ofcourse I have to be patient because you can’t win much races in young age but when the opportunity will come in future, I want to take them. Winning races in F1 and possibly fighting for win of F1 championship is my ultimate goal and only time will tell if I can achieve it.

N: We are now moving to Williams, the team you are managing since season 21. This season you've got the privilege of having double World Championd Asdrúbal Pinto as your driver, with Cameron Pither as his teammate. After season 36, when you finished 13th on the championship, I think expectations are high following the result of the first race, achieving 8+4 points. What are you hoping to achieve on this season? Can you make any prediction, not just from your team, but a general one for the rest of the teams participating?

P: We have high expectations for Williams, I think the development has gone well and we will have decent car this season, and as you said we have Pinto as cream on the top of the cake. I expect driver of his level will produce points even with average car so hopefully we can produce some decent points and bring more stability for Williams results season by season.

I am no fortune teller but I expect us to get podiums in top speed race(s). If we are poor on those tracks we have not much of a chance so we have to prepare well and take what we can.

I predict that RBV or Ferrari team will win the team championship. I think it is tough but I still rely on RBV to take it this season as a team. But drivers championship could go to Ferrari driver.
I will not comment too much for other teams just to avoid causing any stir with my hunches but I wish you guys on Pegaso luck for the future and keep working towards making your project work!

N: Well, thank you, I hope you can also do well during the season :) as we are both managing a Formula One team (you manage Williams, I manage Pegaso), what do you think of all the changes DebiK has proposed for the future of the sport? Do you think this will make it more challenging?

P: I must confess I am unaware of the proposed changes to comment. I trust that my opinion will be asked personally and changes will happen if majority of the teams approve it and we will live by the rules and changes made by developers so I could say that I am very relaxed about any proposed changes. I don’t see much problems in current F1, but I think the forums itself are bit of a joke. The loudest of complaints come from the ones that are not satisfied in the game for some reason and a lot of team managers are probably pretty content on series. I think the decisions should be made based on forms and researches on how team managers, share owners and drivers react on proposed changes.

N: Let's go now onto some quick questions...

-Your best season: Tough pick but I pick season 29 because season was extremely good and I lost the championship in the last race by 2 points to Danny Dias. My personal friend who tried to help me confirm the trophy by setting very low risk approach overtook my driver in one of the last laps in last race and made me lose the championship in Supercars serie. Time has made that a good memory, but back then it really annoyed me.

-Your worst season: I don’t remember which season exactly but it was around S20, and series were one of the Indy jr series, where I had atleast 12 DNF and almost all of them in a row. People tell that they hate the randomness now but I think it was more random then. The last of the 12 DNF races I drove basically zero risk tactics but nothing helped and I basically knew before race that Ritari would DNF.

-Your best moment at MRC: Lucas de Saint Germain drivers' championship in season 28 with Williams car! 2nd place in constructors.

-Other good moments: Winning the Suomen Mestaruussarja in S32 (Finnish championship private serie), with a veteran driver. It was the last and biggest victory in Ritari’s career... also getting in Trophy of the championship the first time with young Ritari. Other one was Ritari’s miraculous race in Monte Carlo F1 race with a really bad Alfa Romeo car (6th place).

-Your worst moment at MRC: Vera Fasth's disappearance in season 28. It costed the only constructors championship trophy from Williams team. Still makes me sad thinking about how close we were.

-A message to the rest of managers: The biggest wisdom about MRC managing is what I heard a long time ago... “Make mistakes and as much as you can! Because you can only get better by improving of the mistakes and you will never get on the top without risking something.”

It is okay to try something different than others. Every trick of this game has not been learned and its your own career so it is up to you if you going with the mass or try some risky or ambitious moves or just different approaches to series, practice, training or whatever! This game needs more diversity of the grey mass.

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This was my discussion with Petu. I think we can all think about his last message. Do you agree with him? On which side do you think you are, as managers? On the side of that 'mass' Petu comments or on the other one of trying different things and risking to get good results?

The next international interview I'll post will come in two weeks. I hope you've liked this one, I also admit proposals via DM for next time :D