Met ZTimo Glock in Montreal and chatted for 20 mins - Thoughts on best driver misc

We were having some drinks on the Terrace of Villnueve's restaurant Saturday afternoon after qualifying and Glock and his team were up there as well waiting for a sponsor event. I just started talking to him and surprisingly he was up for talking to someone different and he chatted with me for about 20mins.

The short version - I asked him who he thought the very best driver was. At first he gave me a PR answer of "It is difficult to say as there are many variables." I asked him to cut to it and he said it has to be Alonso combining skill, being ruthless and ability to give the engineers feedback on the car.

We talked different cars on the grid and what makes one special over another and his short answer was quote "Adrian Newey is a God"

He talked about the Pirelli Tires and he likes them as it is better for the show and also allows different cars to take advantage of different tracks based on compounds. He talked about how the Ferrari is a solid car but only excels with the compounds like those seen in Monoco and Montreal.

We talked about family, and just regular BS, took a couple of pictures and then they went to the sponsor dinner.

All in all a cool experience. Obviously I would have liked to have met other drivers in the same atmosphere but i am not sure they would have gladly given me the almost half hour glock did

 

The other comment of note is that a guy standing a few feet away from me was making fun of Nascar (I am not a fan myself of it but i did not say anything). GLock said he didn't know what he was talking about and that it takes a lot of talent to drive those cars with the changing track conditions during an event being the main difficulty. He said he would like the chance to compete in one potentially down the road

 

Cool! Timo always comes across as a decent guy. He deserves much better than that poor Virgin.

 

I agree. In 2009 he did some awesome stuff in that Toyota. He'll fit in better in Renault, will hunt Petrov more than Heidfelt does anyways.

Very cool that he chatted to you so long. Jan Lammers did the same to me; although we did buy his house, as soon as my parents told me I was a huge racing fan he started inviting me to all sorts of events at the Zandvoort track in Holland...pit tickets, invites to private testing sessions (his Le Mans car efforts). Very cool.

Jos verstappen was a prat. I've never been big on autographs (I can understand it can be irritating to be asked 10x a day), but me and my best friend saw Verstappen once and we asked for a autograph (we where about 10 or 11). They pretty much told us to F off really...

 

Neat. I agree Zo is the man on the field right now. I would have loved seeing him against Schumacher of the late 90s. Oh the titanic battles

 

Very cool! Thanks for sharing!

Always nice to hear of people's experiences with drivers and other athletes when they don't have a microphone shoved in front of them and have to talk in "PR-speak"

Frank

 

Since Interlagos 2008 Timo Glock is my hero.

He fixed F1 history for all of us where Mad Max and his minions were trying to alter it.