Dodgy Business: Learning valuable lessons

When I spoke to Helmut Marko about the rogue stone thrown up by Ronnie Peterson that cost him his left eye some 37 years ago, he made a strong point.

"My accident and [Felipe] Massa's - that was fate. There have been a lot of safety improvements but what I really can't see is that accident with Henry Surtees, you know. Wheels shouldn't fly around because you can avoid that. The wheel fixings must be better.

"At Monte Carlo David Coulthard had an accident coming out of the tunnel and the wheel went all the way down to the chicane at a hell of a speed. If it had hit someone they would have been seriously injured. So I think they have to redo the wheel tethers. Maybe, if there's a certain impact the air is released from the tyre because, without it, the wheel loses its momentum."

Felipe Massa's Ferrari © LAT

Actually, it's a very difficult problem. When I saw poor Henry Surtees' accident, I immediately thought about young Austrian Markus Hottinger, who died in 1980 also in an F2 race.

Derek Warwick's Toleman was involved in an early race incident, losing a wheel, which struck the following Hottinger.

Instinctively I find it frankly amazing that given the amount of open wheel racing that takes place, there has not been more accidents of a similar nature, although I'm told by statisticians that the chances of a luckless driver's head being in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time, are remote.

As well as drivers though, errant wheels are a risk to track workers and spectators. In the fairly recent past marshals have been killed at Melbourne and Monza in hugely unfortunate circumstances and, at that dreadful Imola weekend in 1994, a spectator was injured by a flying wheel.

Motor racing is dangerous, it says so on the ticket, and no matter how many safety advances are made, you won't ever change that. The forces involved in an accident are such that it is amazingly difficult to retain wheels in all circumstances, and to it so that they do not become a danger to a driver in a secondary impact or to other drivers involved in a multi-car accident. Like so many things you have to try to ensure that by solving one problem you don't create another.

One possible solution which can be explored is tethered wheels in association with frontal cockpit protection, via either cages or canopies. Again though, you have to make sure you don't create a bigger problem.

"I think it's time to look at the whole thing and take a balanced approach," Ross Brawn says. "You can have covers and canopies but you've got to be able to get at a driver to extract him properly, so you don't want a structure that collapses down on him. There's also the worry of a car upside down. There's a lot of secondary considerations.

"In the history of F1 that type of frontal head injury accident is fairly rare and the sides are quite high now and we've got all the head rests around the drivers, but it's still something that we should take seriously and see if there's something we can do."

In days gone by, fire was such a huge risk that cages and canopies were always rejected on the grounds that they would create more danger than they eliminated by slowing down rescue procedures. And certainly when people went racing in what amounted to spaceframe or aluminium fuel baths, it was all too easy to understand why. Today though, with super-strong monocoques and sealed bag tanks, it might be time for a rethink.

More clear-cut is that exemptions to the in-season testing ban need to be introduced to allow the likes of Jaime Alguersuari to have more comfortable F1 baptisms.

Most debutants will arrive at the beginning of a season after a winter test programme, but not all. The testing ban was FOTA-agreed of course, and I'm sure neither FOTA nor the FIA intended to make things tougher for new drivers. To that end the FOTA teams appear to have agreed to allow that poor clueless young novice Michael Schumacher a day's testing in a 2009 Ferrari before he turns up in Valencia later this month.

Jaime Alguersuari at speed in the Hungarian Grand Prix © LAT

Alguersuari's debut may not quite have been Schumacher and Spa '91 but he didn't let himself down and satisfied both Red Bull and Marko, who said he'd had no qualms about putting the youngster in because mentally he's so strong.

"I think young drivers have such enormous possibilities today, especially with our programme," he said. "Of course you must have the personality and talent to use it. It's unbelievable how many of them don't use it. They just don't understand that being a talent is not enough. You have to work hard, you have to be physically good, you have to understand the technical side and you have to build up human relationships in teams."

He wasn't naming names but certainly Toro Rosso, the Red Bull junior filter, doesn't exactly have a reputation for mollycoddling its drivers.

It tends to call a spade a shovel and there have been 'issues' with quite a few drivers - Speed, Liuzzi and latterly Bourdais all spring to mind, although the four-time CART champion apparently struggled with being regarded a 'novice'.

None of Marko's prerequisites was ever a problem for Michael, of course, and his return is fascinating.

I must admit, as soon as it became evident that Massa was going to be out for a while, Schumacher was a tantalising prospect. For Bernie of course, it's manna, and might just save Valencia even if Alonso is not there. But I wasn't sure Michael would do it.
I remember, three years ago, the will he/won't he retire saga. A well-respected German journalist was convinced that Schumacher would not go head-to-head with Raikkonen in the same team. Why would he? After 13 years as indisputably F1's best driver, possibly the best of all time, there would be no shame in having to cede your position to a younger ace. But that wouldn't be the perception. People would question how good he really was, because that's what people do.

At Imola that year AUTOSPORT dined with Sabine Kehm, Michael's personal assistant, herself formerly a respected sports journalist unless such is a contradiction in terms!

Obviously she was not about to betray her employer's innermost secrets but when she claimed that she honestly believed that Michael hadn't made up his mind, we believed her. It also became apparent that they both believed Kimi was damned quick.

Massa was certainly not Michael quick. Turkey that year he won because Michael was so superior he became strategically over ambitious in qualifying and then got trapped in the race. And while Felipe won at Interlagos in Schuey's swansong, Michael started at the back through no fault of his own and was the star as he blitzed his way back through the field. One of his best moves nailed Kimi and certainly Schumacher's drive that afternooon did not appear to be that of a man consigned to a safe retirement.
But retire he did. I've often wondered how much it has since irked him to sit on the pit wall and see Kimi and Felipe nip and tuck. Was he thinking: Damn! Nine titles, 100 wins, no problem....

Now, there's no pressure. He's been out of the cockpit three years and so if he turns up and is on Kimi's pace, he'll look like a hero. And if he doesn't match him everyone will understand.

Michael Schumacher flags waving at the 2009 German Grand Prix © LAT

I reckon he'll be on the podium. To say that Michael was blisteringly fast is stating the obvious but the thing that made him so formidable and gave him those 91 wins was the relentlessness of his races - three flat-out sprints, the in laps, out laps, the way he used the tyres, everything. As Eddie Irvine used to say, if you could look at a results sheet and see that you'd finished 60-odd laps within 20 seconds of M Schumacher, you knew you'd done a bloody good job.

Of course, if he's at all out of condition, that relentlessness might not be there anymore. But from the sporadic tests he's done over the past three years, going as quick if not quicker than the regular drivers at Fiorano and Barcelona, the pure speed still seems to be.

Last year Valencia confounded those of us who were expecting incident aplenty and multiple Safety Car periods. It would be asking a lot for it to be problem free a second time and so we should probably expect the odd curve ball and 'restart' situation.
Remember those uncompromising starts that Schumacher was well renowned for?

Absence may have blunted such 'confidence' a little, but if it hasn't, imagine that degree of attitude and a KERS button! It's not inconceivable that Michael could even win the thing. Tyres may have played a significant part in Hungary but Lewis Hamilton proved that it can be done. The whole scenario is mouthwatering.

Valencia might be slap bang in the middle of the summer holidays but I'll be fascinated to see the TV viewing figures.