During a press event at BAFTA for Codemasters up and coming Formula One game, MG got the chance to sit down with Formula One driver, Anthony Davidson.Anthony has, this year, been BRAWN GP’s test driver along with racing for Aston Martin at the Le Mans 24 hour race, commentating for Radio 5 Live alongside David Croft who was also present and working with promoting and developing the Formula One games.

Timing was tight so a few of us (PR) decided to sit down together and talk to Anthony (AD) and David (DC) about life in Formula One, how the games are coming along and generally anything we could throw at them.  Not literally though as we would get sued!

DC: So, did you like the game?

PR: For the casual racing driver, gamer it will be very, very cool.  For the hardcore driver, I think they will wait for the PS3/360 version.  Saying that I think the PSP version is really, really good.  The Wii version lacks in depth, for example when going around Suzuka there seems to be no camber on some of the turns where you expect them and also there is no connection with the tracks.

AD: I feel I am a hardcore gamer but because of my travelling I take around my PSP.  I already have Gran Turismo on there and this is something I would definitely take with me as well.

PR: Let’s start with your career.  With you test driving you haven’t had to do much really so what has this year been like with Brawn GP and also what it has been like to have 2 very defined camps?

AD: There are always 2 very defined camps in any team, there’s a serious battle that goes on between the 2 sides of the garage, don’t ever believe for a second that it is one happy team, it never is like that.  It’s cut throat and winner takes all in this game.  Just like football, you have the 2 sides, it’s even more critical as team mates as the only direct competitor is in the same machinery as you and the 2 engineers from the 2 different sides want their guy to win and that’s the way its been for years and years.  This year is more apparent then normal as you had 2 team mates fighting for the championship so it became pretty obvious that there was an internal fight going on but it always like that be it Kovalainen and Hamilton, it just goes on.

PR: An example was at the Nurbergring where Reubens wasn’t all that happy with what was going on even though in qualifying Reubens had an edge.  Do you think there is a point where the conflict is detrimental to the team where they are not giving the information to each other they should be?

AD: Two words, Senna, Prost, yes it can be to the detriment of the team but this year they are experienced enough and friendly enough to realise that the car was losing speed against the other teams around them towards the end of the year and it was going to take both of their professionalism and workmanship to do everything they could to ensure that the car would not slip off the edge with their on-going battle in the championship so, they were fighting hard on track, I feel that Reubens did have the upper hand on Jensen, but in the race, more often than not, Jensen had the upper hand over Reubens, so it always created quite a good race between the two of them.

DC: It was interesting in Brazil after the chequered flag that Reubens was waiting for Jensen to give him a big hug.  He told Jensen that if he wanted to party in Brazil tonight, knowing that he had to back in Britain the next day, he could use his private plane rather than taking the normal booked flight.  That shows you the respect, the healthy respect the two drivers have got for each other.  I feel that Jensen would have done the same thing had he been in that position and really whatever Reubens said after Spain with the blah, blah, blah that things aren’t right on my side of the garage he is actually one of the nicest guys in Formula One and he just felt that things were conspiring against him but he drove really well.

AD: I think Reubens drove really well in the second half of the season.  I think the car suited Jensen more in the first half of the season but suited Reubens more in towards the second half, especially in qualifying.

PR: How have you been this year?  You have not had to do much as there was not the amount of testing there used to be.

AD: I’ve missed testing, obviously, with the team.  It took a long while for people to realise that I was anything to do with the team because of the lack of testing but I’ve been doing a lot with the straight line stuff and aerodynamic testing this year available to us but that was completely out of the limelight really and my main work has been working on the simulator project and other PR events but my main thing has been the sim world and its something the teams are looking into more now because of the lack of testing it has become very serious.

PR: The sim world ties in nicely with the gaming world so what have you been able to tell developers about the differences between driving for real and racing games.

AD: Well, the main thing is with formula one games.  I’ve played them for many years and to change to a wider field of view makes it a lot more easier to race against each other.  Also, racing games seem to be a lot faster and to tell them to slow the games down a little.  Developers get carried away when making computer games because they feel that everything has to be so quick, things are flying past you and the trees are flying by but when you race for real things are not actually like that.  Real racing is a lot slower and it feels like being in a road car but because the racing car can do it at faster speeds it feels a lot more calm and is a lot more slower than in a computer game.  That’s always something to get over to computer game developers that if you slow it all down, you can have better racing, especially online racing and make it a bit more realistic.

PR: The main thing that is always there is the concentration on certain features and aspects like braking points in a game.  Is this a feature that is important and do the formula one simulators implement similar things to keep your focus on the track?

AD: Yeah, absolutely, some work has been done to where the driver will look, thy put a special camera on the helmet to see the drivers eye, they will be able to see where the driver is looking when they are going around a lap.  I think it has given, especially in the simulator world a better idea of what is going on.  I think if you take away too many objects around a circuit, you lose the believability that you are in a car, racing around a circuit and as a driver in a car, you do look at certain bits on and around the track to give you an idea of where to let the car run out too, your angle on circuit, where you should brake and all those kinds of things.  There was a famous story once from Le Mans where a driver was using a caravan as a reference point for braking and more than half way into the race he was using this time and time again.  When he got back in to do his next stint, the caravan had gone and he completely missed his braking point and went off the track.  It’s stuff like that, if it’s not in the game then it will detract from your experience.  Especially you find curbs are your real reference on the circuit, curbs, exit curbs and run off areas, these are the things that a driver will use to guide them on their lap and maybe sometimes a different surface change, like a different colour.  The more advanced computer games get, the more information can be put into the game and the more information it can give you.

PR: You’ve been doing Le Mans this year, to keep up with your racing, we all want to see you back fully in a formula one car as it’s been a couple of years now.  What’s happening?  Are you staying at Brawn?

AD: I don’t know at the moment.  As yet, nothing is signed but I am talking to quite a few teams for next year, inside and outside of Formula One but it has been quite a good year really, I’ve had my involvement in racing and I have been involved with a championship winning team and working alongside David Croft with radio commentating so its been an interesting year and doing the radio has allowed me to step back and see Formula One as a whole and not being completely self-contained in your own team.  That’s what it’s like being in a team.  You are completely blinkered by your own performances, you have no idea about how the rest of the field is really getting on.  You can finish a race and have no idea who won it, if you’re last or mid-field but doing the radio stuff this year has really given me an insight into what different driver’s styles are like and how the different teams have progressed through the year.

PR: Do you think that will make you a better driver if you go back into it now?

AD: I think so because it will give you much more of a complete understanding of how different teams can react.  Look at McClaren this year, how they started the year with a very slow car an they have worked at it and worked at it and Lewis was fighting a little too hard at the beginning and over driving the car in a way and he got into the swing of things after driving a slower car because he had never been in that position before.

PR: Being a driver you sometimes cannot see the wood from the trees when you are racing but in a commentary position you can see if someone should be on certain tyres or are on the wrong tyres or have come into the pits at the wrong time.  Are all these things coming together to help you out?

AD: One of my best mates works for Brawn as a lead strategist, so I’ve always got a real insight into every teams approach to a race and what happened in finer detail after the race but at the time in the heat of the battle it is totally different.  Doing our job from the commentary box, someone sitting on the sofa will always pick out a detail we’ve missed if they are solely focussed on the one thing but to cover everything is a completely different kettle of fish.

DC: Qualifying in Brazil, Jensen had an absolute nightmare and didn’t make it through to qualifying 3 and we were both saying for about 5 minutes that he should come in for new tyres, new wets and get out there and talking to Ross Brawn afterwards we asked who made that call, was it Jensen saying I don’t want to come in, was it you as you are in charge of the team and take over all responsibility and there is a whole thought process that we do not budget for and also the audience does not budget for because it would take Jensen 3 laps or so to get the tyres up to temperature to put in the lap times and it might have been that the moments gone, it might be that he could do it or it might be that he could just say as a driver that everything would be ok.

AD: It’s like football, it’s very easy for us to sit in the armchair or sidelines and say “why didn’t he do this” but there always is more going on internally than what you see from the outside as well.

PR: It was quite a mad incident where it was chucking down with rain like that and it must be hard for a driver to re-focus after spending so long in the pits etc.

AD: Well, you can see a driver like Nico Rosberg took the risk of going on intermediates because he’s got nothing to lose where as someone like Jensen leading the championship you just cannot afford to take that chance so that’s why he ended up qualifying so low down

DC: As a fan or commentator you want to see the drivers taken out of their comfort zone and relying on their own ability, it’s brilliant.  Start dry, get wet, get dry, get wet is fabulous.

AD: This is why in computer games, if they can add these features in it’s fantastic because it really gives the fan an idea of what it’s like to be involved and then think the sky is dark, it’s starting to rain, do I come in, don’t I, what are the other cars doing out there it really adds depth to a game.

PR: You see weather dynamics and changing effects so little in computer games, I’m going to ask you this and you’re going to say no but is it something we may see in the 360/PS3 version of the game?

AD: I hope so, I hope so.  I think computer games need that really and I think now with the specifications of consoles and PC’s they are more than capable they’re more than capable of doing it, so I say “bring it on!”

PR: Do many drivers use computer games as a reference to keep them sharp sometimes?

AD: Absolutely, I mean I haven’t turned a wheel at Singapore or Abu Dhabi and I’ve done both of them on the Brawn simulator but I have also done them playing games too.  In 2006, before I went to certain circuits I played all of them on the computer games so, yeah, absolutely.

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