James
Newbold explains why nobody should be overly surprised by the 24-year-old's Putrajaya
heroics and tips the Portuguese as a dark horse for the 2015 DTM.
When Antonio Felix da Costa qualified fourth for the Putrajaya e-Prix,
it’s fair to say that a few eyebrows were raised. Choosing to run with last
year’s powertrains – following the logic that their resources would be better
spent optimising a setup with which they were already familiar, rather than
risk going down a blind alley, ala Trulli, without manufacturer investment – Team
Aguri were not expected to feature at the front in Season Two, even with the
proven talents of BMW-contracted Felix da Costa, a winner in Buenos Aires last year,
on their driving roster.
“The only advantage I see to having a year old car is that we know
exactly what we have and we carry on our learning curve,” admits Felix da Costa, “but
it’s costing us time in terms of pure power and regeneration, some of the new
teams are clearly more efficient than us in both aspects.”
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| Felix da Costa impressed many with his performance in Putrajaya (Dan Bathie). |
But if the Portuguese was at a disadvantage to his
contemporaries in the Malaysian heat, he was determined not to let it show. Felix da Costa ran a strong third in the
early stages before losing a spot to Nicolas Prost’s Renault, but soon found
himself in a net second after leader Sebastien Buemi ground to a halt and Dragon’s
Loic Duval suffered a tardy pitstop.
Prost had been forced to pit early due to an overheating battery on his
first car and now led, but was running at a dramatically-reduced pace to compensate
for his longer second stint and soon found himself under attack from Lucas di
Grassi. It wasn’t long before Felix da Costa followed the Brazilian through, but before
he could mount an attack on the lead in the final few laps, he was struck down
by car problems of his own, twice having to stop on track and perform a system
reset.
Such was the extent of everybody else’s problems that Felix da Costa still
recovered to finish sixth, passing Daniel Abt on the final lap, but
afterwards there was a palpable sense of what might have been after a storming
drive that couldn’t help but cause people to sit up and take notice.
“It was a big surprise even for me!” he says. “We put the car into SuperPole, which was already a massive accomplishment having an year old car, and
then in the race with less than 6 laps to go we were second with enough energy
to keep up with the leader until we had a software issue, but these things can
happen in this championship.”
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| Carlos Sainz Jr., Felix da Costa and Kvyat pictured during testing at Silverstone in 2013. Only one would miss out on an F1 seat (XPB Images). |
That pragmatic attitude has served him well throughout a career littered
with near misses; after all, had Mark Webber taken up Ferrari’s offer for the
2013 season, Felix da Costa would have been the most logical choice to fill in for
Daniel Ricciardo at Toro Rosso, having ended the 2012 season in the form of his
life and impressed Red Bull when given the chance to test in Abu Dhabi.
After replacing Lewis Williamson in the Red Bull Junior Team, Felix da Costa
was parachuted mid-season onto a Formula Renault 3.5 grid that featured Robin
Frijns, Jules Bianchi, Sam Bird and Alexander Rossi and set
tongues wagging with four wins in the last five races for the new
Arden-Caterham team. He would finish just 23 points adrift of eventual champion
Frijns, adding victory in the prestigious Macau Grand Prix and third in the GP3
standings for good measure, but with no space in Formula One, he was tasked by
Helmut Marko with winning the 3.5 championship the following year.
2013 was by no means a poor
year, but after setting the bar so high – to give an idea, Felix da Costa was listed
at no. 8 in AUTOSPORT’s top 50, ahead of the likes of Webber, Le Mans winner
and WEC champion Andre Lotterer, IndyCar champion Ryan Hunter-Reay and DTM
champion Bruno Spengler – third in points behind Magnussen and rookie Stoffel
Vandoorne certainly wasn’t in the script.
A number of niggling little problems and small
mistakes caused doubts to creep into Marko’s mind, but it was still a shock
when Felix da Costa’s was overlooked for promotion to Toro Rosso in favour of the vastly
less experienced Daniil Kvyat. Incidentally, the Russian would again benefit
from being in the right place at the right time the following year, when Sebastian
Vettel’s move to Ferrari left a Kvyat-sized vacancy at Red Bull.
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| Magnussen and Vandoorne provided stiff competition for Felix da Costa in 2013 (Autosport.be) |
Though obviously disappointed, Felix da
Costa took the decision with good grace and was placed in the DTM with BMW,
where he set about learning the ropes of a very different form of racing. Driving
alongside F1 refugee Timo Glock at Ernest Knoors’ Team MTEK, Felix da Costa would
score points on just two occasions, but a move to Charly Lamm’s Team Schnitzer
for 2015 brought better fortunes. Felix da Costa was the only man to finish every
race, and won his first race at Zandvoort on course for 11th in
points, ahead of fellow sophomores Daniel Juncadella (Mercedes), Nico Muller (Audi) and his more experienced BMW colleagues Augusto Farfus and Martin
Tomczyk, the 2011 DTM champion.
“[Zandvoort] was probably the win on my career that cost me the most to
get,” Felix da Costa recalls. “I knew I had the speed since the beginning, but it’s
very difficult to put it all together in DTM. It’s a very special championship,
there aren’t any slow drivers in that field. What counts the most there is
experience, the guys who have been there for 15 years have a massive advantage,
but the rookies come in with a lot of hunger to do well and in the end that mix
is super special.
“Moving to Team Schnitzer at the beginning of this year made me very proud.
It’s certainly another tick in my book to race for a team with such history,
and to work with a guy like Charly Lamm, who needs no introduction to the touring
car world – he probably signs more autograph cards than I do!”
Felix Da Costa's upward trajectory mirrors the
trend of the last two champions Pascal Werhlein and Marco Wittmann before him; each
of whom spent a year learning (in Wittmann’s case carrying out the test and
development work on BMW’s new M4) before scoring their first wins the following
year and adding the necessary consistency to fight for championships the year
after that.
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| Felix da Costa has high expectations of his own performances (Dan Bathie). |
Few would ultimately be surprised
if Felix da Costa – described by one PR as
the most professional driver they had ever worked with – makes that next
step up in 2016, and as you might expect, the Portuguese expects no less from
himself.
“Absolutely, I can’t hide that or be afraid to say it, I’m a very ambitious person and
as an athlete I want to be among the best that compete alongside me. I hate
to be just a number in the field,” he says. “I wake up every day with a lot of
motivation to do better every time I sit in the car, and sometimes I overdo it,
but everybody makes mistakes and the most important thing is that you learn
from them. I believe my time is coming.”
It could be coming sooner than he thinks. His time is now.
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