Ask Nigel: August 8

Dear Angus,
As I wrote in Fifth Column last week, the Jordan/Frentzen affair dominated paddock gossip at Hockenheim, and not surprisingly so. In these days of 100-page driver contracts, it's pretty rare for a team and driver to split in the middle of a season - particularly when it's immediately before that driver's home Grand Prix...

I did hear that Eddie Jordan suggested to Frentzen that they end the contract after the German Grand Prix, but that Heinz in effect said, 'Forget it - if it's over, it's over now'. As EJ refused to discuss the subject all that weekend, and - to no one's surprise - Frentzen himself didn't come to Hockenheim, that story remains in the realms of conjecture.

Undeniably, though, everyone - including, it must be said, some members of the Jordan team - was pretty amazed by the turn of events, although perhaps there had been a clue in the team's post-race press release at Silverstone, Frentzen's last race with the team.

'Official' press releases are invariably so bland as to be hardly worth reading, but on this occasion the quote from EJ finished like this: "Jarno's race was unfortunately over almost before it started, and it seems that seventh place was the best Heinz was able to achieve today." The paragraph didn't end with three dots, but it might as well have done.

It's true enough that Frentzen wasn't having the greatest of seasons, usually being nowhere near Trulli in qualifying (although I noticed that the gap between them, usually negligible in the early races, widened considerably following the return, at Barcelona, of the electronic 'gizmos', including traction control, which Heinz utterly detests).

That said, his performances for Jordan have been invariably sparkling compared with those of Damon Hill in 1999. When you say, however, that 'Damon wanted to retire, and EJ made him continue to the end of the season', I'm not entirely confident you have it the right way round...

I hated watching Damon in his last season, frankly, because - in the car, and out of it - he looked like a man who simply didn't want to be in Formula 1 any more. He did his own reputation no service at all, and I kept wishing he would accept the 'financial shortfall' and stop - as, frankly, did most members of the Jordan team.

Apart from anything else, no one wanted to see Damon hurt himself - which can happen in these circumstances. What I hoped was that he would knock it on the head as James Hunt had done (after the Monaco Grand Prix in 1979). When I talked to James about that, years later, this is what he said.

"Driving a racing car, when you've got the ability, is like riding a bike. You don't get worse at it. It's only your head that moves around, right?

"In my book, driving at ten-tenths is no more dangerous than at seven-tenths - all it means, after all, is that you're going 2-3mph faster at any given point on a circuit. And, frankly, an accident at 167mph isn't going to be any better than one at 170. For me, driving at the limit didn't change the risk. Whenever I made mistakes on my own, it was when I wasn't trying - I wasn't concentrating hard enough. So it was always more likely I'd shunt in those circumstances."

Thankfully, Damon got through his last season unscathed, but still it was a rather inglorious end to a successful career.




Dear Brian,
The relationship between Williams and Honda, which began late in 1983, and ended after the 1987 season, was immensely successful, as you say. Between them, Keke Rosberg, Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet won a great many races for the partnership, which ended in a World Championship for Nelson.

In that last season ('87) Williams and Honda were together, though, Honda also supplied engines to Lotus, whose number one driver was Ayrton Senna. Although Senna won only a couple of races - Monaco and Detroit - in Lotus's radical 'active suspension' 99T, he quickly built up a strong rapport with the Honda engineers. It was already known that Ayrton was going to McLaren for 1988 (alongside Alain Prost), and when Honda reached agreement with Ron Dennis, they thereby snared the two best drivers in the world.

Honda also had a close relationship with Piquet, who announced as early as August 1987 that he would be leaving Williams at the end of the season, and replacing Senna at Lotus.

At this stage of the game, therefore, it looked as if Honda would be supplying three teams for 1988: Williams, Lotus and McLaren. Such an arrangement was hardly feasible. In future, clearly their priority would be McLaren, with Lotus as a second string, and cynics - yes, I'm afraid there are such people in F1 - saw their attempts to persuade Frank Williams to take Satoru Nakajima as nothing more than a ploy to end the relationship.

No one tells FW and Patrick Head who their drivers shall be, and they duly refused to countenance running a journeyman in their second car, simply because he was Japanese. Lotus, however, had been rather more malleable in that respect, having already run Nakajima in 1987, and so the agreement was simply renewed for '88, with Satoru now partnering Piquet, rather than Senna.

Thus, Honda kept down to two teams for 1988, McLaren and Lotus, while Williams were obliged to spend a season with the uncompetitive Judd V8 motor, and scored not a single victory. Even now, nearly 15 years on, in Williams circles you will find that Honda is not necessarily the most popular engine manufacturer in the paddock...




Dear Mark,
By and large, I agree with you that there is way too much whingeing by today's F1 drivers, but I'm a little surprised that you bring up Barrichello and Coulthard at Hockenheim - perhaps this was an interview on TV that I, being there, didn't see.

At the conference in the press room, Rubens had no criticism of David whatever. Quite the opposite, in effect. Twice he had overtaken him on the outside of the right-hander into the stadium, and undeniably this required a degree of cooperation from DC.

"I've known David since our Formula 3 days," Rubens commented, "and we have respect for each other. It was tight, but he gave me enough room." That seemed to me a refreshing change from the moaning we so often hear on these occasions.




Dear Mark,
It's quite true that the Superlicence system has not over time been totally successful in keeping out drivers of... let's say, less than stellar ability (such as, say, Giovanni Lavaggi and Jean-Denis Deletraz), but it's better than nothing at all.

Undoubtedly, in years gone by, when a 'competitions licence' was all you needed, there were some drivers in Formula 1 who should never have been allowed near it, and if I had to pick out one name it would be that of Ottorino Volonterio, an Italian lawyer who took it upon himself to buy a Maserati 250F, and attempt to go racing with it.

For some reason, this man's qualifying time for the 1956 German Grand Prix (at the old Nurburgring) has always stuck in my mind. While Fangio's Ferrari took pole position, with a time of 9m 51.2s (which he bettered by 10 seconds en route to winning the race, incidentally), the good Ottorino could do no better than 14m 17.1s!

Even at a 14-mile circuit, to be almost four and a half minutes off the pace is quite something. Today's 107% rule would, I fancy, not have been to Volonterio's taste.




Dear Ken,
Del Boy was, and is, a splendid bloke, and also a thoroughly good man, in the true sense of the phrase.

On his day, he was also a quite superb racing driver. Indeed, in their early days, in F3, Warwick looked far more likely to make it than Nigel Mansell, and it has always saddened me that it turned out the way it did.

After great success in FF1600, F3 and F2, Warwick got into F1 in 1981, with the fledgling Toleman team. That season the car was both uncompetitive and hopelessly unreliable, but the following year Derek was able to show his ability on a couple of occasions, notably at Brands Hatch, where he ran as high as second, and at Zandvoort, where he took the fastest lap. In '83, there was more of the same, and Jean Sage, the Renault team manager, was keen to sign him for 1984.

This duly came to be - and Derek very nearly won his first race for his new team, at Rio. All season long he was very competitive, but too often the car broke, and at Dallas, where he had the race on a plate, he made a mistake on the disintegrating surface.

By midseason in '84, Frank Williams had decided to replace his number two driver, Jacques Laffite, for 1985, and Warwick was his first choice. Ultimately Derek turned the offer down, and if that seems utterly unfathomable now, we need to remember that at the time Williams was hardly the hot ticket in F1. First, the team was in its first season with the turbocharged Honda engine, which had a lot of horsepower, but was about as user-friendly as a chainsaw; second, the FW09 chassis - Williams persisted with an aluminium tub, after everyone else had gone to carbon-fibre - was perhaps the worst ever produced by the team.

Renault, by contrast, looked in pretty good shape, so long as something could be done about reliability. Warwick was offered a lot of money to stay, and it seemed like his best option at the time.

Mansell, meantime, had been informed by Lotus that his services would not be required for 1985, when his place, as Elio de Angelis's team mate, would be taken by the young Ayrton Senna. For a time, Nigel couldn't give himself away, and Frank Williams has admitted that he signed him as a last resort - even though team leader Keke Rosberg initially threatened to leave if Mansell should be brought aboard.

So what happened in 1985? Renault's new car was far less competitive than its predecessor, a complete waste of Warwick's time; by the end of the year, with the Regie in serious financial trouble, it was decided to close down the F1 operation.

Williams, meantime, came good again. Towards the end of the season, Mansell won his first Grand Prix, at Brands Hatch, and followed up with another at Kyalami. Nigel was on his way.

Renault decided to continue supplying engines to Lotus for 1986, and did their best to get Warwick into the second car, alongside Senna. The team management was also in favour, as was the primary sponsor, John Player, but Ayrton said no. It wasn't that he had anything against Derek, he said, but he thought him too good to be a number two, and he seriously doubted Lotus's ability to field two competitive cars. Warwick's presence, in other words, would compromise the effort put into his own car, and he wasn't prepared for that to happen. It was mighty tough on Derek, but probably Ayrton was right in his reasoning.

Thereafter, Warwick drove half a season for Brabham in '86 (following the death of de Angelis), and also drove for Arrows for several seasons, but unfortunately he was no longer 'fashionable', and he was never to get into a competitive F1 car again.

Perhaps you're right that he was too much of a 'good bloke' to become a superstar - I can think of no F1 driver I have liked more, nor one who changed less over the years. Just a delightful fellow, absolutely genuine, and with a tremendous sense of humour. I've often thought of how great a British sporting hero we would have had if Mansell's successes could have been combined with Warwick's personality.




Dear David,
I'm not surprised you're amazed, now, to discover what F1 drivers of the past would turn their hands to, but in fact you've got it the wrong way round. It is only in the last 20 years or so that F1 drivers have raced exclusively in F1; time was when there were fewer World Championship Grands Prix, and many more major race meetings for other than F1 cars.

At one time, for example, the World Sports Car Championship was considered virtually as important as F1. When you signed for Ferrari in the '50s and '60s, you were contracted to do all the Grands Prix and all the World Championship Sports Car races, such as Le Mans, the Targa Florio, etc.

Nor did it stop there. F1 people may these days pour scorn on 'Indycar racing' (to give it a generic name), but they sure as hell didn't in the '60s, when such as Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, Denny Hulme, Jochen Rindt and Jackie Stewart raced in the Indy 500. Indeed, when the 1965 race clashed with the Monaco Grand Prix, Clark skipped going to the Principality - and won the 500! He also went on to win the World Championship that year.

All through the '60s, too, the top Grand Prix drivers continued to race in F2. As well as that, a man like Clark - then the greatest driver on earth - also took part in the British Saloon Car Championship, in a factory Lotus Cortina, and - as far as I'm concerned - he ruined saloon car racing for all time! If ever you saw Clark drifting a Lotus Cortina through Clearways or Paddock at Brands Hatch, you can't work up much enthusiasm for be-winged Vauxhall Astras, take my word for it...

A man like Clark simply loved to race, that's the point. When the 1967 World Championship had concluded, in Mexico, all the F1 drivers flew back to Europe - except Jimmy, who stayed that side of the water another week, and drove a Holman-Moody Ford in the NASCAR race at Rockingham! Why? Because he wanted to see what NASCAR was all about.

If Jimmy was one of the great all-rounders, so also was Stirling Moss, as great in sports cars as he was in F1, but, in terms of brilliant versatility, there is no doubt that Mario Andretti stands alone. There may have been greater F1 drivers, greater sports cars drivers, greater stock car drivers, or whatever, but there has never been anyone who excelled in so many disciplines. As far as I'm concerned, Andretti is the greatest all-rounder motor racing has ever seen, and it's quite certain that, in these 'specialist' times, no one will ever challenge him in that regard.

Just consider what he did in the course of 40 years of motor racing: he won in a Formula 1 car at Monza, in an Indy car at Indianapolis, in a NASCAR stocker at Daytona, in a championship dirt car at Springfield, Illinois, in a sprint car at Salem, Indiana, in a sports prototype at Brands Hatch, in a Formula 5000 car at Riverside, California, in a midget at Flemington, New Jersey - he even won the Pikes Peak hillclimb in Colorado, which is about as specialised as it gets.

And that's just giving single examples of victories in each type of racing. The man was also World Champion, in 1978, and took several USAC/CART Championships. In the course of 407 starts in Champ Cars, he won races in four different decades, his first in 1965, his last in 1993. And think of this: all the time Andretti was racing fulltime in F1, he was also running as many Champ Car races as his schedule allowed. Monaco one weekend, Indy the next...


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