Ask Nigel: December 19

Dear Pasquale,

What are my thoughts on the season ahead? Difficult to know what to say, really, given that, thanks to the testing ban, none of the new cars has run a lap yet.

Still, there are some virtual certainties. First of all, no, I don't think it's too much to expect a third successive championship from Ferrari and Michael Schumacher - indeed, if I were placing a bet at this moment, that's where my money would go. Why? Because Schumacher is the best driver, and in 2001, at least, Ferrari finally got themselves into the position of being able to offer him not only the most reliable car, but also the best car.

The team's engines are on a par with anything else (save perhaps BMW) for horsepower, and they don't break: even when Schuey has an 'off' weekend, as at Silverstone this year, chances are he'll still get a bundle of points. Ferrari have way more money than any other team...I could go on and on. There's every reason to believe Michael can make it three on the trot in 2002.

Personally, I hope it doesn't happen, because domination by a single team and driver becomes very boring, and when I join a jammed M25 to go to Stalag Heathrow every other Thursday morning, I need to believe that something unexpected may happen this weekend...

If rumours be true, Mercedes-Benz are still some way off in the horsepower race, so while I expect David Coulthard to be a serious factor next year, my feeling is that most of Schumacher's opposition is going to come from Williams-BMW, rather than McLaren. There is no doubt that Frank and Patrick Head were very disappointed with Ralf Schumacher's performances in the last few races, and they must hope that he will come back next year reinvigorated, as indeed he did this season.

Even if he does, though, Ralf is going to be very hard pushed to reassert himself over Juan Pablo Montoya, the man most of us see as the next really great driver, and the one to threaten Schumacher as Michael came to threaten Ayrton Senna. JPM was incredibly impressive in the second half of his debut season, and will be even more so next year, having now learned his way around not only an F1 car, but also around a whole Grand Prix weekend. As well as that, of course, he will be familiar with all the circuits.

Insiders expect that BMW will retain a power advantage in 2002, albeit not perhaps as much as they had in the first half of 2001. That being so, if Williams can provide Juan and Ralf with a competitive car - and improve on what was pretty poor reliability this season - Michael should be seeing a lot of them. I still think it's a little early to be thinking in terms of a World Championship for Montoya - he has one year's experience, after all, while Schumacher has 10 seasons behind him - but I don't doubt that there are going to be days when he beats him, fair and square.

All that said, though, the smart money is on Michael for a fifth World Championship. Until other leading teams can match Ferrari for reliability, let alone pace, they may win a lot of races, but they're not going to put a championship together.



Dear Rizwan,

Yes, I think he does, to some extent. In 2000, with Williams, some of Jenson's performances were astonishing for one so new, so inexperienced, and there is no doubt that anyone who can excel, as he did, in qualifying at circuits like Spa and Suzuka, has talent to spare. Sometimes his inexperience showed in mistakes in the races, but that was only to be expected of a novice. His fundamental ability and speed, though, were not in question.

Button was always going to have to leave Williams after one season, however, for if he were not to lose Juan Montoya for ever, Frank had to take up his option on him, and quite obviously there was nothing to be thought about here: drivers of JPM's potential come along very rarely indeed.

Therefore Jenson was farmed out to Benetton for a couple of years, and for most of the 2001 season the car - and its radical Renault engine - were hopelessly off the pace. This in itself was no fault of Button's, but when a driver finds himself in a slow car, it is vital that - at the very least - he shows well against his team mate, the only other man with exactly the same poor equipment. And in this regard Jenson came up well short of Giancarlo Fisichella.

That was point one. Point two was that Benetton team members began to murmur that he was not as committed as he should have been, and one or two said bluntly that he was lazy, a criticism formerly made of Fisichella.

On top of that, Button - suddenly earning huge money - splashed out on all manner of things, including a sizeable boat which was moored in the Monaco harbour during Grand Prix week, and this evidence of overt wealth plainly didn't sit well with Benetton folk, given that he was hardly delivering in the car. The widespread feeling in the paddock was that his mind was too much on toys and the good life, not enough on his job.

In this situation, the last team principal Jenson needed to be working for was Flavio Briatore, because Flav doesn't go in for politically correct platitudes: when he's unhappy with a member of his team, he says so, as Fisichella had found out the year before. The gist of Briatore's remarks was that he wanted a racing driver, not a playboy, and he didn't care who knew it.

Towards the end of the year, both car and engine improved very significantly, and so also did Jenson's performances, even if more often than not he continued to be in Fisichella's shadow.

No one believes that his talent has mysteriously evaporated, or anything like that, but the hope is that he learned big lessons in 2001. We have to bear in mind that he is extremely young, and in my opinion his management did him no favours this year: they really should have anticipated how the paddock would react to all the toys and so on. It wouldn't have mattered much if Jenson had been blowing Fisichella away, but such was decidedly not the case.

I'm sure he will be in a very different frame of mind as 2002 dawns. A year ago everyone was raving about a marvellous first season in F1; now he needs to prove himself all over again. Significantly, Messrs Williams and Head remain among Button's greatest supporters, and their
belief in him remains. As things stand, it is difficult to envisage his going back to their team in 2003, but stranger things have happened. For Jenson, this coming season is an absolutely crucial one.



Dear Richard,
Why doesn't Alain Prost 'use some of his personal fortune to shore up his team for the time being'? Because he's got more sense!

It's true that Alain made a very considerable amount of money out of his 14 seasons as a Grand Prix driver, but, in terms of keeping a modern F1 team alive, it probably wouldn't last a couple of months, let alone a season. Keep in mind that an engine deal alone is around $18 or $20m a year these days, and that's before you've even thought about cars, driver retainers, testing, travel budgets, and all the rest of it.

Therefore, it would not only be unwise of Prost to delve into his own savings, it would also be futile. As Rob Walker memorably said, "The only way to make a small fortune out of financing an F1 team is to start off with a very large one..."

Sad to say, the world is littered by ex-F1 drivers who once made a huge amount of money out of their racing careers, and are now on their uppers. I wouldn't wish to embarrass any of them by mentioning their names, but take my word for it, there are many more of them than you might expect, and in some cases - not all - this is because they were foolish enough to put their own cash into racing teams.

There is nothing sadder than to see a star of the past reduced to selling all his trophies, and I know of at least two who have been obliged to do that in the recent past.

Wealthy as Prost may be, he has nothing like as much money as many of the team owners - just scan the Sunday Times 'rich list' each year, and you'll see what I mean. And those people have not accumulated this level of wealth by gambling with their own cash.



Dear Nishant,
The 1964 Mexican Grand Prix was one of the most dramatic on record. It was the last race of the season, and three British drivers - Jimmy Clark (Lotus), Graham Hill (BRM), and John Surtees (Ferrari) - all went there with the chance of becoming World Champion.

Back then, there were a lot more F1 races than there are now, but many were non-championship events. Only 10 races counted for the World Championship, and your score was based on your six best results. There were only nine points for a win, but the rest of the scoring system was as it is today.

Going into the race, Hill was ahead on points, from Surtees and Clark, but it was Jimmy who dominated qualifying, eight-tenths quicker than Dan Gurney's Brabham, then the Ferraris of Lorenzo Bandini and Surtees, Mike Spence's Lotus and Hill.

At the start Clark went into the lead, and began to disappear. There was obviously no question his being beaten by anyone, so really it was a matter of which cars would last, and where they would finish. If Jimmy won the race, with Hill no higher than fourth, and Surtees no higher than third, he would be World Champion.

By lap 12, Clark still led from Gurney, but by now Hill was into the third place he needed to be sure of the championship. Behind him, though, were the Ferraris - and Bandini was intent on helping Surtees to the title.

On lap 31 Lorenzo dived down the inside at the tight hairpin, but Graham refused to give way, and the Ferrari slammed into the back of the BRM, folding over its exhaust pipes in the process. While Bandini set off after Gurney, Hill was forced into the pits to have the bent pipes cut away. Later he would need to stop again, this time for repairs to a broken throttle return spring, and now he was down to 11th, out of contention for the championship - unless something happened to Clark and Surtees.

In the late stages it was Clark, then Gurney, Bandini and Surtees. Jimmy looked to have it made, but in the last few laps he noticed an oil slick at the hairpin, changed his line to avoid it - and noticed next time round that there was a new oil slick on his revised line...

An oil pipe had split, and as Jimmy began his very last lap he was very slow over the line, signalling to Colin Chapman in the pits that all was lost. In the course of the lap his engine seized solid, and he would be classified only fifth.

Now Gurney led, but a couple of laps from the end Bandini had dutifully allowed Surtees by into second place - and the six points he needed to beat Hill by one. Thus they finished.

No one ever suggested that Bandini had deliberately run into Hill, and indeed Lorenzo was mortified that their coming-together had so affected the outcome of the championship, even if he were pleased that his Ferrari team mate had ultimately come out on top.

Graham, of course, was extremely disappointed to lose what would have been his second World Championship, but he didn't scream and shout about it. In those civilised days, sportsmen knew how to behave.

A couple of months later Bandini received a parcel from England, a Christmas present from Hill. It was an LP of driving lessons... Style, I think they used to call it.



Dear Ed,
It's impossible to know, isn't it? It's true that Raikkonen emphatically does not lack confidence (and one must hope that one day the charm will catch up), but confidence alone isn't going to get the job done.

He will still be in only the second year of his F1 career, after all. At Sauber they reported that he had a calm and methodical approach, and in his first race, he qualified 13th, and finished sixth, for a point on his debut. All very impressive.

Clearly, Kimi was a natural, but inevitably his performances prompted some to murmur that they were confirmation of the fact that now, particularly following the reintroduction of the 'gizmos', F1 cars were becoming too easy to drive - not unlike big karts, in fact, with no gear shifting to worry about, left foot braking, and so on.

It was a point of view with which many concurred, but it didn't detract from the impression Raikkonen made. He would finish in the points four times, and by midseason had convinced Ron Dennis that he was the boy to replace Mika Hakkinen.

All that said, life is going to be very different for him from now on. It is one thing to be a new kid on the block, driving for a second-string team, impressing every fortnight by qualifying and racing higher than might have been expected, but quite another to be in a front-running team, with a front-running team mate.

For the first time, David Coulthard - admitted by the team officially or not - will be looked upon as McLaren's number one driver, and I suspect this will do only good things for his morale. DC is not to be underestimated, and while I'm sure there will be weekends when Raikkonen is the quicker of the two, I will be extremely surprised to see him get regularly the better of David.

It always takes a driver time to become acclimatised to a new team and car, whereas Coulthard knows McLaren inside out, having been there for six years already. Raikkonen made remarkably few mistakes in his first season, but he will be put to the test if the McLaren-Mercedes should prove not to be quite on par with Ferrari and Williams-BMW. In those circumstances, he might start over-driving to compensate, whereas DC has the experience to know better.

For now, I'm reserving judgement on Raikkonen a little bit. There is clear evidence that he has tremendous natural ability, but for now I don't see him on the same level as Juan Montoya, another rookie in 2001. That's not strictly fair, I know, for JPM came in with far more actual racing experience, but there were signs this year that Kimi could use a little of Juan's insouciance when things were not going so well.

If McLaren and Mercedes produce a package comparable with the very best, I can see Kimi causing a sensation or two. If not, the story could be very different.