Ask Nigel: April 4

Hello Nigel,
If you had the opportunity to ask one (and only one) question to any Formula 1 driver past or present, living or not, and you were guaranteed a completely honest answer. Who would the driver be and what question would you ask?
Tom Maule, Gothenburg, Sweden

Dear Tom,
Good question - the problem is keeping it down to one! I would like, for example, to be able to ask Juan Manuel Fangio if he 'allowed' Mercedes team mate Stirling Moss to win the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree. Fangio - being a gentleman - always maintained that Moss simply beat him that day, but Stirling himself has never really known, one way or the other.

I would also like to ask Didier Pironi - being guaranteed an honest answer - if he genuinely believed that his Ferrari team mate Gilles Villeneuve was racing with him at Imola in 1982, when he nicked the win from Gilles on the last lap, and set off the chain of events which contributed - I have no doubt of this - to Villeneuve's death at Zolder a fortnight later.

Then there is Montreal in 1991, when Mansell's leading Williams-Renault ground to a halt halfway round the final lap. Nigel himself always maintained that the engine 'simply died', but members of his team suggested that he was so busy waving - prematurely - to the crowd that he forgot to change down quickly enough for the hairpin, thus allowing the revs to drop to the point that the engine cut...

I think, on balance, though, that my question would be directed to Michael Schumacher. Ah, but which one? It would be tempting, for example, to ask, "Did you deliberately take Damon Hill out in the championship-deciding race at Adelaide in 1994?"

In the end, though, I'd stick with, "Was it true that - just before your contact with Jacques Villeneuve in the championship-deciding race at Jerez in 1997 - your Ferrari had developed a serious problem which would have kept you from finishing the race?"




Dear Patrick,
Everyone tells me that Prague is the most beautiful city, but unfortunately I've never been there, so I don't know what kind of a backdrop it would make for a Grand Prix.

Although Monaco is indeed the most famous street race, the 'old' Long Beach - as used for F1 from 1976-83 - was a much better track for racing. That blast down Shoreline Drive, with a tight corner at the end of it, was a sure guarantee of overtaking, and there was always plenty of it.

I have to say, though, that in my opinion the best street circuit was Montjuich, in the hills above Barcelona. Four Spanish Grands Prix were run there, in 1969, '71, '73 and '75. It wasn't strictly a 'street' track, in fact, for it was made up of public roads around a park, rather than through a city, but it had the feel of a quick Monaco, and I still believe it was the most exciting place to watch Grand Prix cars that I ever visited. Certainly, it was a pretty dangerous place, even by the standards of the day, but the drivers adored it.

I never cared for the street circuit in Detroit - probably, to some degree, because it was in Detroit! - but I liked the track used for the one-off Dallas Grand Prix in 1984. It was quick, for that kind of circuit, and a good test of a driver's skill, but in the predictably roasting weather - Texas in July, after all - the improperly cured track surface broke up badly, and led to a chaotic race. For all that, it attracted a huge crowd, and I always thought it a pity that we never went back there.

As far as dream venues are concerned... I've lived in, or near, London for more than 30 years, and often, when I've driven through Hyde Park, I've fantasised about a Grand Prix there, taking in some of Park Lane, Marble Arch, and so on.

It'll never happen, of course, because - apart from anything else - effectively to close down London for three or four days is inconceivable. Unfortunately, the same goes for Paris, a place I love, and New York, which is my favourite city anywhere on earth. A Grand Prix through Central Park, taking in some of Fifth Avenue... now that really would be something else again.





Dear Crawford,
I'm glad you like the column - maybe it's time you got your boss interested in Formula 1...

In light of the fact that you wrote in before last weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix, it's interesting - and timely - that you raise the subject of Williams, BMW, Michelin and the team's drivers.

Patrick Head is not a man to make false promises, and nor is he one to make excuses. The last three seasons have been purgatory for him and Frank Williams, both of them men accustomed to winning, and winning pretty often. The last victory by a Williams driver - Jacques Villeneuve - was at the Nurburgring in September 1997.

In all truth, the team's subsequent slide from absolute competitiveness was not a real surprise. Renault, its engine supplier for so many years, withdrew (albeit only temporarily) from F1 at the end of '97, and although Williams continued with the same V10 (now badged as a Supertec) for the next two seasons, it quickly became outdated, for now the pace of research and development was nothing like what it had been.

On power, then, they were outgunned - and they knew, what's more, that there was little likelihood of that changing in 2000, the first year of their partnership with BMW. Not surprisingly, BMW chose to be conservative in its first year back, but towards the end of the season there were distinct signs of progress.

This year's engine - absolutely brand new - went from the beginnings of the design stage to installation in a car for testing in an astounding six months, and this time the gloves were off. The results of that labour we have already seen. Jacques Villeneuve, discussing his accident with Ralf Schumacher at Melbourne, commented that he hadn't been able to get near the Williams-BMW in a straight line. "They've got a huge engine in that thing!" he exclaimed. And Jacques, remember, has a Honda motor in his BAR.

As well as that, it is clear that this year's Williams is the best for some years. "We're fairly confident," Head said before the first race, "that we've been able to close the performance gap to McLaren and Ferrari." When Patrick says something like that, you take notice.

In the first two races - Melbourne and Sepang - the car was pretty competitive, but undoubtedly suffered from a lack of downforce. New aerodynamic bits, installed for Interlagos, were adjudged a great success by both drivers.

Now, Michelin. Thus far, all those running on the French tyres have noticed a period of 'drop off' in performance after a few laps, after which the grip comes back (for a very long time, it must be said). Michelin unquestionably have the expertise and experience to put that right - but let's keep a sense of perspective here: Interlagos, which Montoya convincingly led for a long time, was only the company's third race since returning to F1 after an absence of going on 20 years. I think they've done a quite sensational job so far - on none of the three tracks, after all, had they been able to test.

It seems to me that what Williams has at the moment is a pretty good car, which will get better and better, and the most powerful engine around. In Brazil, Montoya was on a one-stop strategy, yet still he was able to blitz Schumacher's Ferrari up the hill at the end of the lap - and Michael, on a two-stop strategy, must have been significantly lighter. On the tyre front, we will move soon to circuits where Michelin have been able to test, to acquire data. It all looks mighty promising...

On top of everything else, of course, Williams has two real chargers driving for them, two young guys guaranteed to keep the other from going to sleep. Both Ralf Schumacher and Juan Montoya are super-quick, and both are well capable of winning races - very soon.

I have not been alone in suspecting for some time that, in Montoya, we have the next truly great Grand Prix driver. After Sunday, it's just possible that the idea may even have crossed Michael's mind...




Dear Ian,
Yes, we all have our different reasons for raising sporting personalities to heroic status. Among my heroes have been Stirling Moss, Jean Behra, Mario Andretti, Keke Rosberg and Gilles Villeneuve, not least because, in each case, one had the impression they had been put on earth to drive racing cars - they absolutely personified 'racing driver', out of the car as well as in it.

Behra and Villeneuve appealed to me because they were in the great tradition of the 'abnormally brave', and would take things right to the edge, and sometimes beyond it. I'm well aware that, in absolute terms, to be too brave is considered, if anything, a fault in a racing driver, but I'm invariably lost in admiration for those who are.

Physical courage is one thing, however, moral courage quite another. In the appalling conditions at Adelaide in 1989, for example, I deeply admired Alain Prost's decision to park his McLaren at the end of the opening lap. He knew very well that he would be slagged off for it, have his manhood called into question, and all the rest of it, but still he did it.

Why? Because the rain was so bad that day that the drivers were effectively heading into a wall of nothing, and hoping for the best. Prost knew better than most the consequences of zero visibility at 180mph: it was in just those conditions, during practice at Hockenheim in 1982, that Didier Pironi's Ferrari hit Prost's Renault, vaulted over it, and somersaulted down the road. Pironi suffered the dreadful leg injuries which brought his racing career to an end.

There could have been more of that in Adelaide. Remember how Ayrton Senna, lapping Martin Brundle, drove into the Brabham hard enough to tear off his McLaren's left front wheel? Simply, Senna had no idea that Brundle was there.

Before that race, most of the drivers were of the opinion that conditions were too bad to race in, and when Prost announced his intention to quit after a single lap, several others said they would do the same. None did. "I saw Alain going in," said Gerhard Berger, "and I didn't have the balls to do the same. It was the only time in my racing career that I felt truly ashamed..."

Niki Lauda did the same thing, of course, in the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji - and on that occasion there was even more at stake, for it was the last race of the season, and Lauda was in a fight with James Hunt for the World Championship. Nevertheless, after two laps, he parked it, saying that the monsoon conditions were unacceptable.

The Ferrari people, thinking to spare him embarrassment, offered to 'invent' a fault on the car, a reason for his retirement, but Niki would have none of that. He had retired because he considered the conditions absurd, and needed no manufactured excuse, thank you very much.

A little over three months earlier, Lauda had been given the Last Rites, following an accident at the 'old' Nurburgring, in which he had been dreadfully burned. While in hospital, he necessarily missed the Austrian and Dutch Grands Prix - yet still he led the World Championship, with four races to go.

At Monza, six weeks to the day after his accident, Niki was back in his Ferrari. At the end of practice, on the opening day, I happened to be in the Ferrari pit when he climbed from his car. I watched him take off his helmet, then gingerly peel off his balaclava - which was stuck to his face with dried blood, his burns still raw and barely healed.

Lauda qualified fifth for the Italian Grand Prix, and he finished fourth. It remains the bravest thing I have ever seen in motor racing. So if you want to talk about 'heroic status', I will put Niki at the top of any list.




Dear Peter,
I'm in absolute agreement with you. In many ways, for me Lotus stopped being Lotus after the death of Colin Chapman, but there remained some good years on the horizon, when Peter Warr was running the team, and Ayrton Senna was the number one driver. After Senna went off to McLaren, for 1988, Lotus degenerated into something of a joke, and if in the end I was sorry to see the team disappear, it was entirely because of what it had once meant.

In just the same way, I wouldn't wish to see the name of Brabham return, in a new guise, or Surtees or BRM or any of the other teams which have fallen by the wayside. The past is the past.




Dear Nigel,
Like you, I am somewhat amazed that Ferrari should employ nearly 700 people on its Grand Prix racing programme, but why are you appalled, I wonder? If Ferrari has the budget - and let there be no doubts about that! - it can surely employ as many folk as it feels are necessary to do the job properly. Why, who knows how many there are simply engaged in work on software?

When did things start to mushroom? Emphatically not in the 1960s! This is John Cooper - whose team won the World Championship in 1959 and '60 - talking about those days.

"First prize in a Grand Prix was always about a grand, of which 45 percent went to us, 45 percent to the driver, and 10 percent to the mechanics. We only used to take two or three mechanics to the races, you know, and they had to drive the transporter and everything, then come back and rebuild the cars!

"It all seems terribly simple, looking back. I mean, 'sorting' cars in those days meant getting gear ratios right, and trying alternative roll-bars. Sometimes we'd play with different wheel off-sets and things, but that was about it!"

Now here is Patrick Head, talking about Williams. "There's been quite an expansion over the last five years, and lot of people regret that, because it's quite difficult to keep the sort of smaller company feeling - that's one of the challenges of management. We're still less than 400, though, and I'm talking about the entire company.

"The big challenge is to stop occasionally, and say, 'If we need more achievement, how can we be better organised?' Such a lot of the time, you're rushing around, chasing your own tail. Frank often says, 'Go and have a look at FW14B - the active ride car from 1992'. It had power steering, four-channel ABS braking, traction control, computer-controlled suspension, and so on... We had a total of 195 people then, and we designed, developed and raced that car, and did more testing mileage than we do now.

"The thing that's different is that, once we'd got the car reliable, we didn't develop it as much during the year as we do now. I would say our productivity per man - whether it be by design or manufacture - was higher than it is now, and it's interesting to try and understand it. There are all sorts of complexities now that we didn't have to deal with then: for example, there was very, very much less crash and impact testing in those days. And you need people working on next year's car when you're racing the current one.

"When I think of the old days, though... when we started Williams Grand Prix Engineering, for the '77 season, I think we had eight employees at the start of the season, and 11 at the end of it! Mind you, we were running a 'customer' March that we developed through the year.

"By the end of 1978, we had 18 people, and by the beginning of '79 it was up to 32. When we went racing in 1978, if you turned up at the factory door, there'd be a secretary and a floor cleaner and one machinist - and that was about it; everyone else was out at a circuit somewhere..."

So there you are. The whole thing really began to grow through the '80s, but it wasn't until the '90s - the electronic '90s - that employment levels began to mushroom. Who knows what we'll have in another 10 years' time?

If you have a question for Nigel, e-mail it to AskNigel@haynet.com.