Joan Villadelprat: “Michael Schumacher was the most complete pilot”
The Spanish, right hand of Flavio Briatore in Benetton, worked with runners such as Prost, Piquet, Lauda, Alonso and even in a test with Senna, but his choice was for the German heptacampeon and he told AM850.com.
¿Who is Joan Villadelprat? He tells him in talk with AM850.com. “Basically, I started working in a competition workshop at 15 years, I went through all Spanish formulas, then the super renault Europe, the English F3, then the season in Argentina, I returned and entered Project Four (NDER: Team Created by Ron Dennis for F2 and F3) until Porject Four joined McLaren and from there I started working in F1. I spent six years in McLaren, I was Chief of Mechanics of Ferrari, Team Manager of Tyrrell, Director of Operations and Sports of Benetton, general director of Prost and, at the end of the link with Prost, I put my Euskadi Epsilon project in which we did the First Spanish car for the 24 hours of Le Mans. The competition, not Formula 1, has been my whole life. And it still is, today work for radios, the TV or podcast. I started at 15 and now I am almost 70 ”.
Within his extensive career, he had the possibility of having huge pilots, many of them, Formula 1 champions under his wing. Ayrton Senna proved for the first time in F1 with a Villadelprat car, was close to Fernando Alonso to arrive at the F3000, worked with Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Keke Rosberg, Michael Schumacher. A luxury, without a doubt.
-What was the most complete pilot with whom he worked?
-I have the most complete, without a doubt, Michael Schumacher. And I can say that his early years were not easy because he made me one behind another. He made me all colors, from destroying the car before leaving boxes, on the Silverstone wall. And in 94 I spent more time in the Plaza de la Concordia in Paris (Nder: Headquarters of the FIA) fighting for him, than in the factory. At that time he was the Director of Operations and everything that was production, management, test, everything was in my charge. They were Flavio Briatore, Ross Brown, who carried the technical part, and me. We were 400 and peak of people. I had to work twice as many people. But it is very clear that, if you see what we created in the 80, 90 in Benetton, something well we did. Because all F1 teams have people who come from Benetton in Top positions. Ross Brown reached the maximum, Rory Byrne, in Ferrari; Jonathan Wheatley will now be the main team of Audi, Pat Fry, as technical director of Williams; Pat Symonds was a technical director in countless teams, Rob Marshall, is now in Aston Martin. I can go for the paddock and recognize people who have worked under my orders, something well did when that group of important people who were exceptional.
-When Schumacher went to Ferrari, team did not win a title since 1979, did you imagine that it was going to give the success it had?
-Yes, because he took 20 uncles of Benetton. He took everyone, Ross Brown, Rory Byrne, James Allison, another that is now in Mercedes. He took countless people, we were Pat Symonds and I, nothing more. I had to arrive. And so and everything took five years. And that is important to understand it. The process of changing a company has been four or five years of time. We took four years to win the first world title in Benetton, Red Bull took four years, Ferrari took five, Mercedes took four. If you look at the statistics, normally, if you have the group of perfect people for the gear to work well, you need a period of settlement, stability and when you want, you can win two years, three or five as Michael did.
-That is precisely what Ferrari did in recent times, with modifications in the technical part and even in the direction.
-For what is understood, there is something very important that Michael did the best people do not know: he shielded all these people. He armored all the people who took Benetton. If they threw it out, Michael left. You know what it means to work in Ferrari without having the pressure and sword of Damocles all day, because there when things do not work it is a disaster. You are the phenomenon or the total disaster. And precisely Ferrari’s philosophy was that, when something does not work for one or two years, all new and start again. And that is the big mistake. A company needs stability if you have good people.
-How is it made to work with those pilots and their egos?
-You have to be afraid and understand the egos, know how to work and be in your place when it touches and put the balls above the table how much it touches. It depends on what position you are in. In managment positions there are obviously moments when you have to put things above the table. After all, we are all employees and the pilots are too. And you have to mark the company’s policy, this is the direction in which we want to go and this is what needs to be done. As I was in all phases, from mechanical, to the wind tunnel, to be the first manager of mechanics in the history of Ferrari, to be Tyrrell manager, ten years in Benetton, director in Prost … I passed through all The positions, I worked in South America, in France, in Italy, in England, I speak five languages … All of that gives you a very big openness and knowing how to play with people. One of my qualities is that I am a leader, it is not good that I say it, but in all the places where I was hardly you will find someone who says I did not do my work well. Because he was the first to arrive and the last to leave, always. Maybe for fear, to push myself and because I do not come from Harvard, to have an engineering. All that made me work much harder than other people who have it easier because they have a title. I come from a country where F1 looked very little. And when I went to England to discover what the competition was, I saw that that was my life.
