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A JYS driving lesson - Au revoir, Kyalami

I learned, a few days after returning from Kyalami, that next year's South African motorcycle Grand Prix has been cancelled by the sport's governing body, the FIM. More sinisterly, the FIM also voted to ban South African riders from racing outside their own country

I am sad now that FISA has chosen to go down the same path, and I say this because, yes, I do cleave to the notion that politics and sport should be kept apart. Otherwise, sport, one of the few remaining forces for good in the world, can have no realistic long term future. There won't be anywhere to stage it.

The fact, surely, is that every place in the world is unacceptable to somebody. We have seen how political ideology - or, perhaps, political expediency - has mutilated the Olympic Games, with the Americans giving Moscow a miss, the Russians boycotting Los Angeles.

Cricket, too, has become the tool of political dogma, with X refusing to play Y if Z is included in the team. The cricket world formally shunned South Africa long ago, of course, but England and Australia are quite happy to include South Africans in their own Test sides. Thanks to the FIM, motorcycle racers from that country now have no comparable opportunity.

It is the hypocrisy of it all that I can't stomach. It is the selective morality, the careful removal at Kyalami of certain sponsors' names from the cars - despite the fact that their products are readily available down the road, widely adver-tised beyond the TV cameras' reach. It is governments living in glass houses attempting to pressure drivers into boycotting the race.

The motorcycle race is off, and now the Formula 1 race goes with it. What leaves me uncertain whether to laugh or cry is that the proposal approved by delegates of the FIM came from that bastion of democracy, the Soviet Union.

Next year we go to Budapest for the first ever Grand Prix in an eastern bloc country, and I look forward to it. A while ago, of course, there was even speculation about a race in Moscow, but the negotiations came to nought. If, as the Russian FIM delegate apparently suggest, an unblemished record on human rights is to be a criterion for suitability to hold a Grand Prix, his FISA counterpart would presumably feel honour bound to ensure they are never reopened. Wouldn't he? Or are the rights of some humans more equal than others?

I write this with cynicism, but not callousness. In the last 15 years of racing journalism, I've seen enough of the world to know that much of it is not very pleasant. But let us go one of two ways: either settle for a one - race World Championship on the moon, or work on the premise that sport is good for international relations, and take our show to any country which might want it, including Russia. And South Africa.



"I've been thinking," Jackie Stewart murmured at a Grand Prix earlier this season, "that it might be a good idea to have a few journalists out on a circuit sometime - for a bit of tuition. What d'you think?"

I responded with alacrity, and various colleagues felt the same way. Thus, the week before Kyalami, we presented ourselves at Stansted early one morning for a quick flight up to Donington. I wasn't feeling great. The night before we had been to see Are You Lonesome Tonight? in London, then had dinner, then drove home. I got about three hours' sleep - and today I'm supposed to drive J.Y. Stewart...

"You look a bit bleary," he said, as I squinted into the low autumn sun at Donington. "Sure you're taking this seriously?" He, of course, the slender monument to living sensibly, was as bouncy as ever. We all trooped into his classroom, and after a couple of black coffees I felt almost ready to take off my sunglasses.

He began by giving us the theory of how to drive smoothly, safely and fast, drawing sketches on a blackboard to show why a car won't cooperate with you if you're rough with it. It was all done with lucid simplicity, and seemed so obvious that you wondered why you'd never thought of it.

The lecture over, Stewart went round with each of us in turn. At our disposal was a fleet of Sierras, some the 2-litre fuel-injected models, the rest four-wheel drive 2.8-litre 4x4s. Having never driven either, or been round Donington before, I put myself to the end of Jackie's queue, and set out from the pits alone.

It is a lovely way to spend an hour, thrashing someone else's car around a race circuit. By now I didn't feel 'bleary' at all. At circuit speeds the 2-litre Sierra, like most modern saloons, understeered strongly, making the 4x4 the more impressive afterwards. Steering response was so much better that at first the car seemed 'nervous', but in a few laps I came to be very impressed with it.

Fine, I now had a reasonable idea of which way the track went. My own car is a 2.8 Capri, so some aspects of the Sierra seemed very familiar.

"Right, Roebuck, it's you at last," grinned Stewart. And, to make matters worse, he invited Alan Henry of Motoring News to spectate from the back seat. Any mistakes were going to get a wide hearing...

"First of all, I'm going to drive for a few laps," Jackie said. "Then you take over, and for a while I'll move the wheel if I think you're not getting into an apex at the right moment, things like that."

"I always used to notice that you sat nearer the wheel than most of your contemporaries," I said, as he adjusted the seat, made himself comfortable.

"That's right. You look at most racing drivers' forearms, and you'll see they're huge, solid. There's a lot of isometrics involved. When I started, I used the traditional 'Stirling Moss straight arms' driving position, because I thought it looked good. But as racing cars got heavier and bigger, that didn't work. You weren't strong enough like that - try picking up a chair with your arms straight, and then do it with them bent.

"Most people don't pay enough attention to their position in a car. With your shoulders against the back of the seat, you should be able to clench your hand over the top of the wheel. And when your left foot's not operating the clutch, it should be to the left of the pedal, firm against the floor. That braces you properly."

For the first few laps everything he did was accompanied by commentary. "You know, I've explained the importance of being smooth onto the brakes, lightly at first, then progressively harder. But I don't think many people think of the importance of being smooth off the brakes. Let me show you...

The car lurched into a corner, and began to run wide.

"See what I mean? You have the brakes on hard, and the nose of the car, of course, is down. If you come off them abruptly, the nose comes up abruptly, and the car is unsettled - just as you need it to be working with you, as you turn into the corner.

"It's the same if you go into a corner with the brakes still on. The car is pitching forward because of the braking, and that's using up a lot of the suspension movement you have available - which means that it's not available to help you into the corner."

Jackie has always been a great one for 'buzz' words and catchphrases, and his latest - referring to what you feel through the steering - is "light is right." If the steering wheel is heavy in your hands, fighting you, you've done it wrong.

The basic Stewart approach is simplicity itself - in theory. Lift off smoothly, lightly onto the brakes at first, then progressively harder, get your changing down done early, out of the way, lightly off the brake pedal, turn in, no throttle at all until the apex, then accelerate smoothly and progressively out.

Sounds simple? Well, I'm here to tell you it works. I know, I watched him do it. "Right, now this lap I'm going to drive absolutely as fast as I can, OK?" There was no talking on that lap, and none was necessary. I sat there in complete awe "OK, now it's you," he said, pulling in,

I should tell you here that I'm no different from anyone else. I may have spun a Renault Formula 1 in a straight line, but in a quick road car I think I'm pretty damn good. It was therefore sobering to find Jackie's hand helping to move the wheel when he thought I hadn't turned in early enough. On one occasion, though, I was gratified to find that, steering from the passenger seat, even he is fallible...

"OK, flat! Flat! Flat! Don't lift!" he yelled, as we went down through the Craner Curves towards the Old Hairpin. I braked, changed down to third, thought I'd got it pretty well right - and suddenly the unseen Scottish hand was turning me in, too early, surely?

The Sierra went straight over the high inside kerbing, bounced across the road, over the kerbs and bump strips on the exit and onto the grass. There was no worry, nothing to hit, and JYS was helpless with laughter beside me: "My fault, my fault, sorry..." he graciously said. In the back, Henry was whimpering quietly to himself. His turn was approaching.

"Good, absolutely right," he said at the hairpin next time through. "Now, d'you see what I mean? You're smoother now than when we started, and I'll bet if we'd had a watch on you, you're also quicker, even though it may not feel it...

"The best way to be a good driver, and to enjoy it, is consciously to think about everything you do, make every gear-change as imperceptible as you can, give the car an easy time. I had 27 wins from 99 races, you know, and people say that's a good average - but I had to finish those races to win them, and a lot of them came because I kept the car in one piece."

A lot of them also came because he was - and is - a genius in a car. He last drove me round a circuit in 1974, the year after he retired, and nothing has changed. He's been out of racing 12 years, and he's only a few months older than Mario Andretti. If he had continued, imagine the record Prost might be shooting at now...



Scene: Heathrow, Sunday morning. 7.20. We have just alighted from BA 056 from Johannesburg, and are waiting for our bags. It arrives, and Nigel Mansell now has a suitcase to go with his considerable hand luggage, which includes his silver trophy from the day before.

"What do you reckon I should do with this?" he asked. "Do I need to declare it?" I thought surely not, but a Customs Official, unmoved by a British triumph, pointed him towards the red channel.

In the end they let him through without problem or payment, but they did keep him standing around for half an hour. In Italy they'd have been helping him carry it...

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