Ask Nigel: April 25

Dear Nigel,
I really relish your column, and read your online Q&As religiously. I am a great fan of Jacques Villeneuve, but do you think that by being so committed to BAR, he has given up all hope of becoming World Champion again? If you were his manager, how would you plan his career from now on?
Youssef Hammad, Cairo, Egypt

Dear Youssef,
Glad you like the columns. Thank you.

I'm also a fan of Jacques Villeneuve, and the more I think about it the more I'm glad that he won the World Championship when he did, in 1997. Since then, he's had a middling year with Supertec engines at Williams (1998), and two and a bit seasons with BAR, the first an utter disaster, the second a bit less so, and no points so far in the third. These have been what could - and should - have been the great years of his career.

In truth, that's by no means his fault - or not only his fault, anyway. At the end of '98, he figured there was little to choose between Williams and BAR, for both would be using Supertec motors in '99, and he chose to go to BAR, partly because it was the brainchild of his mentor, Craig Pollock, and also because the money was better.

Jacques liked the challenge of going with something new, and proving the doubters wrong, but it was a very expensive - except in financial terms - decision. It takes a long time for a new 'created' team to come together, and in BAR's case took even longer than most anticipated.

His problem over the last three years has been that, for a driver of his quality, only McLaren-Mercedes and Ferrari have been worth driving for. Not too many would dissent from the view that Villeneuve belonged in the top three, along with Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen, but instead of being able to fight with those two, weekend to weekend, he has struggled with an uncompetitive car. In that respect, Michael and Mika must have been unable to believe their luck.

This year JV must be looking wistfully at what he left behind at Williams - a team that was always going to come back to the front one day.

What does the future hold for him now? Williams, with Ralf Schumacher, Juan Montoya (and Jenson Button) on the payroll, look set for a good long time, so Jacques' best hope must be that either M. Schumacher or Hakkinen retire in the near future, leaving a vacancy at Ferrari or McLaren, in which case he might - might - be offered a drive there.

It could happen. Villeneuve is only 30 years old, after all. The problem is that a new generation - guys like Raikkonen - has come on the scene, and down the road this is where the top teams may be looking. I truly hope he gets into a top team again, and soon, but for now, one has to say, it would do his cause no harm to start getting the better of Olivier Panis...





Dear Achim,
Sorry to say this, but I have almost no interest in touring car racing - particularly when it involves things like Vauxhall Astras! I know the DTM is not like that, but still it doesn't really capture my imagination. The only form of 'tin top' racing that has ever appealed to me is NASCAR.

Keke Rosberg is indeed an old friend, and I did once go to an ITC race at Magny-Cours, largely because he wore me down, insisting I had to go to one of the races sooner or later. I quite enjoyed it, too - it was a very fine weekend, in the 'social' sense - but it didn't make me want to go to any more, I'm afraid.

Is the modern DTM a credible breeding ground for F1? It could be, I suppose - guys like Giancarlo Fisichella and Dario Franchitti did well in the ITC, and progressed to F1 and CART, respectively. But I'm starting to wonder - with the 'steer and brake' F1 cars we have now - if any breeding ground beyond karting is necessary...




Dear Norman,
Off the top of my head, the most underrated drivers I can think of are: Hermann Lang, the best Grand Prix driver of 1939, whose best years were lost to the war; Tony Brooks, a truly great driver who was at times quicker than Stirling Moss in equal cars, and who has never received his due; Chris Amon, who should have been World Champion in 1968, yet never had the luck even to win a single Grand Prix; Francois Cevert who, by the time of his death in 1973, was the equal of Jackie Stewart at Tyrrell.

That's four. To my mind, however, the most underrated driver of all time was Brian Redman, who could drive anything. A modest, unassuming bloke, with a self-deprecatory sense of humour, Brian co-drove factory Porsches with Jo Siffert, and was often the faster of the two. He raced, and often beat, Mario Andretti in the American Formula 5000 series. Standing in for Peter Revson in the McLaren team at Monaco in 1972, he finished a lap ahead of the other regular team driver, Denny Hulme. I could go on...

Redman's personality dictated that he and Formula 1 were never going to be happy bedfellows. After Revson's death, early in 1974, he joined the Shadow team, but after only a handful of races he gave them back their money, and said he preferred to race elsewhere: F1, he said, was too 'commercialised' for his taste - and this is more than 25 years ago!

For me, Brian was just a fantastic racing driver. One night at dinner, many years ago, I asked Denis Jenkinson who he would like to go with on the Mille Miglia, were the event still run. "Brian Redman," he said at once. "He'd be as quick as Siffert - and he'd finish, too..."




Dear Martin,
No, I can't put my finger on what has gone wrong with the team they call Jaguar Racing - if I could, I imagine they'd be paying me a lot of money to let them know...

On the face of it, yes, the whole is less than the sum of its parts - but what are its parts? First of all, I think it's worth pointing out that the current management regime, Bobby Rahal and Niki Lauda, have not been in the job long, and I don't think it's fair to judge them yet. A lot of things were already in place for the 2001 season by the time they arrived, and although certain personnel changes were made, it was already too late materially to change the course of the team's season.

Jaguar's arrival in F1, at the beginning of 2000, was handled ineptly, you'd have to say - and that's being kind. There was PR overkill of which Alastair Campbell might have been proud, but if you trumpet your arrival to that extent, give the impression you're going to take on the world, and beat it, you're asking for trouble. As with the BAR fiasco the year before, many in the paddock took positive pleasure from watching Jaguar embarrass themselves.

Can Jaguar succeed in time? I'm sure they can, yes, but for that to happen there will have to be clear evidence of everyone pulling in the same direction. Although the whole deal is owned by Ford, I hear tell of power struggles behind the scenes - I'm talking not about the management of the race team, but of individuals in board rooms - and if they be true, they can only destabilise Jaguar Racing, and its future. Rahal and Lauda are not to be envied in their task: it's a huge one, and I wish them well.




Dear John,
I never knew Piers Courage, coming into the world of Formula 1 a year or so after he was gone from it. But over time I've heard so many tales of the man - particularly in conversations with Frank Williams - as to feel great regret that we never met.

Certainly, I well remember the relief we felt when they announced, at Zandvoort that day, that everyone was all right. It hadn't looked that way. At the end of the 23rd lap two drivers - Jo Siffert and Piers Courage - were missing, and on the far side of the circuit a huge waft of black smoke billowed into the sky.

It was fully an hour later when the announcer said there had been 'a mistake' earlier on. "We have to tell you," he said, "that Piers Courage died in his car."

This was June 21 1970. Courage had been running eighth in the Dutch Grand Prix, at the wheel of the de Tomaso run by Frank Williams Racing Cars, an F1 team in its fledgling years. "In every respect," Frank said, "life got very tough the next day.

"I can't tell you that I considered getting out of the business. Not for a second. But after Piers died, it was a matter of going racing for different reasons. I was devastated. And, looking back, I believe every single one of his contemporaries came to his funeral, which says a lot about the bloke.

"In the seventies," Frank murmured, "we buried a lot of drivers, didn't we?"

At the time of Courage's accident, less than three weeks had passed since the death, in a midweek testing accident at Goodwood, of Bruce McLaren. Jacky Ickx had miraculously come out of a blazing Ferrari at Jarama, and Denny Hulme had suffered burns at Indianapolis.

On the rostrum at Zandvoort Jochen Rindt showed no pleasure in victory, for Piers had been a close friend. And at Monza, less than three months later, Jochen, too, would die. An awful year, as Williams remembered.

"When I talk about Piers, I have to be very careful," FW said, "not to make it sound like an eulogy. The first thing about him was that he viewed almost everything he did with an amused eye. He was very good at a dinner party, for example, because he could sit with complete strangers, and talk to them about anything - half of it nonsense, of course, as always at dinner parties.

"He had a wonderful sense of humour, and delighted in telling stories against himself - though never at the expense of others. I mention this first, because I'd come from a poor background, and didn't have anything like his privileges or self-confidence at that time - I was mesmerised by this performance he would put on! And, rightly or wrongly, much impressed by it."

Piers, indeed, came from a privileged background. The eldest son of the chairman of Courage Breweries, he was educated at Eton, and knew nothing beyond huge wealth - until deciding one day to abandon accountancy (for which he was hardly suited) for a career in motor racing.

"Piers was desperately keen to succeed as a racing driver," said Frank, "but it was a long time before anyone took him seriously. His background rather worked against him, because people thought he couldn't be tough enough. And at the same time they assumed he had access to family money, but that wasn't the case: his parents never supported his racing. He was like the rest of us - broke.

"He had started racing with a Lotus 7, then decided in 1964 he would have a go at F3, which he did for two seasons. It was a very hand-to-mouth existence, I can tell you, a matter of setting off to some little race in East Germany or Sicily or somewhere, towing the car behind his old Ford Zephyr. He used to crash fairly regularly in '64, I remember, and you'd probably doubt me if I told you we used to try and straighten out the chassis by pushing it against a wall with another car! But that's what we did...

"Very much the English gent, though, Piers, even when he was penniless. We'd share the driving of his Zephyr, towing to and from the races, and when it was my turn to drive he'd sleep on the back seat - but always in pyjamas! In fact, many's the time we stopped on an autobahn at first light, and Piers would head off to the gents with his toothbrush, still in his pyjamas. The locals used to think that very strange, but I'm sure he never noticed."

It would be very easy to get the impression that Courage was merely a dilettante, playing at being a racing driver. But Piers, according to Frank, was always very dedicated to his career.

"Because he was so different from the popular conception of a racing driver - especially these days - some people found it difficult to take him seriously. But he thought a great deal about whatever car he happened to be driving. He may not have been a great test driver, but he was extremely good at working with an engineer. In '69 it was essentially just him and me, after all, and I relied on him almost totally for guidance.

"It was a lovely year, that. We had a Brabham chassis, Cosworth engines, and Dunlop tyres. Given the relative paucity of opposition that season, you usually got some points if you finished. We were second at Monte Carlo, second at Watkins Glen, and so on.

"That was the year Piers really found himself as a racing driver. He'd done Formula 1 before, with the Parnell BRMs, but it hadn't worked out very well. At the end of 1967 he came to me and suggested we do F2 together, with a Brabham he knew I had hanging around. He proposed splitting the expenses, and I said, 'Piers, that's great - you're on!' He got his confidence back with that, and then we decided to do F1 together the following year."

Over the winter of 1967/68 Courage decided to put together a team for the Tasman Series, running an F2 McLaren, with a loan from his father, another from his bank manager. Usually, he was hard pressed to stay with Jimmy Clark's Lotus and Chris Amon's Ferrari, but at Longford, a long-defunct true road circuit in Tasmania, appalling weather conditions worked his way. The little McLaren, on Dunlop 'wets', was ideal for the task at hand.

Race morning was chaotic. The circuit at one point crossed over a wooden railway bridge, which was set alight by vandals, then put out. Then a torrential downpour waterlogged the circuit, after which the bridge caught fire once more, needing further extinguishing. The drivers began to debate the wisdom of starting the race at all at this, a track lethal even in perfect weather.

Discussions took place, and there was necessarily some pressure on those taking part: the race, if it were to go ahead, had to be over by a given time, because the track also went over a level crossing...

Courage described it thus: "Even the most feckless racing driver is unwilling to compete with an express train travelling at right angles to himself. This was the only time I have known the timing of a race to be governed by Bradshaw." A nice laconic touch he had. And he won the race, too, with Clark second.

After the F1 successes of 1969, Williams reached agreement with de Tomaso to run a new Dallara-designed car for 1970, and of course hoped Courage would drive it.

"These days," Williams said, "we see drivers who are...very commercially-minded about their five- or 10-year lifespan in F1, let's put it that way. Piers didn't view it quite like that - he wasn't out to make as much as he could while he could.

"For 1970, he got an offer from Ferrari, for both Fl and sports car racing, and he turned it down. He had already verbally agreed to drive for me in F1, and for Alfa Romeo in sports cars, and never thought of going back on his word. The money, in fact, worked out at about the same, but he well knew what moving to Ferrari would do for his career. For the drivers of today, it would have been no contest, I'm sure.

"That period with the de Tomaso was sadly brief, but Piers really flowered as a racing driver at that time. The car was terrible at first - overweight, lousy handling and so on - but after the first race, at Kyalami, he sat down with Dallara and the others, and went through it, point by point. It was like a two-hour debrief, which was unheard of in those days. And the second version of the car was a huge improvement. By mid-season we were getting to the stage of becoming really competitive with it."

There was always an impression at the time that Courage personified his name perhaps too much for his own good. "Piers was very brave, certainly," Frank agreed, "but very skilful, too. He wasn't as good as Jochen Rindt - whom I personally still regard as the best
there's ever been - but he was very much a top Grand Prix driver by 1970."

A mighty unusual one, however. "It seems to me that one of the advantages of a privileged education, like Piers had at Eton, is that, even if you're not going to be a brilliant physicist or whatever, they try and instill into you the importance in life of history, literature, the world around you.

"I think of Piers, for example, whenever I hear Beethoven's Sixth Symphony - the Pastoral - because it was his favourite piece of music. And in '69 and '70 I took to travelling with books of poetry, to be ready for him! Even so, he could always outquote me, which maddened me...

"Racing was a lot of fun then. It still is now, in some ways, but back then it was like being on a high all the time. Piers' career - and the team's career - were coming along very strongly. Everything was looking good for the future. Ford had just bought out de Tomaso, so we had high hopes of more finance and technical backing. We seemed to have it made.

"And here was this society golden boy driving for the team! He was a great-looking fellow, very amusing, devastatingly charming, beautiful wife, title, all that stuff. Sally, his wife, was just like him - nutty as a fruitcake! A very pretty girl, but a very tough-minded one, too.

"I particularly recall one afternoon with them, in Monte Carlo in 1970. We were sitting in a little cheap old cafe, with everyone stopping by to say hello to them, and I remember thinking that this life was so beautiful and happy for them that it just couldn't go on. I wasn't thinking in terms of his getting killed in a racing car, or anything of the kind; just that their life was almost too good to be true..."




Dear Gary,
I well remember Silverstone '77, too, and although Renault's debut was a little chaotic in some ways, still Jean-Pierre Jabouille's qualifying time was only 1.6 seconds away from James Hunt's pole lap.

That first turbocharged F1 car had the most appalling throttle lag at that time, but I do remember something Mario Andretti said to me after a practice session. "It may look like a joke now - but, I'm telling you, that's the future. Once it gets in a straight line, and the turbo's kicked in, that thing is unbelievably quick..."

He was right, wasn't he? It took a couple of years for Renault to win a race - Jabouille at Dijon in '79 - but, in terms of horsepower, the writing was on the wall for the normally-aspirated brigade long before that. In time, everyone had to go the turbo route: simply put, a turbocharged 1.5-litre motor was way more powerful than a 3-litre 'atmospheric' engine. In the latter days of the turbo era, as much as 1500bhp was coaxed from the Renault V6 for qualifying...

Undoubtedly, though, Renault's greatest engines were its V10s, first in 3.5, then in 3-litre form. They had it all: power, driveability, and reliability, and they took Mansell, Prost, Hill and Villeneuve to World Championships with Williams.

Now, the Regie is back, with Benetton (which next year becomes Equipe Renault), but the radical 111-degree V10 in current use is proving a consummate disappointment, in terms of both power (it is reckoned to be at least 100bhp down on such as Ferrari and Mercedes, to say nothing of BMW) and reliability.

Earlier this year I asked the technical director of another manufacturer if his company had considered such a configuration for its engine. "No!" he answered at once. "We can see the advantages, in terms of low centre of gravity, and so on, but there are big packaging problems with such a wide engine - and we also suspect that it...may be subject to flexing..." This last, I am told, is proving to be the case.

All that said, Renault's previous record speaks for itself, and gives cause for optimism for the future. The company is not coming back to F1 for reasons of altruism, and in time, if necessary, I'm sure they'll junk this motor, and start again. Whatever, I'm quite sure we haven't seen the end of Renault as a major force in F1.