Ask Nigel: August 15

Dear Mike,
It depends how you look at these things. Is it better for an engine manufacturer to concentrate on one team only, as do, say, Mercedes and BMW, or to supply two, as do Honda?

The two German companies have no doubt that concentrating on one team is the way to go, whereas Honda argue - not altogether convincingly - that you can learn twice as much by going racing with two teams. On the strength of what we've seen this season, certainly, you'd have to say that Mercedes and, particularly, BMW, seem to have it right.

Ferrari, of course, go one better even than Honda, supplying not only their own factory team, but also Sauber and Prost. That said, the two 'customer' teams emphatically do not get Ferrari's state-of-the-art motors - as Arrows, apparently, are to get from Ford/Cosworth/Pi in 2002.

I have to say I find Niki Lauda's decision a strange one. He bases it on Honda's argument - that you learn twice as much by supplying two teams - but I know that most people in the Jaguar team are anything but impressed, and I'm not surprised. Had Adrian Newey gone through with his promise to Bobby Rahal and joined Jaguar Racing as technical director, I feel rather sure there would be little question of sharing 'their' engine with another team.

Fundamentally, then, I agree with you that Ford/Cosworth/Pi might do better to concentrate on trying to win races with Jaguar before supplying engines to another team, but it may well be that Lauda doubts Jaguar's ability to do that before 2002, at the earliest. Quite apart from anything else, if you're going to take on the likes of Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen, you need a true number one driver, and Eddie Irvine, good as he may be, is not that.




Dear Marcus,
"You know me - I want so much to do this. I still have incredible determination; I want to drive as much as when I started."

This was Jean Alesi about a month ago, when he was with Prost, before there was any question of a move to Jordan. All right, he might have wished to be at the other end of the grid, where one of his ability properly belonged, but still he loved driving for its own sake, and I'm sure he always will.

It's 12 years since he came into F1, at the French Grand Prix, where he was dauntingly quick, finishing fourth after running as high as second. The F1 world took due note, for rookies almost never perform at that level; as well as that, Alesi was driving not for one of the big teams, but for Tyrrell, whose great days were in the past. The following spring, he led much of the US Grand Prix in Phoenix, fought a brief but memorable battle with Ayrton Senna and finished second. At Monte Carlo, it was again Senna-Alesi.

Through that year, everyone was trying to sign him for 1991, and had Jean been a normal, pragmatic sort of F1 driver, he would have weighed up his options and signed for Williams-Renault. Had he done so, who knows how many Grands Prix he might have won? If Frank had been able to sign him for '91, after all, there would have been no need to sweet-talk Nigel Mansell out of his plan to retire. Williams was on the cusp of a period of domination, and Jean could have been in the pound seats.

As it was, heart ruled head - as perhaps it always will with Alesi - and he committed himself to Ferrari, where it may fairly be said he wasted five years in usually uncompetitive cars. Jean himself doesn't see it that way, of course, for he adored the team, and still says he has no regrets. You mention Williams, and you get a rueful shrug: yes, for sure it would have been better for his career, but...there's no point in thinking about it.

Just before Christmas one year, I was in Williams's office, when someone came in with a case of champagne. "It's from Jean!" Frank exclaimed, delightedly. "Isn't that something? The first present I've ever been given by a racing driver - and he doesn't even drive for me. Lovely bloke - and a remarkable driver. He'll be here eventually..."

It never happened, though. After Ferrari, Alesi went to Benetton for two years, after which the management decided it should in future go for 'yoof'. This is a policy which has yet to bear fruit. In 1996 and '97 Jean and Gerhard Berger scored 135 points for the team; in the almost four seasons since, Messrs Fisichella, Wurz and Button have amassed a total of 75.

To my mind, Alesi has always been among the very fastest drivers, but often overlooked is that, given a half-reliable car, he has also been among the best finishers. Thirteen times he made the podium in his two years with Benetton.

There followed a couple of seasons with Sauber, a team he enjoyed, but not one capable of doing him justice. Twice though - in Austria in '98, and Magny-Cours in '99 - Jean started from the front row, and on each occasion a treacherous track surface allowing his other-worldly car control to compensate for middling equipment.

Little needs to be said about his time with Prost. Alesi went there in positive frame of mind, for Alain was not only a man he revered, but also his close friend. The two of them talked of forging a really strong French team, even envisaging a role for Jean after his retirement as a driver.

As it is though, everything has gone wrong, not least because Prost's sponsors deserted him, and he has a huge Ferrari engine bill to finance. I hope that Alesi's defection to Jordan hasn't ended one of racing's true friendships, as with Bobby Rahal and Adrian Newey. Perhaps it's true you should never work with friends.

Over the last few years I have found it extraordinary that the top teams have continued to pass Jean by. Yes, he can be temperamental, and he tends to say what he thinks - but, in the end, even in this era do you hire a driver for his PR blandness or his speed?

Gerhard Berger, his longtime team mate at Ferrari and Benetton, remains a fan. "For me, Jean is underestimated. I think he's really a very good racing driver. He doesn't make many mistakes in a race, he has unbelievable car control, he has speed, he has experience, he's quick in the rain... And he's very good finisher.

"Jean's problem is that he has an image of being uncontrollable, but I don't think it's fair any more. I think the way he behaves depends entirely on how he is treated. I really would like to see him again in a winning car."

Is there some life in the old warrior yet? I have no doubt of it. The trick will be for Jordan to provide him with a competitive and reliable car - and to channel all that flair and commitment in a positive direction. Eddie Jordan says that only he knows how to get the best out of Jean Alesi. Now comes the time to prove it.




Dear Mike,
I'd agree with the opinion that Martin Brundle was one of the most intelligent drivers of his time - indeed, I think him among the sharpest people in the paddock to this day. Not much gets past Martin, believe me.

I like him very much, and always have - perhaps because we share a cynical sense of humour when it comes to F1. Every year we both stay at the Hotel de le Ville in Monza, and over dinner he is quite wonderful company. "I can't do accents," he always says, but it doesn't keep him from being one of the best raconteurs I know. A very good bloke.

As a driver, he was superb on his day, but not quite from the top drawer. After his epic F3 season in 1983, when he alone challenged Ayrton Senna on a regular basic - and sometimes beat him - a lot of people saw him as a future World Champion, and certainly his early F1 races - with Tyrrell - were hugely impressive. But he had a huge accident during practice at Dallas, severely damaging his ankles and feet (which, first thing in the morning, pain him to this day, incidentally), and I've always wondered how much effect that had on his subsequent career. I'm guessing here - I don't know.

Looking at some of the people who have 'won' a Grand Prix over time, it's a thorough injustice that Brundle never did. To some degree, it's because he was never in the right car at the right time - his one year with McLaren, for example, had to be the one when they were using Peugeot engines! - and, to some degree, too, he didn't help his own cause by not being the greatest qualifier. Martin was always infinitely better in the race.

In the McLaren-Peugeot, he was second to Michael Schumacher in the 1994 Monaco Grand Prix, and also, in the Benetton-Ford, second to Ayrton Senna at Monza in '92 - ahead of Schumacher, who was then his team mate.

I don't know if he's still saying it now, but for a long time Michael used to remark that Martin was the best team mate he'd ever had. Through that '92 season, Schumacher always beat Brundle in qualifying, but in the races Martin was quite often more effective.

If there was a race he should have won, it was probably the Canadian Grand Prix of that year. Towards the end, he was running second - having pulled clear of Michael - and catching Gerhard Berger's McLaren-Honda quite quickly, when his car's transmission broke. Still, a very fine racing driver, with a career to be proud of, and now, of course, a quite brilliant TV commentator.




Dear Steve,
Is eight years ago really 'the old days'? Well, maybe so...

You're quite right that, 'in the old days', Alain Prost's ability at setting up a car was unmatched, and contributed hugely to his four World Championships (should have been more...) and 51 Grand Prix wins.

However, time was when Grand Prix racing was an infinitely more sophisticated sport than it is today - not in terms of technology, of course, for technology is a burgeoning thing, and grows, like Topsy, with every passing year - but in terms of the race itself.

Nowadays, let's face it, what we have is a pretty crude form of racing - sprint-stop-sprint-stop, etc. Before the introduction of refuelling, it was necessary to set a car up so that it worked with a big fuel load (enough for 200 miles), at the beginning of a race, with a medium fuel load, for the middle section, and with almost no fuel load, for the closing stages.

In arriving at a set-up which would work in all these conditions, Prost was quite unequalled, as anyone at McLaren will tell you to this day. As he points out himself, when you had to have a 'compromise set-up', which would work pretty well at all stages of a race, inevitably some cars were better than others at different stages; thus - equally inevitably - there was considerably more opportunity for overtaking.

Don't get me wrong, set-up is still hugely important - for most of this season, in my opinion, it has been Juan Montoya's lack of F1 experience in this respect which has led to Ralf Schumacher usually being ahead of him - but, thanks to the fact that at any given time the cars are carrying far less fuel than they did, plus the fact that they're on fresh tyres (on that lighter fuel load) more often, arriving at a race set-up is less difficult than it was, not least because it's far closer to a qualifying set-up than used to be the case.

Is the inexperience of, say, Jenson Button a factor in the form he has shown this year? To some degree, perhaps, but last year at Williams he was often able to come up with a very good set-up, and had the confidence to go his own way, rather than copy what Ralf was doing. No, I think Jenson's form has more to do with the fact that he's driving a thoroughly uncompetitive car - and not as quickly as his team mate, Giancarlo Fisichella.




Dear Neil,
Ye Gods, what a question!

I'm not sure I'd like to answer - in public, anyway - which great racing drivers, past or present, 'pose the greatest risk to fellow road users', but in terms of risk to my car...I'd be reluctant, I think, to lend it to a good many of them.

There is, however, a clear winner: I would never, under any circumstances, have lent my car to Gilles Villeneuve. He was a good friend of mine, and I thought the world of him, but there are limits!

Gilles's own 'company' Ferrari 308GTB, I remember, always looked as if it had just come through a battle zone; there were always little dents at the corners, scrapes here and there. This was a car that was used.

One time, I remember, I drove with him - in a hire car, I hasten to add - down the coast road from the Rio track to the town, and the experience is etched in my memory for all time. As when he was in the race car, he knew only one way to drive, and that was flat out, regardless of traffic, regardless of conditions. About halfway down, it began to dawn on me that this was the most freakishly gifted driver on earth, but as we dived this way and that, overtaking inside and outside, it was anything but a relaxing experience.

Not that it bothered Gilles, of course. Amid all the shrieking of tyres, the cadence braking, and so on, he continued to chatter away, blithely unaware that most people aren't used to travelling this way. He dropped me off finally at my hotel, where I alighted, shaking, and began ransacking my pockets for a cigarette.

Late the next afternoon, I ran into him in the paddock. He was just leaving. "Need a lift today?" he grinned. I didn't!




Dear Roger,
I didn't start working as an F1 journalist until 1971, so I never knew Mike Spence, but I did see him racing many times, and find it sad that now he is almost a forgotten man.

After a successful career in Formula Junior (as F3 was known at one time), Spence was invited by Colin Chapman to stand in for the injured Trevor Taylor at the 1963 Italian Grand Prix, and although he retired in the race, he impressed Chapman by qualifying ninth.

The following year, the same thing happened again. Lotus's second driver was now Peter Arundell, and when Arundell was severely injured at Reims, Spence was again asked to step in as Jim Clark's team mate. In 1965 he beat Jackie Stewart to win the International Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, and also won the non-championship South African Grand Prix in 1966, before giving up the Lotus drive to the now recovered Arundell.

At that point, Spence went off to drive for Tim Parnell's private F1 team, and stayed there through 1967, a year in which he also co-drove (with Phil Hill) the sensational Chaparral 2F in the World Sports Car Championship. Together they won the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch.

For 1968 Mike joined the BRM factory team, as team mate to Pedro Rodriguez, and in the early races of the year - notably at the Daily Express Trophy at Silverstone - he was startlingly quick, suddenly looking like more than an ordinarily good Grand Prix driver.

After the death of Clark, at Hockenheim in April, Spence was invited to take over Jimmy's Lotus 56 turbine car in the Indianapolis 500. From the moment he stepped into the car, he was blindingly quick, and considered a likely winner of the race, having set the fastest lap ever run at the Speedway.

Then, late one afternoon, he was asked to do a few shakedown laps in team mate Greg Weld's car, and, although not running especially fast, for some reason lost control at the entry to turn one, and hit the wall. Although the car was not badly damaged, the right front wheel came back into the cockpit, and Spence received severe head injuries, from which he died a few hours later.

It was month to the day since Clark's death. Exactly a month later Lodovico Scarfiotti lost his life, and exactly a month after that it was the turn of Jo Schlesser. An unspeakably perilous time in motor racing.

Spence, a gentle and courteous man, is remembered well by all who knew him, and what a tragedy it was that he should die just as his career was really beginning to take off. A 'natural' or a 'grafter'? More the former, I think.


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