It is January 31, 2001 when Arrows finally announces the drivers for the upcoming Formula 1 season. As expected, goes Jos Verstappen another year at Tom Walkinshaw’s stable, which he had taken fifth in Canada in 2000 and fourth in Italy. Pedro de la Rosa seemed on his way to a third season with Arrows for a long time, but the seat surprisingly goes to a 22-year-old Brazilian: Enrique Bernoldi.
Bernoldi, making his Arrows debut in the in Formula 1, and Verstappen, meanwhile tried and tested at the highest level of motorsport, did not exactly become each other’s best friends that year. At one point, the two drivers barely exchange a word. In an interview with Motorsport.com Brazil Bernoldi reminisces about his time alongside Verstappen at Arrows.
“I came to Arrows with the support of Helmut Marko,” begins Bernoldi, who was part of the Red Bull Junior Team. “He asked me, ‘What do you want to achieve?’ I replied that I wanted to become world champion. He said: ‘If Verstappen beats you, you’re out.’ A clear message. If that boy wants to become champion, he should not be beaten by Verstappen. So I started there thinking that I had to be in front of him every session. That always happened at the beginning of the year.”
Bernoldi makes a quick impression during the pre-season, but at the time it was also good practice for the smaller teams to do some runs with an ultralight car, to win over potential sponsors with fast lap times. “There were test days when I was fifth, behind the McLarens and the Ferraris, because Arrows drove a light car to attract sponsors,” recalls Bernoldi. However, at the first race in Melbourne, the Brazilian debutant is faced with the facts. “When I arrived in Australia, I thought I had completed a good preparation. But then when I saw Michael Schumacher’s lap times, I asked myself, ‘My god, what the hell happened? How come those guys drive so fast?’ Arrows should have added weight to the car and the 2001 car was not good, and so was the engine.”
According to Bernoldi, the relationship with his Dutch teammate was on edge from the start. “Verstappen couldn’t lose to a rookie, but I had Marko and I couldn’t lose to Verstappen. So there were tensions between us right away,” said Bernoldi. “At the first race Jos told me in front of Marko: ‘You are my second Brazilian teammate. I’ve had one for a whole year [Ricardo Rosset bij Footwork tijdens het F1-seizoen 1996] and I beat him 16-0 in the qualifiers.’” Marko gave a telling glance towards Bernoldi. Bernoldi with a smile: “Then Marko looked at me with one eye…”
Enrique Bernoldi annoys David Coulthard in Monaco.
Foto: Russell Batchelor / Motorsport Images
Bernoldi is not doing badly in qualifying. He is even regularly faster than Verstappen. “The first time I finished above him in qualifying was [bij de derde race] in Brazil. After that, that also happened in Imola, Barcelona and Austria. He then started to lose himself a little. He was getting nervous because I was finishing above him more and more in qualifying. During Friday practice at Magny-Cours he spun and ended up in the gravel pit. When I saw that, I was happy. You always want to do better than your team-mate and if he wasn’t driving it was better for me because he wouldn’t be able to fine-tune his car. But when I entered the pits, the team said to me, ‘Get out of the car.’ They gave Jos my car because we couldn’t use the spare car. He drove my car and I couldn’t drive. That situation arose twice. The first time was because of that spider and the other time it was because of the engine. Then I returned to the car for qualifying.”
A situation that Bernoldi was not happy about to say the least. “I used Brembo brakes, which were light to use, and Jos used Hitcos, which were very hard. So he braked with a lot of force, which was not good for my brakes,” explains Bernoldi. “When I got back in the car, everything felt strange, when I had to be fast on the very first lap. That was not ideal. But both times he drove my car, I was faster in qualifying. So that’s why I said to him, “Don’t drive my car anymore, I’m faster than you.” I was pretty pissed about it and let him know.”
Although Bernoldi eventually outperforms Verstappen in ten of the seventeen qualifying sessions, his performance in the races is disappointing. His best finish in 2001 was eighth in the German Grand Prix. Verstappen even calls him the worst teammate he has had in Formula 1 in August of that year. “I don’t get along very well with him,” the Dutchman noted. “We talk very little and I have to say he is the worst team-mate I’ve had in Formula 1. I think there are better drivers available to the team than him. He has a talent for qualifying, but he’s not that strong in the race.” Bernoldi on the mutual competition against Motorsport.com Brazil: “My race engineer was Italian, my engine engineer was French but also spoke Italian and my data engineer was Belgian and also spoke Italian. So we spoke to each other in Italian, so Jos didn’t know what we were discussing. So at a certain point I stopped talking to Jos. But with Sophie [Kumpen, destijds de vrouw van Jos]. Purely to provoke him.”
Bernoldi has another funny anecdote about Max, who was three or four years old at the time: “One time before a race, Max came into Arrows’ motorhome and he stared at me. His father had probably said all kinds of bad things about me at home. So he stared at me and then went to the toilet. He was wearing plastic boots. I heard some noise coming from the toilet and took a look. It turned out he had stepped into the toilet and one of his boots got stuck. I took him out and handed him over to his mother. But his boot was still in the toilet. Then his mother took it out.”
Arrows teammates Enrique Bernoldi and Jos Verstappen.
Foto: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images
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