Mr. Wapojif

Celebrating the Return of F1 Ace Heinz-Harald Frentzen

Heinz-Harald Frentzen F1 return celebration

When we first got into F1 back in 1999, one driver that season immediately became a hero of ours. Driving for the underdog Irish team Jordan, it was Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

In that distinctive yellow car, with his yellow overalls, eye-catching crash helmet, and sporting some mighty sideburns, the guy was just effortlessly cool.

The laid-back, quirky German seemed an odd fit in F1. With his unusual sense of humour and irreverent attitude, how was he fitting into this ultra-competitive sport?

Well, he was bloody fast. But after he retired from F1 in 2003 (20 years ago almost at this point) he disappeared.

So his sudden return in mid-2023 on Twitter was like welcoming back an old friend into our lives. And he’s been as great fun as ever and very candid.

Welcome Back, Heinz-Harald Frentzen!

It’s Frentzen’s daughter Lea who encouraged her father to create a Twitter account and start posting. She wanted to go to a race weekend and this was the route she took to nudge him there.

Frentzen, who’s now 56, quickly gathered a big following and was then approached by F1 journalist Tom Clarkson with race tickets for Silverstone 2023. After that, the German driver also did a very, very rare interview on the Beyond the Grid podcast (see further below).

He’s basically been absent from F1 for 20 years, so it was great hearing from him again.

Post F1, he raced briefly in the German DTM series. But then he moved totally out of the racing limelight and he was running his father’s undertaker business (a job he’d held in his pre-F1 career, too).

This shows the type of guy he is—he’s just not particularly bothered about the whole attention seeking celeb stuff.

In fact, on Twitter he’s mainly posting stuff like this—memories of the 1990s and his time in Formula 1. This was 1995 at Silverstone when he was driving for Sauber (his peer Mika Hakkinen is dancing away in a red jacket).

He’s very funny, too, but was famous (even notorious) for that in his F1 years. During his driver interviews he’d always be ready with a bizarre quip of some sort that was totally out of character for normal F1 driver PR speak.

After his first win at Imola in 1997 he cryptically said:

“It’s like oil on my soul.”

We believe this has some sort of meaning, but it was one of those offhand comments that left a lot of viewers baffled. For us, it was just another reason to love the guy.

Anyway, it’s great he’s back around F1 again dispensing his insights and technical knowledge. Follow him on Twitter! Worship the ground he walks on! All hail.

Frentzen’s F1 Career: Highs, Lows, and Yellow

As we’d just got into F1 back in mid-1998, we weren’t aware of the situation that had unfolded thanks to Sir Frank Williams and his team.

In mid-1996, just as driver Damon Hill was set to win the title that year for Williams, the team owner decided to sack Hill ahead of 1997. This was based on Hill’s sporadic form in 1995 (see Hill’s book Watching the Wheels for details).

Williams was convinced Frentzen was the Michael Schumacher beater for his team.

This was based on a reputation Frentzen had for being faster than Schumacher, having put in some super quick times in a 1990 sportscar championship with Mercedes. F1 superstar Ayrton Senna had also praised Frentzen’s driving style in the latter’s first race at Brazil in 1994.

His first team was mid-field outfit Sauber.

After Senna’s death at Imola two races later, Frank Williams began a long campaign to get the German into his team. He immediately offered Frentzen a drive after the Imola weekend, but the German driver stayed loyal to Sauber until the end of 1996.

That period ramped up the hype. Williams had total conviction—Frentzen was going to blitz all before him. So when he finally joined in early 1997 ahead of the new season, the pressure was immense.

Ultimately, Frentzen only spent two seasons with Williams before being let go. He won one race for the team.

Now, there’s a brilliant discussion about why this partnership was always doomed to failure on one of our favourite podcasts. The Imola 1997 episode of Bring Back V10’s (the mystery of Frentzen’s Williams failure) from The Race has a fantastic open discussion about this point.

If you’re interested, the guys talk for 10 minutes from the 57 minute mark. It’s a really lovely discussion we think, summing up how Frentzen just wasn’t the right fit for Williams due to his personality and temperament.

To be fair to Frentzen and his 1997 campaign, the results don’t quite reflect the full story. It looks terrible on paper—he had the best car on the grid but was thrashed by his teammate Jacques Villeneueve.

He finished a distant third in the title race, whilst JV wrapped up the title (just… in very scrappy fashion). Meanwhile Frentzen got:

  • One win.
  • One pole position.
  • Six podiums.

Now, the major batch of podiums all came at the end of the season (five in a row). So, prior to the 11th race of 1997, he’d had two podiums and only scored 19 points.

Disastrous—Williams expected this guy to be dominating.

However, extreme bad luck with reliability cost Frentzen at least two to three other wins that year. On his debut with Williams brake failure robbed him of 2nd place.

He could have won in Argentina (race three), but the car broke down.

After his win at Imola 1997, there were hopes his confidence would shoot up and he promptly stuck it on pole at the next race at Monaco. That must have looked like the turning point.

But then Williams made a catastrophic strategy decision prior to the race, leaving both its drivers plunging down the field in wet conditions.

Meanwhile, Schumacher called the conditions perfectly on a strategy front and, in a far inferior car to the Williams, was almost 20 seconds ahead of 2nd placed Giancarlo Fisichella by the end of lap five.

Things didn’t kick on for Frentzen from there. He would have quite easily won at Hungary later in the season, but his fuel flap was left open after a pitstop and he was forced to retire.

Lots of points were lost due to technical issue, but the fact is he just was sporadic with his form and looked (at worst) like he was hopelessly out of his depth.

He was just too introverted and sensitive for the Williams environment.

And Sir Frank Williams and chief engineer Sir Patrick Head, being of a different era, didn’t have the whereabouts to try and extract the best from their driver with a supportive environment. It was sink or swim at Williams.

Frentzen was expected to be a staggering genius the moment he was in that ’97 Williams. He didn’t deliver and tied himself up in knots as the season wore on.

By 1998, Frentzen was actively avoiding Head each race weekend.

Now the bizarre thing then is that Eddie Jordan scooped up the damaged goods for his team, with both Williams rejects ending up driving alongside each other for 1999—Hill and Frentzen.

It’s the type of unbelievable situation we don’t think will ever happen again in F1, one born out of Sir Frank Williams’ impulsive enthusiasm for trying new drivers.

Damon Hill is always too much of a gentleman, so Frentzen’s arrival  didn’t bother him—the two got on well.

However, Hill’s desire had waned by then and he had a very poor season. He retired at the end of the year.

But Frentzen rejuvenated his career, winning two races, constantly on the podium, and making a surprise title bid. He said he went to Jordan with much more experience and knowledge, helping him to now get the most out of the car.

With three races to go at the Nurburgring ’99, he stuck the car on pole in difficult conditions and then led the first half of the race in very demanding conditions.

The agonising car failure he then suffered is permanently burned into our memory. Just gut-wrenching. We don’t think we’ll ever get over it. Right at the start of this video—the yellow car stopped at the side of the track. Agony!

He probably would have won that race and been tied with points at the top of the title hunt with two races left.

Sheesh. But it’s the classic underdog story and something to celebrate, as it helps put a different spin on Frentzen’s career.

At the time, Sir Frank Williams must have been baffled—why was this guy suddenly excelling, fighting for the title, in the fourth best car on the grid? Williams had gifted him easily the best car in 1997 and he was nowhere.

The fact is the importance of psychology and nurturing drivers.

That and, as you can hear below in the HHF podcast, how Frentzen needed proper guidance with the complex nature of the 1997 Williams. It was a much different beast to anything else he’d driven up to that point.

As brilliant a team as Williams was in the 1990s, its approach to drivers was expecting them to floor it, take any issues on the chin, and win everything.

Frentzen was dumped into the car, with a level of expectation and pressure placed on him we can’t even comprehend, and expected to be a Michael Schumacher destroying ultra-genius.

With the extra benefit of hindsight, no driver in the sport at that time (barring Mika Hakkinen at his peak) was anywhere near Schumacher’s level.

Once Frentzen left for Jordan, he found a better working environment.

Eddie Jordan’s team was much more relaxed and suited Frentzen down to the ground. With a great car, he went out and showed the world what he could do.

And that 1999 season is a shining beacon in his career—with the right set of circumstances, this guy could fight for titles.

Beyond the Grid: Frentzen’s Candid Interview

Here’s Frentzen’s podcast in full, click on the above to go through to the page. It’s an hour and a half but very interesting if you like this sort of thing.

He discusses his time at Williams and his issues with the 1997 car.

Plus, he reveals how he permanently ruined his chances of joining McLaren by telling a silly joke to director Ron Dennis. Frentzen says Dennis never spoke to him again after it.

He’s also just a top bloke to listen to. Laid back and insightful, with a naturally humble nature and casual leaning towards the absurd.

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