Will Kamui Kobayashi be the Banzai Warrior again?

Kamui Kobayashi

When Kamui Kobayashi first entered the F1 scene as a race driver by replacing the injured Timo Glock in the Toyota towards the end of 2009, nobody would have expected the short and shy Japanese to become one of the best over-takers on the grid.

As time has passed, Kobayashi has become more aggressive, albeit in a safe way, unlike crash kids Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado. He’s made some absolutely breathtaking overtaking manoeuvres with ease, and that is what has caught the eye of the F1 paddock. Veterans of the sport very quickly labelled him as the best Japan has ever produced.

Kobayashi joined Sauber in 2010 and was able to match his experienced teammate Pedro de la Rosa, and in the second half of the season, started to beat him regularly. That spelt doom for the Spaniard and he was replaced by Nick Heidfeld. Having got to grips with the car, it wasn’t soon before Kobayashi was able to match Heidfeld too.

2011 again saw a new team-mate for Kobayashi but this time it was somebody less experienced than him. Sergio Perez was not able to match Kobayashi’s one-lap pace, but made up for it through with his craftiness and excellent tyre-conservation ability. Unfortunately, this brought with it the down fall of the Japanese racer, something nobody saw coming or even predicted.

A similar story played out in 2012 but Perez would now convert his tyre-conserving gift into giant-killing performances and that would be the turning point in both of the Sauber drivers’ careers. With stupendous podium finishes in Malaysia, Canada and Italy, Perez became a star. Not even Kobayashi’s impressive podium finish in Japan could match up to the amount of appreciation the Mexican got. In F1, only the race results matter; because the Sundays are when the points are handed out. Kobayashi suffered the consequences of not converting his impressive displays to get either podium or points finishes.

Kamui Kobayashi celebrates with his team after finishing third at his home grand prix

If we analyse Sauber’s 2012 season we will see that Perez regularly qualified outside the top 10 and his Japanese team-mate made it into Q3 quite often. That is what played into the Mexican’s hands because the rules state that drivers qualifying outside the top 10 can start on tyres of their own choice – and as a result, Perez would run on an opposite strategy to all the front runners. He would start on the primes and run a long opening stint at a consistent pace, while drivers around him would push hard early and destroy their tyres. He would then head to the pits and join in the clear, ahead of the midfield battles.

On the other hand, Kobayashi was forced to run on a similar strategy to the rest of the top 10, and as Sauber didn’t generally have the pace of the top 4 teams, he would be overtaken while running on similar tyres. This is how Perez was able to transcend the Sauber’s shortcomings while Kobayashi fell into its clutches.

In 2012, Kobayashi qualified the Sauber in the top 3 three times – not an ordinary feat by any means – while Perez’s best qualifying position was 4th on the grid in Belgium, and due to the reasons explained above, Perez became the darling and his team-mate became an also-ran. It was sad to see Kobayashi publicly appealing for funding after the end of last season, while Perez was all smiles after securing a seat at McLaren.

It’s almost guaranteed that the Japanese driver is no more in the running for a 2013 seat even after he was able to raise 8 million euros. He himself said that he is not interested in anything else but Formula 1 – so obviously other forms of motor sport are out of the question – and thus would use the money to acquire a competitive 2014 seat instead of fighting for a 2013 one in the new teams.

As he’s quite famous among the fans, many of them would like to see him back on the grid for next year. What we will miss most will be his banzai overtakes of which, Martin Brundle once said, “He gets to the normal braking point and then goes, ‘Now, which one is the brake again? That’s right, it’s on the left,’ and he just sails past people!”