Interview: Ralph Firman

If they had them at schools careers fairs, the stall explaining how to become a formula one driver would surely be the most popular. As a profession, driving these beasts of vehicles is reckoned by the rest of us the apex of glamour: the speed, the prestige, the money, the female company. The lucky few who make it are thought a breed apart, swanking around with the self-possession of those who know they are blessed.

The reality is, inevitably, more prosaic: the endless sitting around while mechanics fiddle with your compression system, the claustrophobia of the cockpit, the way you soon become oblivious as to whether it is Rio out there beyond the garage doors or Melbourne or Monaco. Plus, in the case of Ralph Firman, the new boy on the formula one grid who has been a driver with the Jordan team for just over three weeks now, the fact that you have to slice the end off your driving boot because your feet are too big for the standard-issue footwear. Not that glamorous, then.

"I've not yet come across anything that counts as glamorous," Firman says as he waits for his car to be readied for final testing before Sunday's Australian grand prix. "But I guess I'll suspend my judgment until the actual racing starts."

Yet, talking to Firman as he hangs about in the Jordan garage at Silverstone, it is clear he retains the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the schoolboy standing in the paddock with an autograph book. Shy, softly spoken, the antithesis of, say, Eddie Irvine he might be, but he cannot hide his excitement at finally finding himself behind the wheel of a formula one car.

"This is what I've been dreaming about since I was about 12," he says. "I'm enjoying every second of it so far. I think the first race is going to be just amazing. I mean, I've driven lots of fast cars but nothing compares to these. The acceleration, downforce, braking: incredible. Just to come and watch them go round the circuit gives you a buzz. So imagine what it's like getting in one and driving it."

You tell us: what is it like? "It's difficult to appreciate from the television. But when you finally do it, well, it's lovely."

In many ways the only surprise about Firman finally easing his 6ft 1in frame into a formula one car is that it has taken so long for him to get there. Now 27, he has been talked about by those in the know since he was in his teens. His father, Ralph senior, set up Van Diemen International Racing Services in the 70s, manufacturing cars for all levels of racing. The young Firman was tearing round the track competitively from the age of 10. There was, presumably, no need for career fairs for him: a driver he was destined to be.

"You say that," he says, "but when my parents bought me a go-kart it was just a hobby. I don't think they did it thinking it would necessarily lead to this. It was only because I was winning races that I went on with it. They never pushed me to race."

Still, he admits the world in which he grew up precluded him from being anything other than a petrol head. "Yeah, motor sport was always very much around me. There were always drivers coming round the house. My dad tried not to bring his work home with him but I guess it was there all the time."

And while other kids of his age had posters of their driving heroes on the wall, the young Firman had the real thing, living in his house. Not any old driver, either. "Ayrton Senna raced for my parents for a couple of years when he first came over from Brazil, then he lived with us when he raced for Lotus," he recalls. "I'd love to say he gave me my first driving lesson but I was only eight or nine. Still, it sticks in the mind. You don't really realise at the time what it means but it is amazing to look back on it, to realise you had a very different kind of upbringing."

The young Firman was 15, winning lots of kart championships, when he first realised he could do this for a living. By then he had been dispatched from his Norfolk home to boarding school but the headmaster was helpfully indulgent in allowing him time to go karting.

"The school probably initially thought it was just a passing phase," he says. "But by the end of my time there they were really good about it. Studies suffered a bit from all the travelling. But I did my A-levels. Just about."

The moment he left school he was driving full-time. From karting he went into formula Vauxhall junior, with cars, he recalls, so lacking in aerodynamics it was "like taking a brick round the circuit". Still, he must have been good at manipulating building materials because he won the championship when he was 18 and was voted the McLaren Autosport young driver of the year. The coming man had almost arrived and by the time he was 20 he had won the formula three championship, beating Juan Pablo Montoya into second place. It seemed only a short step from there to formula one. But then finance intervened.

"Well, I wanted to stay in formula 3000 in Europe, keep my name in the frame, but you're talking serious money to compete. You need like a million dollars behind you. Which I just didn't have."

Instead, at 21, he was offered a drive in Japan, in formula Nippon. "They pay you," he says. "How hard a choice was that?"

He went east full of anticipation - a chance to learn, he thought. And learn he did: perhaps the most valuable lesson a putative formula one driver can pick up. "It was unfortunate," he says. "I was stuck in an uncompetitive car for four years."

With that the Firman stellar trajectory stalled. At the back of the Japanese grid race after race, his apparently inexorable rise went into reverse. "The real problem is," he admits, "if you're not winning and you're that far from home, nobody's writing about you, you get forgotten."

At no point, though, did he consider packing in. "I was frustrated. But I had a dream of driving formula one I needed to stick to. And it taught me a valuable lesson, not to doubt yourself. It also taught me a bit about patience. If you are in an uncompetitive car you just have to bide your time. And in the end I got the break, got a good car and dominated the championship for the last two years over there."

He knew his luck had really turned, though, when he took a holiday on the Caribbean island of St Bart's at Christmas. Returning from a day on the beach, his travelling companion persuaded him to pop into a sunglasses shop. Now most motor racing fans would have told him that, since it was the natural habitat of those involved in the trade, this was the best place to tout for business. But Firman claims to be astonished by whom he bumped into there.

"Maybe there was a touch of fate about it," he says. "I really didn't need any sunglasses. I almost stayed in the car. But for some reason I went in the shop. And there was Eddie Jordan. I was as shocked to see him as he was to see me. He knows my family, he's known me for many years. We met up for dinner, got on really well. He's a great guy, really charismatic."

And best of all he was a guy in need of a second driver to back up Giancarlo Fisichella, though Firman says it never occurred to him to suggest he was the answer to Jordan's recruitment problem.

"Hey, we were on holiday, we had better things to talk about," he says. "The deal wasn't done until just before it was announced in the last week of January. I was going to go back to formula Nippon. I actually went out to Japan to negotiate a deal. Nothing is certain in this game."

That is especially so down in the shallow end of the formula one pond where Jordan feed. If not quite expected to finance himself like his compatriot Justin Wilson at Minardi, Firman will not be in the same financial galaxy as some of his rivals. Jordan, as the lack of sponsors' logos decorating the side of his car would suggest, can offer him little more than a start.

"That's all I want," he says. "Japan made me more determined. If I hadn't had those frustrations, then I wouldn't be mentally prepared for formula one."

By now Firman's car is ready for him. He is squeezed into the cockpit and, rather disconcertingly, almost as an afterthought, handed the steering wheel, which he slots into the dashboard himself.

"I don't think I'll find out anything about the car or myself until Friday, in Australia," he says. "Until then you can't make any assessments about what you could achieve. I want to try and score points and, if it's a wet race, maybe end up on the podium. But that is the long-term ambition. Really I can't afford to look beyond the first lap at Melbourne. That moment on the grid when the light goes green is going to be incredible. Yeah."

Moments later, after the car has been started by a pair of computer operators at the back of the garage, he eases into the pit lane, past a dozen photographers, out on to the course at Silverstone. He puts his foot down, learning, he says, as he goes along. The car makes a loud farting noise, splutters and, after an uncertain lap of the track, glides silently to a stop. A couple of mechanics run out to push vehicle and driver back into the garage and the waiting clutches of a flurry of engineers. Ralph Firman's learning curve has suddenly grown very steep indeed.