Czech formula racer dreams of a ticket to the elite. He has caught up with Sainz, Alonso inspires him with age

Formula 1 enjoys an eminent interest also among Czech sports viewers. In the future, the series could also welcome a Czech driver. Vladimír Netušil and his Effective Racing stable are moving in the right direction. Although he has only been in the cockpit since he turned thirty, he is still more than enough competition for the youngsters. He has become the champion of the Central European zone and wants to earn his ticket to the top in Formula 3 in the coming months.

He’s been watching Formula 1 since he was a kid. As soon as Czech TV channels started broadcasting young Michael Schumacher racing around the circuits in his red Ferrari, Vladimir fell in love with motorsport.

He loved the sport himself, and if it hadn’t been for a serious accident, his steps might have led him elsewhere. At the age of 15, he was involved in a car accident that killed his friend and the driver of the vehicle. In the passenger seat, Vladimir was given the unpleasant diagnosis that he might never get back on his feet.

But months in a wheelchair and regular rehabilitation eventually reversed the original prognosis and he was able to return to a full life. But he put the sport on hold. He took a job in finance. Later, he bought a fast car, and his steps eventually led to an environment where the smell of gasoline and the sound of engines are the order of the day.

“I would give a million crowns for one lap in Formula 1,” Vladimir told his friends of his dream. The dream soon became a goal. Vladimir began to study the possibilities, sat in the cockpit for the first time at the age of thirty and three years later bought his first Formula One car.

“It was 2016, I bought a two-litre from Renault and started driving the Carbonia Cup. The season is made up of seven races and you can pretty much drive it on your own money. I was hungry to try racing, so I went for it. There were races in Most, Germany, Poland and the Hungaroring in Hungary. There you get your first taste of the atmosphere that you’ve only known from TV. You see the paddocks, you see the places where the famous pilots walked. And what happened was thatI won all seven races,” says Vladimír Netušil modestly, whose next steps led him to Josef Král, who had raced in GP2 in the past.

The world of motorsport is all about money. Vladimír has always found his own sponsors, and the same was true for the 2017 and 2018 seasons, when he raised around two million crowns for the Central European zone.

“I finished third and second in two seasons. I was the fastest on the Czech circuits. Only in Most, Carlos Sainz, who now drives for Ferrari in F1, set a slightly faster time with an identical car ,” he recalls.

His next steps then led to Formula 3, or rather to the Euroformula Open. “Max Verstappen went straight from that to Formula 1. Charles Leclerc and others also drove here,” he explains.

“Sometimes I can’t help thinking how it might have been if I had started racing earlier. But I’m not the sniveling type who looks to the past. Plus, there are two drivers in Formula 1 who are a bit older than me. The likes of Fernando Alonso likes to say that racing is not measured by age, but by stopwatches,” he adds with a smile.

A season at Formula 3 level is then roughly five times more expensive than the lower competitions. It’s the same for the cost of the car itself. An entire season costs in the tens of millions of crowns.

“Formula 3 is bought without an engine and is unified. The only engine one can buy is one’s own. We went to Mercedes. I ordered one engine in March, but because they work with big and top stables, where they deliver maybe twenty engines a season, it took six months for mine to come in. So I continued training at Renault and then the coronavirus came. Part of the season went off, but it was quite strange.”

In the coming months, he wants to focus on getting the best possible results in the Euroformula Open. If he does well in the long term, the lasso from the elite competitions is bound to come. But alongside building his own career, he is also building his Effective racing team.

“When I come out of that formula in maybe three or five years, I want my team to be fully established at European level. Then I want to be involved with the team for the rest of my life. For now I’m still driving, but then someone else will be driving the wheel and I could be the one to educate the new Schumachers. My goal then is to have two cars and two drivers who will pay for a place in the team and facilities for racing. All drivers’ careers are paid for by rich dads at the start, formula is a sport for the rich, that’s just the way it is,” he concludes.

Source: Effective Racing