Earlier this month, I had the chance to chat with former Canadian racing driver, Allen Berg. Berg has raced in a variety of disciplines, including Formula 3, Formula 2, Formula 1, DTM and more. He currently owns a group of racing schools, located in the Southwestern United States. It was an honour for my first interview to be with a fellow Canadian. Check it out.
What made you want to become a racing driver?
“I would watch it on television. When I was like four or five, I would watch Wide World of Sports on TV and saw the Formula One cars running in Europe. It just became a dream of mine. Since that age, I’ve always aspired to be a racing driver. As I got into karting and was able to do well and work my way up the racing ladder, it became more and more of a possibility that I could make this dream a reality.”
What was your backup plan, in the event that a career in racing didn’t work out?
“I didn’t have a backup plan. I basically went into racing with the idea that I was going to race in Formula One and had set my goal at that. If it had failed, then I would have gotten into something else. I didn’t really have any long term career backup plan if racing didn’t work, which probably wasn’t very smart. I was very lucky. I did make it in the end. I know that to make it in any challenging endeavor, it requires an awful lot of commitment to be able to be successful. In retrospect, I probably should have got a proper degree in university, but I didn’t go down that road. If I had, I probably would have never made it into Formula One.”
Were your family and friends supportive of your racing career?
“Yes, my family was very much supportive. My father was my biggest fan. They were excited about it, but they were concerned that it was such a tumultuous profession. You rarely have a good Christmas, unless you have your contract for the next year in place already: which only happened a couple of times during my career. It’s a tough, lonely and challenging career. In the end, my family accepted that this was what I wanted to do for a living. I accepted and understood the risks involved and I guess they did too.”
You started your racing career in an era where motorsport was nowhere near as safe as it is today. In fact, roughly a month prior to your first Formula One race, we lost Elio de Angelis in an accident during testing. Were you ever worried about what could have happened to you behind that wheel of a race car?
“Certainly there are risks. The faster the car is: the more risk that there is involved. The car that I was driving had a chassis that was three or four years old, as were the engines. The Osella team was known to have mechanical failures and I was fortunate that I didn’t have that sort of thing happen to me. There were a few drivers injured and killed during the time that I was involved in the sport. It got a lot safer because of that. It’s just one of those things. If you’re a boxer, you don’t climb into the ring worried that you’re going to get hit. As a racing driver, you’re out there and if you worry about those kinds of things while you’re in the car, you’re not going to perform well. In terms of when you’re out of the car, you do everything in your power to ensure that you’re as prepared as possible; whether it’s fitness or ensuring that the equipment that you’ve got is the best prepared that it can possibly be. But there are also things that are just outside of your control. If you worry about that, you’re never going to be fast. I can only remember one time that I had an accident and I thought ‘this is going to hurt’. Other than that, you’re driving the car as fast as you can, whenever you need to, to do the job that you need to do.”
You had the opportunity to race with some people that went on to be quite successful, in particular Ayrton Senna and Martin Brundle in the British Formula 3 series during 1983. There were times that you finished on the podium with them. What was it like to race against Senna and Brundle?
“At that time, they were competitors. In time and retrospect, you can look back and see the different drivers that I’ve raced against over my career and the level of competitiveness that we had. At that point in time, finishing on the podium was still third or second place. The only time that it’s really very rewarding, to me, is when you win.”
Was there ever a point, after seeing how successful the drivers that you’ve raced against went on to be, that you looked back and said ‘Wow, I was on the podium with some of these guys’?
“Absolutely. I look back at some of the drivers that I’ve raced against and it makes me proud that I was running in the pack with those guys. For me, I never really looked back in my career, as I feel that in life you are only as good as your last race. I continue to work forward with my various business projects and endeavors. What happened in the past is history, looking back on it and being melancholy is still not something that I do very often. I look forward to things that are coming up. The fact that I now have a son is something that makes me look back a little bit more, in terms of the successful career that I had as a racing driver. I know that he admires that. With him now looking back and asking me questions about being a racing driver and racing in Formula One, it gives me a little bit more appreciation for it. Still, for me, it’s looking forward that I always think about.”
You have an 8-year-old son. Is he interested in a racing career?
“If you ask him what he’s going to do when he grows up, he tells you he’s going to be a Formula One driver. It’s worrying that he wants to go down the same road I did. I think that when I went down that road it was different times, with more opportunities for younger drivers to be able to make the steps. I was certainly very fortunate along the way, but I think it’s now a lot more difficult for young drivers. Actually we’re going karting this year, for the first time and he’s very excited about that and I am too. We’re doing it for fun. If he wants to become a racing driver, he’s going to have to find his own way like I did, but certainly he is going to get a proper education first. That’s something that I think is very important for every young person to be properly educated and have a good fallback position. More than ever now, racing is not just about the talent. I know a lot of young frustrated racing drivers that are out there and deserve the opportunities, but can’t get the breaks because they don’t have the requisite sponsorship behind them.”
How difficult was it for you to find a position on a team in Formula One?
“The opportunities did come to me. When I finish in 1984 and I had finished second in the British Formula Three series, I received my super license. I had different managers and mentors behind me that helped make introductions. There were teams – Arrows, Williams, March – that were interested in my running with them in 1985, contingent on sponsorship that would have to come from Canada. That just simply was not possible to put together, as, particularly in Western Canada, there was not really a Formula One following out here. People didn’t really understand the commercial value of being involved with sponsoring a Formula One team. When I did make the step into Formula One in 1986, it was with the Osella team that needed a driver. I was at the right place, at the right time and certainly my manager had opened some doors for me. A friend of mine was actually driving on the team. Christian Danner was making the move to Arrows to replace Marc Surer, who was injured. I went to the Canadian Grand Prix, that’s when the replacement was taking place and I was one driver that was on the scene looking for the ride. So they decided to sign me.”
What was it like at your first Formula One race?
“It was a feeling that I had envisioned throughout my career. When I got there, I knew some of the drivers already and it felt very natural to climb into the car. The cars were very fast and it took some time for me to become accustomed to driving the car. I went from driving Formula 3 cars that were a little less than 200hp, to a 900hp Formula One car. There’s an adaption period, but after the first few sessions in the car I was running at the same pace as my teammate and the other drivers around me. It was something that I felt very comfortable with. However, the team was certainly burdened by a lack of budget and they really struggled to find sponsorships, as I guess all teams at the mid to back of the pack do. Osella was no different. There wasn’t much margin for error and they certainly made me aware of that. There just simply was not a spare inventory, so if I was to have a lot of accidents… nor did they have the parts inventory for gearboxes and engines. We were somewhat restricted by that and had to restrict the number of laps that we did in practice.”
Because the Osella team was so low on money, the car wasn’t the best and it was the cause of multiple race retirements. What do you think that you would have been able to achieve with a better car?
“I had, at the end of that season, about half a dozen offers to run in Formula One the following year and I had the backers behind me at that stage. A Canadian company, Labatt, was negotiating with these teams on my behalf. So, certainly the opportunities were there and you don’t get offers in Formula One, unless you’re good. I had six of them. Back then, it wasn’t such big news in Canada because people didn’t understand or follow Formula One and didn’t really know what that was all about. In 1987, the Canadian Grand Prix was cancelled and as a result, the backers that we had garnered, for the ’87 program, went away and I ended up not racing in Formula One anymore. The opportunities were there and the drivers that I raced against earlier in my career went on and some of them had long, successful careers in Formula One. If they had that level of success in Formula One, I certainly could have as well.”
You’ve mentioned that there really wasn’t enough interest in Canada and the United States. Do you think that has improved?
“I think that there’s certainly a better understanding of it. Before it was a small, but very passionate culture. I think that now, it’s a lot more mainstream. There’s better television coverage and a better understanding of what it’s all about. I think that Formula One is more widely known in Canada and the United States than what it was in my era.”
How well did you get along with your teammate on the Osella team, Piercarlo Ghinzani?
“Really well. He’s a great guy. He’s a great racing driver with a great personality. He’s the ultimate Italian Formula One driver. He has class, style and good taste. I think he was a very underrated driver and he really never had the breaks go his way throughout his career. He wasn’t ever able to get into the right team at the right time.”
Do you still talk with people from your racing career?
“I keep in touch with them. I wouldn’t say on a regular basis. Everyone’s busy, doing their own businesses and involved with their own projects. There are times when our paths will cross at different social events and we’ll talk a little bit.”
Which Formula One team would you have most liked to drive for?
“I think everyone says Ferrari and I would say that would probably be the ultimate team to drive for. I also very much liked the Lotus team. That was a team that I followed when it had JPS sponsorship and I always thought that the Lotus cars were pretty cool. Lotus, Ferrari, Brabham and being able to drive for Bernie Ecclestone would have been cool.”
How different was it to make the move from open wheel racing to “tin top” cars?
“When I made the transition, I kind of looked down a little bit on the touring car drivers and thought that they were drivers that just weren’t able to make a career in formula car racing. I realized after I got into the German Touring Car championship, that it was really the technology of Formula One, but with fenders. The drivers were specialists in these cars and very good. They had a very high level of driving talent. Of course when you have the major German manufacturers involved with the series, it was a very competitive series. It took a while to learn the tracks and learn the nuances of driving a touring car from a formula car. It’s a different driving discipline altogether and has its challenges.”
At a couple of points throughout your career, you spent time racing in Mexico. Why did you choose to race in Mexico, rather than trying to get a seat in something like IndyCar, which was more local?
“I never really looked at the rest North America as an area that I seriously pursued. It seemed to always come down to sponsorship. I was getting paid to race and was driving for some major sponsors and teams: companies like Marlboro and Coca-Cola. I would go to the occasional IndyCar race or Group C race, but it always came down to the fact that those teams are always seeking drivers with sponsorship to be able to make the step. Why would I go and look to find sponsorship to race when I was making a nice living driving race cars for very powerful teams in Mexico. In that era, racing in Mexico was very strong and all of the races were televised live. They had about twenty different tracks down there and had manufacturer involvement in different championships. The level of driving was very high in Mexico and a lot of the drivers that I was racing against went on to race at a lot of different levels, in IndyCar mainly. Most of the backing in my racing career came from outside of Canada, as I never really had a huge amount of backing from here. Mexico is one country where they really get behind their racing drivers. I think you would be hard pressed to find another country that has as many drivers that are racing in international racing series and are supported by companies from their own country, as there are in Mexico.”
At what point did you decide to pack up your driving career and move onto different roles in racing?
“When I was 40, I was approached by a group of drivers that wanted me to operate a race team for them in the Panamerican IndyLights Series. They approached me about putting together a team and I started a four-car race team and coached these other drivers. As part of the program, I fielded a car for myself and did really well. When you control your own destiny, operating your own team, you’re able to do things correctly. It wasn’t like we had an enormous budget to work with, but it was a proper budget. Because I was in control of how to do things correctly, I made the decisions of how to operate the racing team. It was the best year of racing that I had in my whole career, in terms of results. I won an awful lot of races and finished on the podium whenever I didn’t win. I won both the team and drivers’ championship. I was 40, the drivers wanted to move on to racing in Formula Atlantic. I decided that there were other things in life besides driving race cars: I wanted to start a family. If you continue to driver race cars, you have to be fully committed and take the risks. When you start having a family that depends on you, it starts to play on drivers’ minds, so they aren’t able to give 100%. I decided that it was time to start a family; I met of the love of my life. I had the opportunity of being involved with the business of racing versus just the racing driver. I decided that after that season, which was the best season I ever had, I thought it was time to hang up my helmet and look into doing other things.”
Was it a tough decision to retire from driving?
“Not really. I’d been racing since I was fifteen and most of those years I made my living by driving race cars. I got to the point where I realized that I really enjoyed the other element of driving, which was behind the pit wall. When I won the championship, things went my way that season, I had the best season of my life. I was able to win my last ever race. I just really decided that was the time to hang it up. From time to time, I look back and I see other drivers that I was racing against at the time, that are still successful as racing drivers. I think about the possibility of continuing on, but I’m quite happy with what I’m doing now. I don’t miss the travel element of racing. I don’t miss it being such a tumultuous career and it being season to season with the driving. It was a very unstable career. I don’t miss that at all.”
What was your favourite memory from your driving career?
“It’s hard to pin down just one. I have a lot of different memories. Finishing eleventh at Le Mans; starting in the Formula One season at Detroit; finishing twelfth at Hockenhim. There are a lot of different things and I think it’s very hard to pin just one particular event down. Certainly winning the team and drivers’ championship with my own team in my first season of operating a racing team. Winning my last race. I can’t really choose just one favourite. Every time you win a championship, that sticks out in your mind as well. But the older you get, the broader you look at things and the more things that you see outside of racing become more important than just driving the race car. So some of those memories start to fade and others take their place, in terms of things that are important to you and the good memories that you have of other things besides driving a race car.”
Was there anything in your career that you didn’t get to do, but would have liked to?
“I think that every driver has that. I think that every driver, except for maybe a fellow like Michael Schumacher, is hungry for more success and more opportunity. I would say, most drivers internally harbor that desire to be the Formula One World Champion or Grand Prix winner, driving with the top team in Formula One or winning the Indy500 and the LeMans 24 Hours. Every driver is like that; I’m no different. Of course there are plenty of other things that you wish to accomplish in racing, but sometimes the opportunities just don’t come your way. I’m very satisfied. I hold the distinction that I have been one of the very few Canadians to have raced in Formula One.”
You’ve been involved in many different aspects and roles in motorsport. Which one has been your favourite?
“Driving was great. When I was in that stage of driving, everything revolved around me. Certainly it took a lot of work and effort, but it was different. I did enjoy running my own racing team. In everything there’s highs and lows and the racing industry is no different. In terms of being a driver, you have the highs winning races and the lows of not winning. The same thing goes with running a race team. I find running the racing school very satisfying, particularly now that we are branching out into operating a Formula One driving experience. To me that’s very exciting and I am really enjoying what I’m doing. I’m also very excited about going karting with my son this year. Not that I have huge aspirations of him becoming a professional racing driver, but just going out there and spending some time with him. Teaching him a little bit about what I know and hopefully having him enjoy himself.”
What made you decide to open the Allen Berg Racing School?
“The team that I was operating at the time had folded because the series that we were working in had contracted and the economy was tougher. We couldn’t attract the sponsors that we needed in order to run the team, so we needed to fold it. I came back to Canada for some family reasons and realized while I was here, that I was still consulting in racing and travelling around to different racing events. I got very tired of the travelling. There was a track in Calgary that was operating without any type of a racing school, so I decided that would be something that I would try. The idea with being involved with helping other racing drivers, by doing what I do best, all while being able to stay home at night and start a family, was very appealing to me. That’s the reason that I started it. The ironic situation is that the school is operating in the Southwestern United States at five different race tracks and I spend about half my time travelling again, which is something that I wanted to get away from. In the next year or two, my family will follow me down and we will be based somewhere in the Southwestern United States.”
You’ve mentioned a few times that you don’t like the travelling involved with having a career in motorsport. What is the hardest part about travelling?
“Now that I have a family, being away from my wife and son is certainly tough. Even before I had my son, I’d climb on an aircraft and I’d look at the calendar and my watch and think ‘Well, three days to be away and then I’m back home again’. You realize that you’re in the wrong profession if you start looking at it in that way and that’s when I realized that I needed to have a home base to stay at. Being away from your family is the toughest.”
Do you still follow Formula One?
“Yes, Formula One is really the only form of racing that I do follow.”
Who is your favourite current Formula One driver?
“I always like to see the underdog do well. In Formula One there are always dominant teams, like right now there is a single dominant team: Mercedes. I like to root for the guys that have a chance to break that domination. I like the guys on Ferrari right now; I think Vettel is proving himself once again because he started to have a lot of people that doubted his abilities when he wasn’t doing so well and Ricciardo was showing him up when he was at Red Bull last year. The car didn’t suit him, but he certainly didn’t forget how to drive from one year to the next. The fact that he’s running with Ferrari and there’s a bit of resurgence there, I’d like to see him do well. I root for those guys that have to work a little bit harder to get the results. Right now, I’m a Vettel fan and I’d certainly like to see Rosberg do a little bit better. There are a lot of good young drivers in F1 right now.”
The Mercedes team has been dominant in 2014 and it looks as though they are on the road to getting a second World Constructors’ Championship title. What do you think about the team’s performance in the recent seasons?
“They’re doing everything right. They have a major manufacturer behind them. They have the budget to do it. They have two of the best drivers in the field. I think that Lewis Hamilton is really on form right now and his teammate, Nico Rosberg, is having a hard time keeping up with him. The new regulations sort of favoured their engine and that’s a big help for them. It seems that the others are now starting to catch up a little bit. Still, I think we’re going to see that Mercedes is going to take it again this year. We’ll see what happens in 2016.”
Domination has been the story of Formula One throughout its history. We had McLaren-Honda with Ayrton Senna; Ferrari with Michael Schumacher; Red Bull with Sebastian Vettel; and now we have Mercedes with Lewis Hamilton. What affects does this domination have on the sport?
“It has always been there, but it’s better when there are more teams that are competitive. I’m not a big fan of the new engine regulations. It’s supposed to be the World Drivers’ Championship, but it’s just falling more and more into the hands of the teams, manufacturers, designers and engineers. I think that we’re seeing that the team with the biggest budget and the right engine is dominating. I don’t think that’s necessarily good. Gone are the days when you had the privateer teams with everybody running engines that were all very similar in performance and horsepower. In my personal opinion, when you have major manufacturers behind these teams, it starts to cause the privateer teams at the back to suffer. That’s what you’re seeing: Smaller grids because the budgets have gone so high. The top teams set the bar. If you don’t have that kind of budget, you’re simply not going to be competitive. The teams in the back struggle so much. You see a team like Marussia, where the cars are blank without sponsorship, and even McLaren, with the empty side pods. That’s not good for the sport. The sport is becoming so expensive because the top teams have so much backing from the manufacturers. I don’t think that’s healthy for the sport in the long term. This also takes away from the drivers. Since it is the World Drivers’ Championship, it should be the best performing driver throughout the year that wins the championship. Not to take anything away from the champions in previous seasons, but you can put anybody on the field into a Mercedes and you know that they’re going to be finishing in the top too. All these new gadgets that they put into racing, I think is public relations. I don’t know how much of this technology is actually going to flow back into use in road cars. Like the KERS system and the hybrid system that they’re using. Not very many teams even use the terminology and I don’t know why they don’t use it because that’s exactly what it is. All of this technology has already been developed and is already on road cars. I don’t see how Formula One is going to put more of that in and develop the technology into road cars. For me, it was a public relations gig to try and make Formula One appear a little bit more current with what is going on with road car technology. This technology is unnecessary in Formula One and is driving the expenses up.”
Have you attended any Grand Prix events since you retired?
“I’ve been to a few, but I haven’t been to one recently because I’ve got no business reason to go to an F1 race. I’ll get back to one someday, but my current activities keep me quite busy. I’m not a great spectator. Unless there’s a business reason to be at a race event, I’m not there and I’ll watch it on TV.”
How different are the modern Formula One cars compared to the cars from the era in which you raced?
“I haven’t been to a Formula One race in a long time, but I can tell you that they are very different. The level of technology and the aero dynamics are just so developed now. The suspension. The electronics. The engine management systems. Back when I drove, the cars were 900hp to 1500hp brutes and everything was controlled with your right foot. You really had to get the most out of the car. I think that the cars are very knife edge right now, that is, they’re very much on the limit. They’re probably not an easy car to drive. The driver now is very much involved with tuning the car as they’re driving, so they spend a lot of time adjusting the different elements of the race car’s handling and performance themselves, with constant communication back to the race engineers. When I was in Formula One, we didn’t even have radios, so it was all done through the pit board.”
If you were offered a chance to come back into Formula One, would you accept?
“I don’t think that anyone would ever turn that opportunity down. I know that would never happen because the drivers that are in Formula One are less than half my age. I’ve now got my own Formula One car that I’ll be driving pretty soon, so I’d think about going back into Formula One I suppose. I know it would not happen, so there’s not even any point in thinking too seriously about that.”
