He will not be racing in the Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on November 27, but the event at Yas Marina Circuit will still serve as a happy milestone for Stoffel Vandoorne.
It will be the last grand prix he will have to watch in the garage as McLaren’s reserve driver before his promotion next season to the race team to partner Fernando Alonso.
“It is great to be in the car full-time next year,” Vandoorne, 24, said.
“It is something that I have been working for since I was a kid and to finally get there is great. I am massively looking forward to being on the grid in Melbourne (for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix).”
Vandoorne is already focusing on being ready to step up to the challenge of matching double world champion Alonso, and the pressure of living up to expectations, having taken 2009 world champion Jenson Button’s seat, with the Briton taking a sabbatical.
“Ever since the decision came there has been a lot of things that have been changing and a lot of preparations that I have been through already,” he said.
“The winter will be very different for me in terms of preparation for next year, getting ready to step in for a full season.”
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Abu Dhabi has been at the heart of some of the Belgian’s key moments in his career.
In 2014 he tested for McLaren at Yas Marina and then 12 months ago he completed his title-winning GP2 season with a runner-up spot.
Already on the British team’s books, Vandoorne’s dominant campaign, which included seven victories, made a strong statement for his arrival in F1 full-time this season.
But McLaren already had Alonso and Button under contract, so chose to keep Vandoorne on the sidelines.
Not that he was without work. He took part in the Super Formula racing series in Japan, where he claimed two wins, and getting the chance to deal directly with Honda, the Japanese engine suppliers to McLaren, was a bonus.
“At the beginning of the year you have that mindset that you are not going to be racing as much as you’re used to so it has been OK unto now to be honest,” he said.
“There have been some weekends that it feels a bit long and some where it doesn’t feel so long which I guess is normal.
“I am just happy that I have the opportunity to race something this year in Super Formula, which is a very competitive car and series, on great tracks in Japan and it has enabled me to build a great relationship with Honda, which is going to be very important for the future.
“So it is not that I have been doing nothing this year. I have learnt a lot being at the grand prix as well and I feel as ready as I can be for the step up.”
Another reason why Vandoorne is confident he will a smooth transition to life in F1 is that he has already made his debut in the series.
Vandoorne was called up at the last minute to replace Alonso for the Bahrain Grand Prix in April after the Spaniard was not cleared by the sport’s medical staff to drive after a sizeable crash at the season opener in Australia.
The wrinkle for Vandoorne was that he was not in Sakhir. He was in the Far East preparing for the Super Formula season. Not that it was going to stop him.
“I was in Japan when I found out,” he said. “It was actually Eric [Boullier, the McLaren team principal] who called me and I had to take the flight back to Bahrain to step in for Fernando. It was a hectic weekend.
Things went well for Vandoorne when he qualified 12th ahead of Button, and then drove to 10th place in the race, scoring a world championship point in the process.
“I wanted to get through the weekend without making any stupid mistakes and everything went very well,” he said. “I out-qualified Jenson in qualifying and then on Sunday I scored the first point for the team.”
A debut race in Formula One, nerves would have been understandable, but Vandoorne was too busy for that.
“Once you are in the car doing the formation lap and going through all the procedures you forget about anything around and you just want to do your job,” he said.
Abu Dhabi is Button’s final race of a career that began in 2000, and although he will not be racing next year, he will still be involved with the team, which Vandoorne appreciates.
“I get on very well with Jenson and Fernando and our relationship didn’t really change much after the announcement,” he said. “I think we are a very strong team, and the important part is that is we all stay in the McLaren family.
“It is great to keep Jenson’s experience and for me it is great to race the car next year with Fernando. I think I am in a strong position for next year.”
Alonso will be a tough benchmark for Vandoorne; in the Spaniard’s 15 years in F1 he has only finished behind one teammate over a season, and that was Lewis Hamilton in 2007. Even then they had the same points, and the Briton was only classified higher in the standings on more second places.
Vandoorne is making no bold statements, his desire simply to help McLaren return to the front of the grid, with the historically successful team, not having won a race for four years.
“I will try to do my best as I have always done and work closely with the team as the first priority is to get the team back up to the top and we have been making good progress over the last year and a half but it is still a long way to go,” he said. “Hopefully next year we can have a good step forward.”
But the one race circled on the calendar for 2017 is Vandoorne’s home race at Spa-Francorchamps in August.
It will be the first time that a Belgian has competed in the race since Jerome D’Ambrosio in 2011 and he is hoping to generate an even bigger crowd following an impressive attendance this year as thousands of fans from the Netherlands made the short trip to support Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen.
“It is one of my favourites, I love racing around there,” Vandoorne said of Spa. “I have usually done pretty well there.
“It was great to see with Max that there were so many fans, and hopefully next year we can have another full house as well.”
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