Straight away; this interview goes down as one of my favourite interviews I've done. Ahead of the Monaco race weekend I was delighted to chat with established commentator and the 'Voice of Formula 2', Alex Jacques!
Originally due to chat with Alex at the Imola Grand Prix, which was unfortunately cancelled due to severe flooding, Alex spoke to me and gave me all his insights from the comfort of his comms box in Monaco as we chatted about all sorts from Vandoorne, GP2 and F2 to the great moments of his career and legends of the sport among other things!
Onto the interview!
Firstly, when did you first start commentating? Around 2010 when I was at University I think!
1. What’s your first memory of racing? Jacques Villeneuve passing Damon Hill at Budapest.
📸 Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in Hungary. Both world champions.
2. Who became your racing hero or heroes? Hakkinen. Mika Hakkinen, he had a kind of 'win it or bin it' style I loved and found entertaining.
📸 2 time world champion Hakkinen.
3. What initially sparked your interest in being a commentator? Murray Walker.
📸 No one quite like Murray. Gone but never, ever forgotten.
4. What’s your favourite thing about being a commentator? There's a lot. Storytelling. I love being the person to tell everyone else what's happening, there's nothing like it.
5. What’s your least favourite thing about it? I have no complaints about my job!
6. What’s been the proudest moment of your career so far? Covering the British GP at Silverstone for Channel 4 in 2021. Really great moment for me to cover an event of that magnitude after covid, with so many people there and of course, the race playing out the way it did.
📸 2021's British Grand Prix was decided in controversial and exciting fashion as Hamilton won after a collision with title rival Verstappen.
7. You’ve covered the Indy 500, F3 and F2 finales, major F1 Grand Prix’s and so much more; what’s the best race you remember commentating on? Monza F2 2017 was crazy. It was getting dark and overtakes were just happening everywhere. Germany 2019 at Hockenheim was another actually, about as crazy as a race can get and I was trying to cover it all on my own!
📸 GP2 at Monza in 2017.
8. You’ve had to cover some difficult and challenging moments, how do you cope with updating your listers/viewers in those moments? There's a responsibility that we as commentators have to keep the viewers or listeners informed of what is happening but we only have limited information that gets passed to us.
📸 Daniel De Jong was lucky to walk away with broken vertebra after a horror crash at Blanchimont in GP2.
I've covered a few moments, the first one I remember is Daniel De Jong who had a big crash with Pierre Gasly at Spa and of course, I covered the horrible day when we sadly lost Anthoine Hubert and that was difficult. The responsibility lies with you as the commentator to guide everyone through, however tough that may be.
📸 F2 and the racing world sadly lost Anthoine Hubert at Spa in 2019.
9. Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris, Yuki Tsunoda, Mick Schumacher, the list goes on, You’ve watched a lot of incredible drivers come up through the ranks and commented on, is there any driver you watched and knew straight away they’d go right to the top? Charles Leclerc. It was immediately obvious that there was something special about him.
📸 Alex with Ferrari's Leclerc.
10. Plenty don’t make it; is there one you watched that you were surprised never made it F1? I was surprised Stoffel Vandoorne never made a bigger impact. He was dominant in GP2 and of course was the champion and he's done well after F1, but I don't think he got the chance with the car McLaren had at the time and getting beaten by Fernando Alonso(as well as many before), he never really got a chance to show what he can do.
📸 Stoffel has since gone on to win the Formula E title but never had a chance to show his real capabilities in F1.
11. The last couple of years has seen your career come on leaps and bounds, what do you still want to achieve? I just want to keep telling the story for as long as possible, I love my job.
12. I’ve interviewed a few other commentators like Harry Benjamin, Chris McCarthy and Tom Gaymor, all of whom have cited you as having some influence on their careers; is it a nice feeling to be sort looked up to by these people? Firstly, Tom, Chris and Harry are all great guys, and they're all doing a great job. I'm appreciative of comments like that and it's nice to receive them, so thanks!
📸 Alex with the energetic and exciting Davide Valsecchi.
13. You yourself are a racing fan, is there anything you’ve collected over the years that you’re proud of or look at fondly? I keep all my notes. I've got all of them from my previous interviews and commentaries. It'll be nice to go back and look at them all when I'm clearing out the loft. Any kind of 'freebies' I get, I tend to give to my nephew!
14. Final question! You’re a keen lower formula fan as we all so my question is below the F2 and F3 level; can you name a driver you’re excited to see coming up? I can give you one name! It's Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the Mercedes junior. He seems to be an excellent young driver and I expect to see him in F1 before too long!
📸 Exciting teenager Antonelli is currently racing in Formula Regional European and is expected to carry on his strong upward trajectory.
An absolutely massive thanks to Alex for this interview and for allowing me to be a part of his Monaco race weekend, hopefully we can do more again sometime because this one was great!
Hear his dulcet tones again at the Canadian Grand Prix in under 2 weeks time!
📸 Image credits: Alex Jacques, Formula Motorsport Limited, Williams Racing, Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team, Formula E.
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