Ask Nigel: December 20

Dear William,
You put your finger on it with your phrase, 'this interminable testing'. Time was when the World Championship did indeed kick off in January, usually in Argentina, and the last time I can remember its happening was in 1982, when we had the South African Grand Prix on January 23.

Going further back than that, it used to be the case that the World Championship ended extremely late. In 1962, for example, the South African Grand Prix, then run at East London, rather than Kyalami, was run on December 29 - and what's more, it was a championship decider, between Graham Hill and Jimmy Clark! Hell of a time to wait to know the identity of the World Champion, wasn't it?

However, times change. Yes, the drivers found it very agreeable to be somewhere hot during the European winter, but you have to remember that in those days, although they actually raced much more (in non-championship F1 races, as well as sports car events, and so on), there were far fewer World Championship Grands Prix, and frequently there were long gaps between such events. As well as that, there was virtually no testing, beyond the occasional morning at Silverstone, or whatever.

Today we have 17 Grands Prix, spaced at fortnightly intervals, which takes up 34 weeks of the year. Such is the level of technology today, and such the consequent amount of testing, that the teams positively need the 18 remaining weeks to prepare for the coming season. No one likes the compression of the season - Ye Gods, next year's World Championship begins with Australia, weekend off, Malaysia, weekend off, and Brazil, which means a long-haul flight every week for six weeks - but really there's no way round it.




Dear Jon,
I have no idea who ITV will get to replace Murray Walker at the end of next year, but my choice for the job would be Ben Edwards, who used to do F1 commentaries (with John Watson) for Eurosport, and for the last few years has commentated on the CART races for the same company. Edwards is excellent, I think; very knowledgeable about the sport, and with his ego firmly under control.

Murray's particular genius, I have always thought, is his ability to convey excitement with his voice - even the dreariest procession of a race sounds riveting when you listen to him. And that quality will be very difficult to find elsewhere.





Dear Peter,
Yes, I do have an interest in motorcycle racing, although not a particularly deep one. If I'm home for the weekend, and there is a World Championship race on TV, I'll watch it, and the same is true of World Superbikes.

I suppose what attracts me about motorcycle racing is that the sport has not fundamentally changed, in terms of spectacle. Very well, they race on much safer circuits now than they used to, but the quality of the actual racing remains excellent. Why? Because the bikes are narrow, which means there is plenty of space for overtaking, and because aerodynamics have only a minimal role to play: a bike can go through a corner right on the tail of another without the rider's having to worry about 'dirty air', so it's surprising that the racing is infinitely closer than in, say, Formula 1.

That said, cars are my first love, and always will be.




Dear Dino,
First of all, like you I am a fan of both F1 and CART. If indeed CART does go to Montreal, to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, it will be fascinating, because it's a very long time since both types of car have run at the same track in the same year.

Would the F1 cars be "at least five seconds faster", as you suggest? Until the CART cars have run there, that must remain in the realms of conjecture. Logically, given that the CART cars are very much heavier, and do not have carbon brakes, they would be at a severe disadvantage at a track like Montreal, which puts a premium on braking - but still I find it hard to imagine Mazzacane's Minardi being quicker than Montoya in one of Ganassi's Reynards...

It's a very long time now, and the regulations in both series were different from now, but back in 1978 the Indycars, then competing for the USAC Championship (the year before CART was launched), came to England for a couple of races, at Silverstone and Brands Hatch.

This was the beginning of the 'ground effect' era in F1, the year of domination by the Lotus 79s of Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson. At the USAC race at Silverstone, though, I have never forgotten the sight of Danny Ongais's Parnelli on its pole lap. This car emphatically did not have any ground effect technology, but Ongais lapped in 1m16.25s. At the time, the F1 lap record was 1m 19.60s...




Dear Rodrigo,
Yes, Jean Behra was indeed my childhood hero. When he was killed, in August 1959, it was one of the saddest days of my life.

I can remember exactly how this preoccupation started. From my earliest recollections, I had been fascinated by cars and speed, but it stirred into the beginnings of a passion one evening in April 1954, when a clip of the Pau Grand Prix was shown on 'Sportsview,' a BBC programme of the time.

Actually, it was more than a clip, as I recall, perhaps running to five minutes, and in that time the commentator completely captured my imagination, describing this cat-and-mouse battle between two very different Frenchmen, Maurice Trintignant and Jean Behra.

It was a most unusual race for the time, in that Ferrari - represented by Trintignant - did not win. After building up a lead, the red car was gradually hauled in by Behra, number one driver for Gordini, the perennially under-financed little French team.

Behra's victory, the commentator said, was the triumph of a better driver over a better car. The final pictures were of scenes after the race, and right there I was hooked. They might have been from different planets, these two, Trintignant correct and phlegmatic, a dapper little man whose driving mirrored his appearance, Behra also small, but stocky and tough, apparently with charisma to throw away.

So here I was, just after my eighth birthday, and facing a big change in my life. For the next five years Jean Behra, his chequered helmet, his victories, his innumerable accidents, became my world, and when he died, at Avus in 1959, I came to understand the meaning of grief for the first time. I never spoke to my idol - although my autograph book bears the signatures of Fangio, Moss, Hawthorn, Castellotti et al, I was always too over-awed to ask Jean - but nearly 40 years on a photograph of him retains pride of place on my office wall.

Why he was of surpassing importance to me, I cannot tell you, because I don't have the answer. It didn't matter to me that there were greater drivers, that he was never World Champion; what appealed primarily, I suppose, was his utter fearlessness. Fangio was right when he described him as "too brave," but this can never be a fault in a childhood hero.

Those of us in thrall to Grand Prix racing support certain drivers throughout our lives, and if favourites of mine have included such as Prost, an elegant stylist who made it look easy, more usually I have been drawn to the derring-do brigade, to Rindt, Peterson and, above all, Gilles Villeneuve.

Among the current drivers, Alesi is one I root for, and my friend Jabby Crombac - who knew Behra - is not surprised: "But of course - Alesi is the Jean Behra of today! Lovely guy, looks the part, tremendous guts, too emotional, drives with his heart..."

Denis Jenkinson was another who thought highly of Behra, and down the years we drank many a cognac as we talked of him. "More than anything else," he said, "what I liked about Jean was his pure love of racing cars. He was a good mechanic in his own right, but he never worked on cars for the fun of it: the only thing that mattered was making them faster. They loved him at Maserati, because he was happy to 'live above the shop'."

Then, the ultimate accolade from Jenks: "There was no bullshit about Jean. He was a racer's racer."

In the 1950s Jenks was frequently in Modena, where Behra was an almost permanent resident at the Albergo Reale. For Jean, a day without some time in a racing car was a day lost, and he savoured every opportunity to pound around the nearby autodromo, then passing the evening playing cards and drinking wine and talking racing.

It was an existence he found completely fulfilling, and the association with Maserati, whom he joined in 1955, was the happiest of his racing life. Gordini had been fun, but after four seasons the chronic lack of both pace and reliability had become wearisome to one now recognised as among the world's top drivers.

Raymond Mays (for whose BRM team Behra later drove) once related to me an anecdote very revealing of Jean's love affair with his job. "I don't think he could ever quite believe his luck - that people would actually pay him to drive racing cars.

"He was a magnificent little driver, and a charming man, but terribly temperamental in a French sort of way. If things weren't going too well, he sometimes got a bit demoralised, but he was never depressed for long, and I asked him how he kept his spirits up.

"When times were bad, he told me, he would get his passport out. 'I look at all the stamps in there, the places racing has taken me to, and then I look at the first page. Name: Jean Behra. Profession: Racing Driver. And it reminds me again how lucky I am to have this life.'

"I must say I found that rather moving - and somewhat different from most racing drivers I've known."

During that first season with Maserati, Behra may well have sought the solace of his passport quite frequently, for the Grands Prix were utterly dominated by Mercedes. There were, however, several non-championship and sports car victories, and these would continue over the next couple of years. At Casablanca in 1957 he squarely trounced everyone, including team mate Fangio, but that year, sadly for him, the race was outside the World Championship.

Maserati withdrew from racing at the end of the season, whereupon Behra went to BRM, and then, for 1959, to Ferrari. It was like coming home - Modena, the Reale, ceaseless testing - and the new association began well. In the gorgeous Dino 246 he won the Aintree 200 from team mate Tony Brooks, and I was there to see it.

Perhaps, though, because the Cooper revolution was underway by now, and the front-engined Ferraris were outpaced on all but 'power' circuits, there was a desperation in Behra's driving through those last months of his life. He was a man with a mechanical understanding of racing cars most untypical of the time, yet now he repeatedly abused his engines, and at Reims he did it once too often. In the pits, team manager Romulo Tavoni glanced at the rev counter tell-tale, and remonstrated with his driver - who felled him with a single punch.

Not surprisingly fired forthwith, Behra immediately sought a return to BRM for the German Grand Prix at Avus. "Unfortunately," Raymond Mays recalled, "there wasn't time to get it organised, so Jean turned up there with his own F2 Porsche."

The day before the Grand Prix there was a sports car race, for which Behra had also entered. Fighting for the lead, in torrential rain, his Porsche RSK spun on the lethally slippery banking, then hit a concrete block. Behra was thrown out, a lurid photograph showing him like Icarus, silhouetted against the grey sky.

"He was in the next pit to us that weekend," said Mays, "and I remember feeling very sorry for him - he seemed very much alone during those last few hours of his life. In hindsight, all the elements of a Greek tragedy were there..."