Servia's New Post

Recognising when the time has come to hang up one’s helmet is a dilemma which every driver must face at some stage in their career, and one which is notoriously difficult to get right. 1996 World Champion Damon Hill infamously overstepped the mark, often retiring healthy machinery in his final season with Jordan in 1999, while Michael Schumacher was arguably pushed into quitting too soon, only to perform an ill-fated U-turn in 2010 after the sport had fundamentally changed.  

IndyCar veteran Oriol Servià admits that retirement is something he too has considered in recent times, but despite stepping out of his ride with Dragon Racing in Formula E, is still some way off. These days, the 41-year-old can be found in the Formula E paddock still in Dragon team-wear, but now with the very official-sounding title of Managing Director, a switch made at the behest of team owner Jay Penske himself.

Servia (right) with Loic Duval at the Battersea e-Prix (Own photo).

“Funnily enough, it’s not that much different because throughout my career, I’ve always loved dealing with the engineers,” says the Spaniard inside the Battersea Park E-Motion Club in June. “I studied mechanical engineering for seven years and although I never worked as one, I’ve always liked it and always saw an advantage by being able to communicate well with them. Now, my job description is basically to make sure the team is working in the way I would like them to work.

“I’m not saying my driving is done; I always said I would stop driving the day that either my team-mate was beating me regularly – even if it was just two tenths every weekend – or I just got tired of everything around driving, the off-seasons never having a ride and still pushing for it year after year. But that day hasn’t arrived yet and I still do a good job at the wheel, so I haven’t given up.”

Having been a part of numerous teams during his lengthy IndyCar career, from frontrunners Newman/Haas, with whom he took his only victory at Montreal in 2005, to Forsythe Racing, KV Racing, Rahal-Letterman, Dreyer & Reinbold and minnows Dale Coyne, Servià certainly knows the constituent parts of a successful race team, which gave him a useful headstart in his new role.

“All my career I was never able to do two consecutive years in the same team, which I hated because as with anything else, not just racing, any sport, any company, continuity is key to success. I always felt like I did a good job, but it was because of lack of sponsorship or the team would close down, or whatever, I was never able to repeat. That gave me the opportunity to jump around a lot, be in extremely good teams and not good teams.

"It’s not like you take notes, but you suffer through the good and the bad times and just end up learning by experience what works and what doesn’t. It’s not only about how much money you can spend on a team – obviously that makes a big difference – but it’s about how the team works, how the engineers work, how you analyse and go after knowledge. Although I was unlucky in my career because I would have achieved more success by staying in one place, it was probably a good thing for whatever comes next in my life that I got to sample so many organisations.”

Servia won his only Champ Car race at Montreal in 2005 (Eric Gilbert).

To date, Servià is part of an exclusive club of drivers to score points in every e-Prix he started, but unlike Justin Wilson (Moscow) and Oliver Turvey (Battersea), did so across multiple events. Servià describes the move upstairs after Buenos Aires as an “organic” change and whilst he admits it certainly wasn’t easy, concedes that it has helped the team move forward. With former Le Mans winner Loic Duval stepping in to partner Jerome d’Ambrosio, Dragon became the first and so far only team to get both cars onto the podium in Berlin – which d’Ambrosio won following Lucas di Grassi’s disqualification – and again in London, en-route to second in the team standings.

“It was tough to step out after I had just been on pole in the second race in Putrajaya, because it wasn’t like I was at the back of the grid and being uncompetitive. We knew the performance of the car was there, but at the third and fourth races both Jerome and I couldn’t put it together and as a team we kept making silly mistakes. It was nothing major, but it all adds up and meant we kept effectively eliminating ourselves when we had fast cars,” says Servià.

“Afterwards Jay said to me ‘listen, we need to step it up here, I want you to take control and manage the team a little better’, which was something that I was already doing a little bit, but you can’t devote all your time to it when you’re driving. It’s very interesting, I’m liking it so far.

“I see it as something that can open a new career for me – as a driver you always wonder what you are going to do next and you have to figure out something new. At least this is 100% related to what I’ve been doing for the last 25 years, it enables me to apply exactly what I’ve learned as a driver and on the commercial side as well, only now I’m not just selling myself, I’m selling the team.”

Servia was promoted to pole in Putrajaya after a penalty for Nico Prost (Formula E).

A personal friend of Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag, Servià has been a fully-paid up fan of Formula E since its inception, and played an important behind-the-scenes role in pitching the project to Penske.  He takes up the story:

“When I knew about the championship being formed, I offered myself to help get in touch with US teams and US drivers and as I was explaining what it was about I found myself becoming really excited about it, almost like it was my thing!” Servià laughs. “I saw the future in the concept, in trying to connect new generations with new technology and racing downtown. In IndyCar we always did a lot of street races and it was always a success because you’re basically bringing the race to the people. And with these types of cars being electric vehicles you have fewer impediments and more cities that want to support it because they want to jump on the green bandwagon, so I saw it as a win-win.

“I also like the fact that the championship decided to go with a set number of teams. They were only going to have ten franchises, so if you have new manufacturers who see the value in the championship and want to jump in, they cannot just start their own team; they have to buy into the existing franchises, which means for once there is value in owning a team. In IndyCar or NASCAR, the value is only the sponsor you have for that year, the next year it can all change.”

And the rest, as they say, was history.

“Jay Penske loved it, saw the concept as I did, so we decided to partner up to try and acquire a franchise,” Servià continues. “At that time there were a lot of interested parties, so we didn’t know if we were going to get one, but luckily we did. Originally I wasn’t going to drive because I was still pursuing a full-season ride in IndyCar, but that wasn’t happening so we went along to the first test to see what the car was all about and I liked it. It’s really fun to drive, it has a lot of rear weight distribution with the battery, it doesn’t have a lot of grip with the grooved tyres and the brakes are challenging to say the least! I was always as fast, or faster than whoever was driving the other car, so we decided to keep going and at the second race I was on pole!”

Servia qualified on the outside of the front row at Indy in 2011 (Eric Gilbert).

What does the future hold for Oriol Servià the racer? At mention of the Indianapolis 500, the fire still burns bright in his eyes. Eliminated this year by a mistimed move by Ed Carpenter into Turn One, Servià, is determined to be back on the grid for next year’s 100^th Anniversary race and better his fourth place finish from 2012.

“In terms of pure pleasure, the Indy 500 compares to nothing else,” he says. “The speeds you go to, the fact that you are there for three weeks working on every little detail, and it all comes down to whether you can deliver or not on a one day event over 500 miles with seven or eight pitstops, where there a lot of decisions and a lot of things that have to go right is always very special.

“I always felt that Indy was a race which is designed for the way I race, because I usually take a bit of time to warm up and take more risks at the end, and that’s the perfect race for that. I’ve been working on it for so long, just to become better at it, so I will pursue it like nothing else. It’s still on the bucket list, that’s for sure!”