Kazuki Nakajima: 'It is not a glamorous life. I don't earn much'

The Brian Viner Interview: With even Formula One suffering in the global recession, the Williams driver is inspired not by being a playboy but by his father

(David Ashdown)

This time a year ago Kazuki Nakajima was preparing for his debut season as a Formula One driver. He had driven for Williams in the Brazilian Grand Prix at the end of the 2007 season, following Alexander Wurz's retirement, and acquitted himself well, finishing 10th and setting a quicker lap time than his team-mate Nico Rosberg. On the downside, he overshot his pit stop and bumped into a couple of his mechanics, who were taken to hospital for precautionary checks.

Then came the 2008 season, beginning with the Australian Grand Prix, in which, compounding the suggestion that he might just be the pits equivalent of Mr Bean, Nakajima bumped into the back of Robert Kubica's car, dumping Kubica out of the race. He, however, carried on to finish sixth. There is more, much more, to Nakajima's driving than accidental bumps and scrapes. Indeed, in Jerez 12 days ago he completed the fastest lap in the final week of testing before the 2009 season gets under way in Melbourne on Sunday, clocking a mightily impressive one minute 17.946 seconds. Lewis Hamilton, who is just four days older, was almost two seconds slower. Numbers are all about context.

We meet in the museum at the Williams compound in Oxfordshire, surrounded by old cars some of which might pre-date even his father's motor racing career. Coincidentally, Satoru Nakajima also made his Formula One debut in the Brazilian Grand Prix, with Lotus in 1987. The father-son coincidences do not end there, either. In 1989 Nakajima Snr was fourth in the Australian Grand Prix, and in 80 races he never had a better finish. Similarly, last year's Australian Grand Prix represents junior's best finish to date. Yet he has every intention of improving on the old man's record, and that would mean a place on the podium.

"But my first realistic aim in every race is to fight for points," he says. "If I achieve that then I have a good chance of stepping up to the podium. And with the regulation changes I feel very positive about this season. The cars are quite different, and we may have to change the way we drive. Also, I think I will have a better chance at the beginning of the season, when there tend to be more technical failures and drivers make more mistakes." Like bashing into Kubica? An obliging laugh. "Yes, I couldn't stop. But that cost me one, maybe two places. And [Fernando] Alonso and [Kimi] Raikkonen were behind me at the time, which was very satisfying."

He speaks English well, but with a heavy accent and an engaging habit of sprinkling his sentences with "how-to-say?" He tells me that England feels like a second home, and that he lived here when he was very little, "in Sussex, I think".

He remembers only one race in which his father drove and that was Satoru's last, the 1991 Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide. It is funny, I venture, how Australia looms large in both their careers. "Yes, yes. I was five years old and I remember it quite clearly. It was raining really hard, and my father had finished fourth there in similar conditions so he was expecting to do well. But he crashed the car early in the race and I remember how disappointed he was."

I have read that his father's driving style was compared, in Japan, to a foodstuff called natto, best described as fermented bean curd. This was a compliment, oddly enough, and Nakajima laughs when I mention it. "Natto is very sticky, and that's how my father drove. There were other drivers who were kamikaze, attacking all the time, but my father always wanted to get to the end of the race." So what kind of driver is he, natto or kamikaze? "In GP2 I was more kamikaze, but in F1 last year I was more natto. This year I want to be between the two." And does his father, insofar as it is possible to compare then and now, think that he has become the superior driver? "He has said so in interviews. But never to me directly."

Whatever, Nakajima is without doubt a better driver than he was a year ago. "Yes," he says, "because I have more capacity in my mind. Last year, I was able to check the data afterwards to work out how to be quicker, but this year I will have room to think while I am driving. I can feel that even sitting in the simulator."

He might be relatively new to Formula One, of course, but he is no stranger to speed. He started racing karts when he was 12, and at 16 decided that he wanted to follow in his father's tyre tracks, so he sought a scholarship sponsored by Toyota. Honda offered one, too, but Satoru had raced with Honda, and his advice to his son was to pursue the Toyota opportunity, lest people should catch a whiff of nepotism.

There was never much chance of that. Nakajima soon proved that he had nosed ahead of his Japanese contemporaries by talent alone. He raced in Formula Three in Japan, and in 2006 came to Europe to see whether he could cut it here. He could, and in a race in Bahrain went wheel to wheel with the emerging Lewis Hamilton. Then he stepped up to GP2, before, in 2007, being offered a job as a test driver with Williams.

"It is hard to find a testing seat so that was a really big chance for me," he says. Does he remember what he was feeling this time last season? "Yes, I was under massive pressure. Lots of tension, especially before qualifying. My heart was beating hard, I was really nervous. But my father gave me advice to concentrate just on myself. Sometimes that's hard in Formula One because there is a lot of PR work for drivers. But that's what I tried to do."

Like him, team-mate Nico Rosberg is the son of a former Formula One driver, but Nakajima is reluctant to attach much significance to the curiosity that both Williams drivers have motor racing antecedents. "It is the same with Nelson Piquet [Jnr] but I don't think it makes any difference on the track. You just race with your talent. Nothing else helps."

It would be indelicate to point it out, but Nelson Snr and Keke Rosberg both won world championships, whereas Satoru never even made it to the podium. What is Nakajima's ambition? Is it to become world champion? "It is too early to say that," he says. "I just want to take a solid step forward this year, because I am not a rookie any more."

It is a good answer from a disarmingly modest and charming young man who, at 24, has the world at his feet. But not, apparently, sex kittens and empty champagne bottles. "For me it is not such a glamorous life," he says, with just a hint of embarrassment. "I am really not earning very much money, and I live in a small flat in Oxford 25 minutes from the factory. I work in the factory the same as other people here, so maybe for some others there is glamour, but not for me."

I ask him whether he misses the Japanese lifestyle? Whether he misses natto, perhaps? He laughs. "There are not really very good Japanese restaurants in Oxford, but there are quite a few in London. But my father when he lived here could eat only Japanese food, which was difficult to find at that time. I am different. I am OK with European food, although I don't know much English food, to be honest."

Hasn't he heard of steak and kidney pie? "I think so. And fish and chips we eat every Friday in the factory."

But only single helpings, by the look of him? "Yes, I work hard at fitness, mainly on cardio stuff, running and swimming, but also we experience a lot of G-force so it is important to have core strengths. The neck is the most important thing. The body is held by the seat belt, but not the head, and with four or five G it is hard [to keep it still] for an hour and a half. So I sit on a chair with my trainer pushing my head, and I push back. Basic stuff."

One gets the impression after an hour with Nakajima that he uses his head in more ways than one, watching carefully the way other drivers operate, and trying always to boost his repertoire. Michael Schumacher, he says, was his hero growing up. But is there anyone on the circuit today whose driving makes him wonder whether he has the skill to compete on level terms?

"I was very impressed last year with Alonso," he says. "He's quick, very aggressive, yet very consistent at the same time. And I've heard he's very good at pointing out problems with the car."

Like the Spaniard, Nakajima is his country's only representative on the grid. I ask him whether he has made Formula One more popular back home. "Maybe. It is probably the third-biggest sport, behind baseball and football, and level with golf. It is hard for Japanese sportsmen to adapt to cultural differences elsewhere. In Britain I think there are only two footballers, with Celtic. But I like the differences, and I can be more relaxed here. In Japan you have to be very polite, to older people especially. There is even a different language to be polite in. And I am a polite person, but I can be friendlier here."

As if to prove it, Nakajima shakes my hand warmly, with a slight bow, and leaves the Williams museum almost certainly thinking far more about the immediate future than the distant past.