Ask Nigel: Jan 16

Dear Michael,
Don't know quite what to say about Lauda's taking the wheel of the Jaguar F1 car. For years a standing joke in the press room has been that it's a pity that the best driver on the Prost team payroll has been stuck on the pit wall, wearing a headset, and I guess you could make a case for saying the same about Jaguar! Just my little joke, you understand...

A guy like John Surtees continued to test his own F1 cars long after he had retired as a driver - but not when he was 52 years old, and hadn't been near a race car for 16 years!

That said, I can understand Niki's wish to experience a contemporary F1 car, because they've changed so much - even in the last 12 months, let alone since 1985 - and he admitted several times that he didn't fully comprehend what his drivers were going on about, particularly with regard to the sundry electronic systems which now (unfortunately) do so much of the work formerly carried out by the driver.

Privately, I'm told, he was stunned by how much easier the cars were to drive than in his era, when the drivers were required to change gear themselves, get the car off the line themselves, and modulate the throttle themselves. Who knows, these things may be in his mind when it comes to agreeing money for the driver contracts for 2003...

I digress. Niki admits that the only physical preparation he undertook for the test was to cut down on cigarettes, so probably the 10 laps he drove were quite enough. Certainly, he didn't cruise - I hear those on hand were pretty impressed by how hard he was going - and afterwards he said it had been very worthwhile, that now he would have a far greater understanding of his drivers' comments about the car.

Lauda does have an ego, of course, but I don't think for a second that this had anything to do with his driving the Jaguar - he doesn't think that way. I'm sure his motives for doing it were quite genuine, and sure, too, that he will have found the experience productive. From what I hear, though, he and his colleagues face another very difficult season: the latest Jag is hardly setting the world on fire.



Dear Victor,
My understanding is that Ford are closing five plants in the USA, and that as many 35,000 people are to be laid off. Stark figures indeed. On the
radio the other day I heard Nick Scheele, interviewed at the Detroit Auto Show, say that he didn't expect the company to be making a profit again for at least two or three years.

These things being so, who knows what will happen down the road to the Jaguar F1 programme? While Jac Nasser was a great supporter of Ford's involvement in motor sport, and particularly in F1, it's impossible to know how the new regime views it: I could be wrong, but I suspect it could be rather less favourably than the previous one.

I've related this story before - and I stress that it may be apocryphal - but last summer someone told me that a senior Ford man (a member of the new post-Nasser hierarchy) had demanded to know, 'Who the f***'s Ed Irvine? Any why is he the second highest paid employee of Ford Motor Company?' The fact that he reputedly pronounced it 'Irvinn' - and that he had never heard of him - suggests that F1 may not be of consuming interest to the gentlemen of Dearborn. If the story is true, of course.

From insiders within Ford USA I know there is, let's say, minimal enthusiasm for the Jaguar F1 programme. That might - as some of us pointed out at the time of its inception - have been rather different if it had been 'the Ford F1 programme', but someone knew better. Thus far, the great bulk of the funding has come from Ford USA - but I'm led to believe that the cheques are not what they were.

The fact is that Ford wins a lot of NASCAR races and a lot of CART races, and has so far achieved precious little success from an F1 programme that costs a huge amount more than the two domestic series put together.

Should that situation not turn around significantly - and there are few obvious reasons to suppose it will - I would not bet a significant amount on Jaguar's being involved in, say, three years' time. I'll always believe they should have gone Grand Prix racing as 'Ford'.



Dear Bimi,
I like Paul Stoddart, and rather enjoy his somewhat irreverent attitude to Formula 1. He's a man who has made a lot of money from taking chances, from putting his money where his mouth is, and I admired the gamble he took when he got involved with Minardi. It's sad that the little team has lost its all-Italian flavour, but everything has its price, and this was no more than inevitable.

I'd agree with you that Stoddart is directing the team in the right direction, but still there is no doubt that, in his aspirations to build it into a more significant outfit, he faces a daunting task, not least because budgetary constraints will inevitably mean taking 'drivers who can pay', rather than 'drivers who can drive'. No way round this. In 2001 he was mighty lucky to have Fernando Alonso - but of course drivers of Alonso's potential never stay in small teams for long.

I think the Asiatech motors should be better than the 'old Fords' previously used by the team - certainly, in the Arrows last year, they went better than in 2000, when they were 'Peugeots'. That said, they will of course not be competitive with the very best - and neither are they free, of course. In all ways, Paul and his team remain up against it.



Dear Timothy,
Forgive me, but I think you're a little wide of the mark in suggesting that, 'Throughout the '90s John Barnard seemed to have pretty much vanished'. At the wheel of JB's Ferrari 641, Alain Prost damn near won the World Championship in 1990...

After leaving Ferrari, Barnard was then technical director at Benetton, where he worked with Michael Schumacher, no less, before rejoining Ferrari in the summer of '93. The '94 Ferrari 412T and sublimely beautiful 412T2 were Maranello's last V12 F1 cars, and both were designed by John, as also was the '96 F310, as driven by Schumacher.

After leaving Ferrari once more, John - who resolutely refuses to countenance living outside England - started a company called B3 Technologies, which both designs and manufactures pieces for sundry F1 teams, including, over time, Arrows and Prost. Just last weekend, at AUTOSPORT International, I heard a rumour suggesting B3 may also involved in future work for McLaren, of which Barnard was technical director from 1981 to 1986, before going off to Ferrari for the first time. JB is still very much on the scene.



Dear Simbeni,
Ah, the 917, one of my favourite cars, too. Bobby Rahal told me the other day he was on the look-out for one, to add to his growing collection of classic racing cars, and I wasn't surprised.

It was one of the true greats, and the first 'big' sports racing car Porsche ever built. Initially, though, it was grossly under-developed, and extraordinarily unstable.

The car actually made its debut at the Nurburgring 1000kms in 1969, and Frank Gardner was one of the drivers, partnering David Piper. In its early guise, the 1969 917 is generally held to have been one of the spookiest racing cars of all time, and Gardner's account rather consolidates that view.

"I got a call from the competitions manager - and the money they were offering was certainly good enough to cross a strip of water and get in the thing. I think the reason they bestowed this honour on me was that every 917 driver was in hospital at the time, recovering from various stages of disrepair..."

As you read these words, it is essential to imagine them from the mouth of Frank himself, in a laconic, downbeat, Aussie drawl. "I remember that Piper did one lap in practice, and was all for going back to England, but I pleaded with him to stay because the money was right.

"This was one of the very first 917s, with an alloy chassis, which was gas-filled. There was a big gauge in the cockpit, which measured the gas pressure, and that was there to keep you informed of the chassis's condition. If it zeroed, they said, that meant that the chassis was broken, and I should drive mit care back to the pits.

"Once I knew what the gauge was for, I also knew that if it zeroed I wasn't going to drive it mit care anywhere. I was going to park the bastard there and then, pick up my Deutschmarks and get home to Mum...

"Then there was the engine. You had about 300 horsepower at 5000 revs, and then between 5000 and 6000 you picked up another 300! So it was a bit of delight, really, and it was on narrow nine-inch rims all round. The computer had said that nine-inch rims would make the car very quick in a straight line, but the computer wasn't strapped in the bloody seat up in the Eifel mountains, where you tend to get the odd corner..."

Nor was that the end of it. "You sat between these pannier tanks, which bulged when they put the fuel in. It took 40-odd gallons because it was pretty hungry."

It was also, even with ear plugs in place, quite extraordinarily noisy, to the point, Gardner said, of being disturbing. "It was bloody hard to think. You were horrified by all the activity, your brain numbed by the vibration, the power and the wheelspin.

"In those days they were still gas-welding chassis, and this thing flexed so much that the actual position of the gearchange used to alter. You'd reach out for where the lever had been last time you used it, and it wasn't there! It had moved.

"Nothing about the car was consistent, that was the thing. When it became airborne, sometimes it would sort of float through the air, and other times it would crash down. It never did the same thing twice. Just when you thought you had it worked out, it'd pull another trick.

"It was simply indescribable, the motor car, and the weather did its best to help, as well. Snow and rain all the way. You were just so crossed up in the thing that you didn't know which way was straight ahead in the finish. But we got it through to the end, seventh or somewhere, and in addition to paying me money, they did try to take up a collection for an Iron Cross, which they reckoned I'd earned..."

There followed an invitation to drive the 917 at Le Mans in June, but Frank decided not to accept. "Again, the money was great, but I'd had my lesson. Rolf Stommelen went like hell with the thing, but he had the whole of the Fatherland on his back, and he had to rise to the occasion. Like I always said. I never really wanted to be the quickest bloke in motor racing - I just wanted to be the oldest. And that car was certainly going to interfere with those plans..."

I well remember the sight of Stommelen, leading the early stages of Le Mans in 1969, his long-tail 917 wandering down the Mulsanne straight - at well the wrong side of 20Omph. So unwieldy was it that Rolf was needing to correct the steering, keeping the car away from the verges, first on the left, then on the right, then on the left...

Brian Redman was one of the Porsche factory drivers in that era, usually partnering Jo Siffert, and he, too, remembers the 917 with, let's say, a wry smile.

"Once they'd got the aerodynamics sorted out, and put some proper wheels and tyres on the thing, it evolved into a very good car, but at first it was terrifying. Very early on, I got a call from Porsche to come and test it, and I thought, 'Hmmmm, they've got 10 drivers in the team - why do they want me?' So I said I had some very important business, but I'd see if I could put it off, and I'd call them back in an hour. I rang Siffert: 'Seppi, have you tested the 917 yet?' 'No, no, Brian. Not me. We let the others find out what breaks first!'

"I drove one in practice at Le Mans in '69, and it was the fastest I ever went there - 238mph. But it was all over the road; on Mulsanne you were constantly having to correct the steering, and you just hoped that when you arrived at the kink you were on the left side of the road... If you weren't, you had to brake!

"The spaceframe of the original 917 was pressurised, gas-filled, so that if the gauge lost more than so much pressure, you knew you had a crack. When that happened, they'd go round all the joints with a cigarette lighter!"

Redman and Siffert won many times in 917s, but if there is one race that sticks out in my mind, it is - inevitably, I suppose - the BOAC 1000kms at Brands Hatch in 1970, when it poured down, and Pedro Rodriguez made every other driver look flat-footed.

In those days, a World Championship sports car race was a Grand Prix by any other name, so let me take a line or two to give you the flavour of the entry. In the JW Automotive Gulf 917s were Rodriguez/Leo Kinnunen and Siffert/Redman, and in the Porsche Salzburg cars were Denny Hulme/Vic Elford and Hans Herrmann/Richard Attwood. The works Ferraris were crewed by Jacky Ickx/Jackie Oliver and Chris Amon/Arturo Merzario, with Mike Parkes/Herbert Muller in the Scuderia Filipinetti car.

There was a factory Alfa Romeo for Piers Courage/Andrea de Adamich, and the Matras were crewed by Jack Brabham/Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Henri Pescarolo/Johnny Servoz-Gavin. There were several Lola T70s for such as Jo Bonnier/Reine Wisell, and a bunch of Porsche 908s, one of which was driven by Gijs van Lennep and a brilliant newcomer, Hans Laine, who would sadly die in the car at the Nurburgring a few weeks later.

Porsche was immensely serious about sports car racing in those days, to the extent that John Wyer's team - which operated the Gulf-sponsored factory cars at the time - had available the 917 for fast circuits and the nimbler 908/3 for tight ones. The latter would have been the thing to have for Brands Hatch, but in April was not ready. Pedro, Seppi & Co had therefore to run the big cars.

By 1970, the 917 was relatively civilised, if not the natural vehicle for Brands Hatch on a wet day. Amon must have groaned on race morning for he had little relish for racing in the rain. In the dry he had put the Ferrari on pole position, a couple of tenths faster than Ickx's sister car and the Elford Porsche, with Brabham, Siffert and Servoz-Gavin also faster than Rodriguez. But Pedro will have rubbed his hands. Never a man much to concern himself with qualifying, anyway, he loved the wet.

In absolute terms, the crowd - around 20,000 - was middling for a World Championship sports car race in those days, but in light of the weather it was astonishing. Cars were towed into the parks that morning, among them my Lotus Elan. Had it not been for Rodriguez, I might well have spent much of the afternoon worrying about getting out again. Had it not been for Rodriguez, come to think of it, I'd have left long before the end.

As it was, Pedro made that impossible. It is easy, quite commonplace, to add layers of folklore to a day, to let hindsight amplify; but only rarely do you appreciate something of legend as it happens before you. That day, sodden and cold, the crowd stayed.

This owed nothing to a close race, for it was hardly that. I can speak only for myself, but that afternoon I waited simply for the pleasure of enjoying Pedro's victory.

Elford led at the end of the first lap, tailed by Ickx, Siffert, Amon, Brabham, Pescarolo and Rodriguez. In their stead, back in the pack, a T70 spun coining out of Clearways, finishing up near the start/finish line, bits of bodywork all over the road. Nowadays, they would stop the race in these circumstances, and you couldn't argue with them. Back then, they waved yellow flags, and hoped everyone would see them through the murk.

Pedro didn't - at least, he always claimed so, and John Wyer, for one, believed him: "He would never have gone through the accident scene flat out if he'd been able to see the flag. There was so much spray from the cars in front that he simply missed it. I never doubted him."

Whatever, next time around Rodriguez was shown a black flag, and this one he did see. A lap later the Porsche was into the pits, and while the Clerk of the Course bawled him out, Pedro impassively sat there, steely eyes straight ahead. When the lecture was over, he let in the clutch with some vim, and hurtled away down pit lane. By now he was going on a lap down on the leaders - yet by lap 20 he was on Amon's tail, past the Ferrari and into the lead.

Rodriguez's driving that afternoon beggars description. In the course of catching Amon, he had first to deal with such as Siffert, his own team mate, whom he outbraked into Paddock in a move which left everyone stupefied and shaking their heads.

I can still see those two pale blue 917s blasting through the spray down the main straight, still recall the amazement that Pedro was up with Seppi already, and next time around would be by him.

Into Paddock Siffert braked where a very brave man would brake, but Rodriguez still kept coming, and on an impossibly tight line aimed inside the other Porsche. In the dip there was the merest shimmy from the back of the car, and then it was gone, seeking out Elford and Amon. They, like Siffert, were sacrificial lambs this day, nothing more.

"That old joke," Chris said, "about why doesn't someone tell Pedro it's raining...it wasn't a bloody joke that day! I remember the way he came past us all, the things he was doing with that car. It was like sleight of hand..."

After that, it was really a matter of waiting out time. There was no race, as such, yet there was something hypnotic about the afternoon, the watching of one man, one car. We were soaked and frozen, yet curiously unaware of it. Until mid-race, anyway. At that point Pedro came in to hand over to Kinnunen, his new team mate. It seemed a good moment to seek out a cup of tea and a sandwich. Even at Brands Hatch.

An odd fellow, Kinnunen. He had made his name in Finnish rallying, and would prove shatteringly fast at the Targa Florio, where presumably he felt in his element. But at a slippery Brands Hatch he was clearly not so, and in the pits Rodriguez began to fret. He had built up a lead so substantial there was little chance of their car being caught, but he worried that Kinnunen might stick it in the fence. After an hour he could stand no more, and asked Wyer if he could take over again.

It was done. In dry overalls, now, Pedro resumed his rhythm, continued on his flawless way. Behind him, Redman crashed the other Gulf Porsche out of second place, and Amon was in and out of the pits with a recalcitrant fuel pump. Ickx, the one man who might have kept Rodriguez alert on a day like this, had stopped countless times for attention to his windscreen wipers... Ferrari electrics had struck again.

The Hulme/Elford 917, though, continued without major problem save that of having covered five fewer laps than the Rodriguez car. At 6.45 Pedro emerged from the gloom of Clearways for the last time, and took the flag. On South Bank spectators plodded through the mud to their cars, sounded their horns in the time-honoured salute of the day.

On the rostrum Rodriguez looked untouched by his work. The black hair was immaculately swept back, as ever, and there was the faintest of smiles.
What was there about this Mexican - this Latin born to dust and heat - that put him at such ease on so English an April day? Siffert, sometimes a match for him on sheer pace, had been dominated, along with everyone else.

"Finesse," said David Yorke, Wyer's team manager for so many years. "In terms of speed, there wasn't usually much between them, but you always had the impression that Seppi did the job with arm muscles flexed, while Pedro sat there resting his thumbs on the wheel. His precision and sensitivity were fantastic. A day like that was made for him."