Mahindra team boss after South Africa malaise: 'It was painful'

Frédéric Bertrand, Mahindra's team boss, first of all, joked: "Yeah, a lot of things [happend last time out] or not enough things because I would have loved to race to be honest," the Frenchman says in conversation with GPblog. Indeed, on the morning of the race in South Africa, now four weeks ago, engineers discovered a flexing issue with the rear suspension. The problem had the potential to lead to accidents, leaving Bertrand with no option but to withdraw his team. ABT Cupra followed suit.

Decision not taken from emotion

Looking back, Bertrand fully stands by his decision. "I think South Africa was something we considered too risky to take the risk of pushing the cars in such a demanding and bumpy track and fast track", he says. "This one has to be rational and not emotional because purely emotionally you will try to go and race and start to forget all the warnings and all the factual things, which are showing that you shouldn't do. And that's why it's not so much an emotional decision."

The hours were intense, with a lot of talking. "You first need to explain to the drivers and they understood very quickly. For sure, they are very disappointed, because for them it's one opportunity less to showcase that they can be fast. The only thing really important was the reaction at the workshop, to make sure that you keep people focused on developing for the next race, but also on finding that solution and putting all the efforts necessary to convert as soon as possible. That has been done so yeah. And it's not only impacting us but also our customer team. For sure, it was very disappointing [for them], but they saw the parts and they saw what was happening. So we all have experience in motorsport, and they all understood or anticipated that might be the only option available. So, I would say everybody reacted very professionally."

Time pressure sometimes helps

At the factory in England, a lot of hard work has been done in recent weeks to find a definitive solution for the flexing rear suspension. This was available fairly quickly, was implemented in the cars and then submitted to the FIA for approval. "Sometimes pressure on time is helping to make the good decision. I think it was the case. So, now we come to Sao Paulo, confident that we have a good solution there and that this solution will be valid and will be the one we maybe should have implemented from the beginning, but that's how it is." 

Bertrand continued: "It was a very painful learning experience, but at least we managed it so nothing was becoming dramatic. We had to not suffer any crashes and for sure we protected the drivers, which was clearly our first goal. So it's now hopefully a subject for the past, but there are a lot of learnings coming out of this in terms of how we validate maybe differently, how we make sure that we don't have those types of difficulties in the future. We also did the full assessment of the car, should there be any other area where we may have doubts. Everything now is under control and the level of confidence is high again."

Details can make everybody down

Above all, the hassle in South Africa showed the team and especially the outside world how complicated car racing really is. "It also pushes the idea that a small thing, a small detail, can make everybody down. So, this really makes everyone realise that even if sometimes it looks like something easy to put cars on the track, it's not that easy and we have responsibilities, and everyone has his own responsibility in the team at any level in the team."