Anthony Davidson has shined a light on his decision to retire from professional racing after this weekend’s Eight Hours of Bahrain, saying he has found the right time walk away after he rediscovered his love for racing in his three final years in LMP2.
Davidson announced earlier in the week that this weekend’s eight-hour enduro with JOTA will be his last, bringing an end to a two-decade career that spanned both Formula One and sportscar racing. The Briton was asked about his decision in Thursday’s pre-event press conference, and explained that it was not a difficult decision to make, first getting doubts about his future at the end of tenure as part of Toyota’s LMP1 effort.
“It’s a pretty easy decision to come to at 42 years old,” said Davidson. “It’s not the first time people have retired at that age. I remember speaking to David Coulthard a long time ago when he retired and I asked him: ‘How do you know? How do you know when it’s time to retire?’
“Because as a young driver back then, you’re obsessed with it, you live and breathe racing and I could never imagine getting to that stage where you didn’t want to drive a racing car anymore. He just looked at me and went ‘when you know, you’ll know. It comes to you.'”
“I think it was probably my last year at Toyota where I started to feel like that. Life gets more complicated the older you get, family comes along. You want to spend more time at home and I’m a family man, I love my time at home, my kids.”
“You start weighing up all the different options and you start realizing there is more to life than just motor racing. At that moment you realise that it is just a sport, it’s not completely your world anymore.”
In addition to his private life, Davidson admits that he started to lose his passion for racing amidst his final years with Toyota. In 2018-19, he was the one moved aside to make room for the incoming Fernando Alonso, despite having taken five race wins in the previous season. It was only through the move to DragonSpeed alongside Roberto Gonzalez and Pastor Maldonado that Davidson made the decision to continue racing.
“That’s honestly how I felt at the time,” he said about weighing up retirement towards the end of his Toyota stint. “On top of that, there were other things going on and I fell out of love with the sport a bit during the end of my Toyota years. It was a fantastic car, fantastic environment, but there were other things at play that kind of made me fall out of love with the sport as a whole.”
“Then I met Roberto [Gonzalez] and Elton Julian [team boss] and the DragonSpeed opportunity came along in LMP2. I weighed up the options and thought long and hard about it but I felt like I should give it a go, to go racing to enjoy it again.”
“I did not know much about LMP2, but I saw their racing was always good fun, very close battles. I wanted to be a part of that and just enjoy racing again like a lot of the amateur drivers do.”
“It’s not their main thing in life, it’s a hobby for them. They want to do well at it, don’t get me wrong, but they go racing for a different purpose to the likes of myself and other pros.”
In his time in LMP2, first with DragonSpeed and later with JOTA, Davidson took part in another 17 races, winning three and finishing on the podium another eight times. More importantly, it also made him rediscover his passion for the sport.
“I had the best time again and completely fell in love again with everything that racing has to offer. So it’s thanks to him and Elton to give me that chance, not just to be on the track again but to be out there in a lighter headspace.”
“I still felt like I was able to operate at my best. I had a pole position in Fuji with DragonSpeed, second place at Le Mans with JOTA and race wins as well. I really felt like I was operating at my best and that’s how I wanted to end slipping down gradually as I got older and older.”
“I wanted to end while I still knew I could mix it with the laptimes with the younger guys and girls, with the young generation who are half my age.”
“At the end of it, I just had to be honest with myself and say I’ve had a great three years since Toyota, three years I never imagined I would have and I can now leave on my terms, how I wanted to end.”
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