Daniel Abt: Why it’s All in the Mind for Audi’s Formula E Driver
You can see, every time Daniel Abt posts a new YouTube video, that he just loves being around cars. This is something you’d expect of a Formula E driver, but there are multiple car tribes, and each has varying levels of representation in top-level motorsport.
It’s rarer than you might imagine to find a top-level driver who is from the tribe which probably would have read Max Power magazine in the nineties, but so many of Abt’s videos are about mods, whether performed by his family’s Abt Sportsline concern or someone else, that it shows him to be an authentic fan, and someone who, if he were not driving high-tech electric cars for a living, would probably be hooning around in an RS6, GoPro attached to the windscreen.
These days, Abt’s 270,000+ followers puts him in the middle tier of motorsport YouTubers (even without Abt’s global profile as a racing driver, Chain Bear F1 has almost as many subscribers), but it’s the authenticity that makes the German driver so watchable. While some other YouTubers seem to get their lessons on unrelenting positivity from the Paul brothers, Abt is not one for shouting, or overemoting about what he’s doing. He’s a driver who works for a renowned tuning house, and these are some of the activities he gets up to that he can show the public. Don’t like long drawn-out banter about matte paint jobs? There are faster-moving, less thorough car channels out there, but none hosted by someone who loves the vehicles quite this much.
Startling Openness
It’s perhaps this sense of I-am-what-I-am upfrontness that saw Abt give a series of interviews last season which, with hindsight, don’t seem particularly ideal for someone who was pushing for a new deal with his team. Abt was bidding to be retained alongside Lucas di Grassi into Season 6, the only partnership intact from the first ever Formula E race in 2014, but his quotes at the time suggest an uneasy defensiveness at odds with the joyful man grinning into his vlogging camera before Free Practice 1 in Sanya.
In May, Abt told Sam Smith of E-Racing365 that he would consider driving for other teams if Audi did not retain him. A standard negotiating stance, perhaps, except that he added an element of doubt into proceedings. “I don’t think BMW or Mercedes-Benz will look at me and say, ‘oh, it’s amazing to have you with your last name,’ Abt told Smith. “I think it’s quite clear, it’s always been the case in my career. But there are some neutral teams that are not so much into this topic.” It was a chance to hear the other side of being a man with a famous motoring family name.
The interview was a sprinkling of introspection in what might have been expected to be another blandly bullish driver interview about the coming season. Abt seemed to hit something of an emotional low a month later as, having received, seemingly, no offers from rival teams, he told Rob Watts of E-Racing Magazine that if Audi did not offer him a new contract, he would retire from motorsport. Many of those who read this were shocked that a 26 year-old who seemed, on the outside, to be having great fun and living a kind of dream would so easily consider moving on from racing.
“I don’t want to do things that I’m not 100% convinced of. I’ve had five amazing years so far and I’ve loved it but I see how other motorsport is evolving, I go to a lot of other series and I watch races but I just don’t see the same atmosphere and spirit so it just does not really attract me,” Abt said of the possibility of a move to another racing category.
What we now know is that Audi offered Abt a new deal shortly after that interview. It did not seem to be on the cards beforehand. Nico Müller, the Swiss who is challenging Rene Rast for the DTM title this season, has plenty of supporters in Ingolstadt, and seemed at some stages last season to have his name on the drive. It’s not clear precisely when the pendulum swung back towards Abt, but Audi Team Principal Allan McNish and his colleagues have taken what they will view as a safe choice, putting the two drivers on the grid who know each other best of all together.
Abt has consistently been a favourite of Formula E fans for his lack of airs and graces, and his accessibility on conventional and social media, and yet his results blew hot and cold, at least compared to di Grassi, until the season just gone. This was Abt’s most consistent campaign, with him only finishing Rome and Monaco outside the points.
Audi decided to stick rather than twist with their driver line-up, but the mere fact that they took so long to announce a decision showed that either they were waiting, as per many of the other teams, to make a coordinated announcement, or there was deliberation within the team as to the best direction in which to go.
It’s Increasingly About Youth
Abt, in a sense, falls foul of the increasing emphasis within top-level motorsport upon youth. He is only 26, and sometimes seems far younger, but in a world where 19 year-olds can reach Formula One and appear the finished article right out of the box, and where Formula E has genuine superstars in even also-ran teams and cars, there’s less focus than there once was on keeping people in the sport just because they offer maturity and a safe pair of hands.
Team organisations (with some notable exceptions) have got better at sympathetically managing young drivers, and there’s a significant publicity boost that comes from taking on someone who is new and fresh. Abt is brilliant at building his profile with YouTube and Instagram, but whereas in 2014 that was a novelty, it’s increasingly becoming an expectation.
Abt’s two Formula E victories came in Season 4. The first, in Mexico City, was a superb strategic win, with the German, fourth into the first corner, taking the lead during the car-changes. He then followed this up with a barnstorming lights-to-flag victory in Berlin, in the kind of performance that comes when someone has found their favourite track. It was a Felipe-Massa-in-Turkey-level performance, and not something we have seen since from Abt.
That Abt can look so dominant in isolation in that Berlin race, but not shine as brightly on some other kinds of track, is one of the reasons for serious thought as to whether he is the man to take Audi forward. Di Grassi, the Season 3 champion, regularly a frontrunner, and in the title hunt right to the end last season, continues to be one of the best and most dependable tacticians in Formula E — he may not have the outright pace of Sebastien Buemi (at least not the Buemi who was behind the wheel of the twin-motor Nissan in qualifying sessions), but di Grassi’s racing brain is sharper than most, and this goes a long way to explaining why his position as Audi’s number one is not in dispute.
Lucas is 35, though, and even if he has another two to three seasons at the top, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that there may be a role for him in motorsport politics sooner rather than later. Audi need to begin preparing the long-term succession plan.
Is Abt the ideal driver to take over from di Grassi as number one? You’d have to say it was questionable, based on cumulative performances, but neither has he performed poorly — he’s been a qualified success, with some real high points, in his five years with the Abt/Audi teams.
There is always a risk in replacing drivers. Müller is clearly very quick, has tested the Audi-powered Gen2 car, and has great belief in his own abilities, but it could be that replacing Abt with him would have been replacing one good driver with another. Müller has, more than likely, a season coming up with GEOX Dragon Racing to learn about the slings and arrows of being a Formula E driver, during which he will have an opportunity to demonstrate his preparedness for a full campaign to his Audi paymasters while also running in DTM races.
How Can Abt Progress?
Abt will need a season of hitherto undemonstrated levels of consistent high performance in order to head off the suspicion that he is a placeholder for Müller, or possibly one of the Envision Virgin Racing drivers. This is not impossible; Jean-Eric Vergne did not always look like being a force in Formula E, and now he’s many people’s answer to the question of who the greatest is in the category.
Out of the four drivers using Audi powertrains, only Abt did not win a race in Season 5. Sam Bird is so associated with Virgin these days that it would be incongruous seeing him in Audi overalls (not that it should be ruled out), but Robin Frijns has speed, wins, a high profile, and an Audi DTM drive in his favour, and would be of interest to any team.
Daniel Abt is a talented racing driver, but he’s also an emotional, direct man, with a vast hinterland of other automotive and travel interests. He wants to show Audi they made the right decision by keeping him on for 2019–20, but more than that, he needs to find another level in the coming season. Formula E is getting tougher for teams and drivers.
Abt’s team-mate and friend, di Grassi, provides lessons on mental approach, stemming from being Formula E’s wizard of mind-games, but maybe there is also some inspiration to be gained from a racing-driver-turned-vlogger from another category — Nico Rosberg (no, really, wait, hear me out). The 2016 F1 World Champion admitted during Sky Sports’ Italian Grand Prix coverage that he had seen a mental coach for two hours a day in order to find the toughness required to beat Lewis Hamilton.
When Abt is on it, as in Berlin 2018, there are few better at extracting maximum pace from a car. Perhaps the majority of pace is found from poring over setup data, but in Abt’s case, perhaps there is a tenth or two to be found in the mind. It will be fascinating to see how he progresses in the coming races.
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