Ferdinand Habsburg says Team WRT were feeling significant pressure as they went into the final round of the 2021 WEC season, where the Belgian squad ultimately won the world championship.
Habsburg, Robin Frijns and Charles Milesi were victorious in the eight-hour season finale, clinching the world title in the process.
Team WRT were the favorites going into the deciding round, having been undefeated since their breakthrough victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in August. After a win in the first race of the Bahrain double header, the team went into the last race as points leader ahead of rivals JOTA.
Despite the team’s strong position, Habsburg admitted that the team was still feeling the pressure in the run up to Saturday’s decider.
“Over the last week, we were our biggest opponents,” Habsburg told MotorsportWeek.com. “I was my biggest opponent. it’s so much nervosity and stress that you feel, but so much excitement, if you don’t get your nervosity under control, you’re gonna screw it up.”
“I think I was confident in the team that if we all did our jobs, we could win it. So it was just down to me making sure that I’m relaxed, that I can help my teammates get relaxed and my engineers get relaxed. We were our biggest opponents.”
“JOTA were incredibly strong, but it was down to us to screw up in the end and I’m very, very happy to say that that we didn’t.”
Habsburg started the race for the Belgian squad and put the car in victory contention with a strong opening stint, making multiple strong overtakes in the first hour. While the 24-year-old looked composed going into the deciding race, he admitted he was anything but.
“It still took me up until the last moment when I put my helmet on that I could finally relax and really look forward to the start of the race. Up until the moment where I was actually putting my helmet on, I was wetting myself in many ways. It worked out, so I’m quite happy about that.”
Habsburg’s opening stint behind the wheel of the #31 ORECA was one of the highlights of the race, with bold passes on the likes of Loic Duval and Phil Hanson putting Team WRT in a position to fight for the class lead.
“I had a lot of fun,” Habsburg said of his opening stint. “My engineer kept on telling me ‘remember, you’re doing two stints on these tyres, calm down.’ But I was having too much fun. I couldn’t hold myself back.”
“On the one hand, I knew I had to push forward, because I knew how much faster the JOTAs were this weekend compared to last weekend. It really showed that pace improved a lot, so I knew I had to try to push on because there’s no time to wait.”
“There was a bunch of cars in my way, so I just had to get past them. I feel very confident on the brakes generally, and the car was great. So I just had a bit of fun out there with my opponents. It worked out well every time, so I guess it’s a bit of risk-reward. And the reward is here.”
The Belgian squad had a slow start to its first season in WEC, suffering reliability issues at Spa and earning a penalty in Monza. Habsburg reckons that the potential from the team was present from the very start of the season, but that the team needed to iron out some mistakes to unlock it.
“We were rookies, there were things to be improved on and we made some mistakes. It just shows that the team learns really quickly and none of those mistakes were repeated on either side. Everybody just did a perfect job from that point on. We had a quick car for the last three rounds and that’s what mattered.
“I think we should have won Monza, but there was something that was in our way that didn’t let us win that. We felt like we should have won Portimao if we hadn’t had the drive through [penalty] so we knew it was there.
“It was just a little tidbits that we had to get out of the way. Then winning Le Mans obviously helped us a lot in the points to catch up again, because of the double points.”
“We had a good second half to the season. I think there’s just a lot of factors that played into that but in the end, it was just not making any mistakes. That’s what what gave us the championship.”
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