“I’m not a very structured, rigorous person.”
You won’t find many normal racing drivers self-analysing like that. But then again Dan Ticktum isn’t a normal racing driver.
On one level the CUPRA Kiro ace is actually pretty normal, in the sense that he’s quick. Not just ordinarily quick, but scorchingly so. He’s methodical too, especially when it comes to reading a race and juggling multiple strategic options. Ticktum is very sharp, and you’d be an idiot to underestimate that. But they’re still out there.
He doesn’t crash much either. London EPrix last year was about the only time he really bent it to the state of affecting his result. He’s also pretty clean. No sap, but he races hard and he races fair. So why that opening gambit?
It came when Formula E Notebook asked him about the absence of Gerry Convy from the team this season. Convy was drafted in last February in Jeddah to work with Ticktum. Ironically, that was the scene of one his celebrated and oft criticized rants, when he was forced to address an issue with the fast-charging to his Porsche.
Convy, an engaging but no-nonsense Scot, builds human machines, but he adapts his methods to his athletes. With 30 years of experience of working with high achieving people, Convy counts Dario Franchitti, David Coulthard, Juan Pablo Montoya and Formula E champions Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck de Vries as success racers he has worked on and with.
Enter Ticktum to his world last year. He’d have heard the rumours, weighed up the baggage, but Convy said as he found. He enjoyed his time with Ticktum and vice versa.
“I don’t like someone that comes to me with a formula and says, ‘this is how you need to be to be a racing driver,” Ticktum told FEN.
“I said that in series one of ‘Driver’ (Formula E’s documentary) and it wasn’t edited too well, it made me sound like I thought Schumacher and Senna were idiots, which I obviously didn’t.
“But certain drivers have their own way of working and I just like to be as relaxed as possible and just be happy and do things in the moment rather than have a lot of rigor and structure.
“Gerry understood that he didn’t try and impart a certain regime on me, he was very adaptive and for me it was more someone to talk to a lot of the time, to voice things and try and have some rational conversations, so that was very useful.
“Obviously on the other side of things, support physically as well is always useful. But above all that, he’s just a good bloke, a nice guy to work with and be around.”
Convy is believed to be working predominantly in the FIA WEC this season and wanted to reduce his travelling after committing to two World Championships in 2025.
The question is will it have any effect on Ticktum. The evidence so far is that Convy’s work benefitted well. The opening race at Sao Paulo was in layered in disappointment for Ticktum but there were meltdowns, not public anyway.
Another person Convy knew well and worked with at Mercedes EQ from 2019-22 was Gary Paffett, who is now of the CUPRA Kiro parish.
“I think Gary a good person to have in the team, and I think a lot of people can look up to someone like him,” said Ticktum.
“I think it’s good to have a leader that is respected in the sport and I think that’s great for the team.”
Ticktum’s ‘Driver’ Verdict
Formula E’s documentary ‘Driver’ which airs on Amazon Prime has been widely praised for its authenticity and multi-layered storytelling. But Ticktum, as ever, has his own thoughts.
“I think it’s better than the first season,” he opined.
“Obviously, when Drive Survive came out, (Max) Verstappen was like, ‘fuck all of you, I’m not being edited like that, go away.’
“I felt a bit like that after the first season, and I think I was definitely the ‘villain’, and I don’t think it was entirely balanced.
“Obviously I am quite a fiery character, I get that, I thought season two was a lot better because it actually showed the drivers’ passion from not just me, there was all the drivers shouting and swearing, and I think it just shows that I’m the same as anyone else really, it’s just my name doesn’t help sometimes, and people focus on the negatives a lot.
But at the beginning of last year, I wasn’t particularly happy, just trying to act the whole time, I’m just going to be me, if it works it works, if it doesn’t it doesn’t, and I think luckily it was the foremost, it seems to have worked out quite well.
By design or not Ticktum has kind of built a brand of his own, and one that he himself says he can “get away with a lot, so it’s fun, a lot of fun, the championship support it, the team support it, I think obviously if I had to go to another team that’s a bit more corporate and they wanted me to tone it down, fine, I can do that, I’m not stupid.
“But I think to be honest I’d be good for any team, in terms of if I had to represent Porsche or Nissan, I love cars, I think I’d be very good at reviewing their cars and representing their brand and all the rest of it, I think I can be exciting.”
Few doubt that.
