Ask Nigel: Feb 21

Dear Nigel,
I have read your Fifth Column in the magazine for as long as l can remember and now "Ask Nigel" on the web, which is an extra weekly bonus. I enjoy hearing about the history of the sport and respect your reasoned views, with this in mind... have you ever been invited to be on one of the 'think tanks' deciding the future direction of the rules and sport. Would you be interested should you be offered it?
Andrew Marriott, UK

Dear Andrew,
Thank you for the compliments - including that suggesting I might be invited to be in one of the 'think tanks' regarding the future of the sport. To answer you, no, such an invitation has never come my way, and I would say that the chances of its happening are about the same as Tony Blair developing a sense of humour...

In fact, I can never recall any journalist being asked to join a 'think tank' or any such thing. It amuses me that people in the paddock are for ever saying, 'You've got a lot more influence than you might think', because my impression is always absolutely to the contrary! We might say we approve of this, disapprove of that, want the racing to be better, the circuits to be more interesting, so-and-so rule to be changed - and you see folk glaze over.

Their stock response is invariably along the lines of, 'Look at the TV figures!' Feel the width, in other words.

Answering your last point - which is purely hypothetical, I assure you! - yes, of course I'd be interested, because I still love this sport passionately, and feel it could be improved in many ways. The great thing about the journalist's role is that he, unlike team owners, sponsors, drivers, engineers, PR folk, has absolutely no axe to grind: he simply wants the sport to be as good as possible to watch.

That said, I don't think I'd last very long. For example, Patrick Head told me last week of a concerted attempt to change the rules, in the interests of improving the racing, by the F1 Technical Working Group, which had decided on a set of aerodynamic regulations very similar to those in Champ car racing.

"The idea," said Patrick, "was to have venturi sidepods, creating a certain amount of downforce, together with much smaller wings. We were confident this would greatly improve a car's ability to follow another one very closely through a corner without running into terminal understeer. Everyone agreed it was a good plan, including all the engineers and aerodynamicists, and just when we got to the point of firming it up, to put before the FIA, a chap from one of the teams stood up and said, 'Look, very sorry, but I know Mr X (his team owner) won't go for that, because he won't be prepared to accept the reduced advertising space a smaller wing would mean...' So that was the end of that."

See what I mean? Privately, paddock folk will admit that the quality of the racing - by that, I mean overtaking on the track, rather than during someone's pit stop - in F1 is currently poor, and they will admit, too, that things could be done greatly to improve it. In theory, they're all for it - so long as it doesn't have what is called in polite circles a 'fiscal penalty'.

Don't think I'd last long in that environment.




Dear Paul,
An interesting man, Mike Parkes, not least because his ability as an engineer was probably even greater than as a driver. Indeed, after his move to Ferrari, Enzo was for ever trying to persuade him to give up racing, because he was worth so much to the company as an engineer.

Certainly, he was tall for a racing driver - but then so also were, say, Dan Gurney and Gerhard Berger, so it's not exactly an insurmountable handicap.

When you describe him as 'slow in speech and movement', I think a better word is 'languid'. Certainly, his accent was very 'County', but he certainly wasn't slow of thought, and when I watched the start of the 1967 Le Mans 24 Hours (in which he and Lodovico Scarfiotti finished second, in a Ferrari P4), he certainly seemed quick enough as he sprinted across the road!

As a sports car driver, Parkes was from the top drawer. I don't know that he would have made it to the very top in F1, but it's worth remembering that he finished second in his first Grand Prix (at Reims in 1966), and then took pole position at Monza.

Sadly, Mike's F1 career ended prematurely when he suffered appalling leg injuries on the first lap of the '67 Belgian Grand Prix (at the 'old' Spa), his Ferrari going off on oil dropped by Jackie Stewart's H16 BRM. Eventually, he recovered, but the Old Man was now not prepared to countenance his racing any longer, and thus Parkes - keen to return to the cockpit - left Maranello. He continued to race sports cars for some years afterwards, and, after his retirement, went to work for Lancia. He always loved life in Italy.

I only met Parkes a couple of times, at Monza in the '70s, and found him charming. He was killed in a road accident near Turin, in torrential rain, in the autumn of 1977.

Last week, our American Editor Gordon Kirby was asked a question about an imaginary hybrid series between F1 and Champ cars. At the end of Gordon's answer, he wondered just what our Grand Prix Editor Nigel Roebuck would have to say on the subject. Below is the original question and Nigel's answer. To read Gordon's answer from last week's column, click here.



Dear George,
My old pal Gordon Kirby gave his own answer to your question last week, and there isn't really a great deal I can add. The notion of a perfect 'hybrid' racing series, absorbing both F1 and Champ car, is appealing, in many ways, but the financial, political - and practical - realities of life mean that it must always stay in the realm of the imagination: a nice dream, if you like.

As a starting point, consider the situation in the USA - where CART and the IRL cannot even agree on the 'spec' of an Indycar! Then imagine throwing Messrs Mosley and Ecclestone into this equation...

As GK says, the really tough thing would be to create a car suitable for all types of track, and I agree with him that, in many ways, CART is already the perfect hybrid series. If the series were to include races on the superspeedways, like Michigan or Fontana, obviously the cars would need to be able to withstand very high speed contact with a concrete wall.

That would seem to call for a car built to CART, rather than F1, 'spec', so Gordon is again right when he says that different types of car would have to be available for different jobs. At Monte Carlo, for example, a Champ car would be hopeless; I've seen them run at Long Beach, and in the environment of a street circuit, they look clumsy and unresponsive, compared with F1 cars.

For me, a perfect hybrid series would involve only open-wheelers. I enjoy NASCAR, and loved sports car racing in its heyday, but deep down I have always had a distinct preference for single-seaters.

To create such a series would indeed test the Barnum & Bailey skills of Bernie Ecclestone, Bill France et al, but I know - I just know - what Bernie's response would be if such an idea were put to him: "Why do I need it?"




Dear Ed,
Well, now, Flav... You're quite right, he is indeed a very shrewd businessman, and he has put that to very good use during his years in F1. A while ago, some of us were invited to dinner at his Chelsea flat, and you may take it from me, this was no two-up-two-down: in point of fact, its previous owner had been one B.C. Ecclestone.

So, yes, Briatore has indeed done extremely well out of F1, although I got the impression he was already quite nicely fixed when he arrived. It's quite true that he was given a lot of stick at first for not having any knowledge of the sport - he has even said on occasion he doesn't particularly like it, per se.

When I asked Bernie for his impressions of Flavio, this is what he said. "He knew nothing about racing before he came into the business. In fact, Luciano (Benetton) asked me to look after him, and I said I'd do what I could. As you know, I got sponsorship for them years ago, from Autopolis.

"I had a fight to get them (Benetton) to take Schumacher - at the time Tom (Walkinshaw, then with the team) said he wanted Brundle or Blundell or something... So, from that point of view, Flavio was very new on the block, but I think he's always enjoyed the fact that there are TV cameras about everywhere - which he couldn't get if he was working in an office at Benetton. So I suppose from that point of view he's happy...

"Flavio calls all the rest of the guys 'mechanics', because they've all basically come up through the ranks in the world of racing. He's something different. He didn't serve an apprenticeship, that's the point, and I'm not saying that's good or bad; I'm saying it's different. So he can have a different approach."

Indeed, he can - and does. As a matter of fact, I've always liked Flavio, not least because he's a character, and one aware of a world beyond motor racing. I also find him very funny, so long as I can keep up with what he's saying - he must gabble more quickly than anyone else I've ever met.

It's odd, in a way, that we should get along so well, because we're absolutely poles apart when it comes to racing: he is interested purely in the marketing and business aspects of the sport, whereas I'm a purist, perhaps to a fault. That said, I agree with many of Flavio's observations about F1 - the poor quality of the racing, the absurdity of refuelling, the dreary Fridays without qualifying, and so on - and, to me, his opinions are always of interest, because they come from someone looking at F1 through fresh eyes.

As for the fact that Briatore knows little about the sport in itself, all I can say is that at least he has always been honest about that - indeed frequently told jokes against himself, another quality I also find pleasing. I far prefer his attitude to that of folk who claim to care deeply about motor racing - but would leave it overnight if the money geyser ever dried up. So, too, would Flav - but he wouldn't make any bones about it!

Yes, he did win two World Championships with Michael S. in 1994 and '95, but I'm sure that he would make no claim to playing a significant role in the races themselves. That's not his forte, and he would admit it. What Briatore excels at it is getting the money in, and running the business.




Dear Barry,
An interesting question. The answer depends really on whether or not there is any truth in the old cliche that, 'racing improves the breed'. At one time, I suppose, it was undeniably true: disc brakes, for example, were pioneered in racing - not least by Jaguar at Le Mans in the early '50s.

In reality, though, that probably stands as racing's 'biggest and best' contribution to ordinary road cars. In fact, it seems to me that there is relatively little that a contemporary racing car - certainly an F1 car - can offer to the road cars of the future. Are we, for example, ever going to have carbon fibre brakes on a Renault Clio or a VW Passat? Shouldn't have thought so.

Consider what, increasingly, we seem to want from road cars these days. First, we want them to be packed with safety systems, such as ABS brakes. F1 cars, though, do not have anti-lock braking systems - they had them way back in 1993, but then ABS was banned from F1, and still is.

Max Mosley was the man who moved to ban 'the gizmos', and I rejoiced when he did it, for I felt - and still feel - that such things have no place in anything purporting to be a DRIVERS' World Championship. In fact, I regret deeply that traction control, launch control (for perfect starts every time) and fully automatic gearboxes are to be allowed in again this year.

Think, though, Barry, of the things we take for granted in our road cars these days. My car has traction control (although it's infinitely more fun to drive with the thing switched off), it has ABS brakes, it has an electrically-operated hood, electric mirror adjustment, remote control central-locking... all manner of things that make it more agreeable - but none of these bits and pieces can be said to have come from racing.

I'm sure it's true that things like engine management systems for road cars have benefited from knowledge gained in racing, but essentially we're talking apples and pears here. I rather agree with Patrick Head, who said a while ago that racing had no need to 'improve the breed' in order to justify itself.

In some respects, let's face it, racing cars lag behind road cars, because the requirements of each are so different. These days, we all take air bags for granted, do we not? But although Professor Sid Watkins and his safety group have done a tremendous amount of work on air bags for F1 cars, as yet it has not been possible to come up with one that reacts - given the likely speed of impact in a racing accident - sufficiently quickly to be of assistance to the driver, without being consequently so violent that it does not itself damage him.

If my car had a 'Tiptronic' gearbox, I suppose I could press buttons on the steering wheel, and think to myself, 'This is what they do in F1' - but, to be honest, I still prefer a clutch and a manual 'box...




Dear Rob,
Had it not been for Lauda's accident, yes, I agree he might well have dominated the season - he did, after all, win four of the first six races, finishing second in the other two. At that point, Niki led the World Championship with 48 points, followed by Hunt and Clay Regazzoni, who had 15 apiece.

Keep in mind, though, that James beat Niki to pole position in the first race of the year, in Brazil, and this in his first race for McLaren. Keep in mind, too, that he beat him to victory in the British Grand Prix, but was then disqualified - and also that the McLaren's reliability was no match for the Ferrari's.

Although, following his accident at the Nurburgring, Lauda - extraordinarily - missed only two races (at the Osterreichring and Zandvoort), he was obviously, and quite understandably, some way from his best when he came back, at Monza. His performance in that race, in which he finished fourth, still stands as the most courageous thing I have ever seen in this sport.

At this point, of course, the pressure was on Hunt to reduce his points deficit to Lauda, and he delivered when he had to, winning brilliantly at both Mosport and Watkins Glen. Then, of course, came Fuji, where Niki - showing immense courage, I thought - voluntarily retired after a couple of laps, declaring the flooded conditions too dangerous. James duly finished third, behind Mario Andretti and Patrick Depailler, and took the championship by a single point.

I didn't hear the Radio 5 programme of which you speak, so can't comment on what Mario said. If he truly said that Hunt 'had the upper hand' on Lauda all year, I am surprised, for such was not the case, as I saw it. I suspect, however, that what he meant was that James was a fundamentally quicker driver than Niki, and with that I wouldn't disagree. Lauda was better than Hunt, yes, but not, I think, as quick.