Ask Nigel: Jan 30

Dear Michael,
I have no idea why Alain Prost has had such a hard time with potential French sponsors - believe me, if I had, I would told Alain years ago! Over time, major French companies - with the exception of Gauloises, who backed Ligier/Prost for countless years - have shown relatively little interest in backing F1 teams, and this has hugely frustrated Prost over time.

Now, why did he fail with his team? I think we've already answered the question, really - from the beginning, he always lacked the budget to do the job properly. However, there's a little more to it than that.

First of all, there's no logical reason why a great racing driver should become a great, or even good, team owner - in fact, it rarely happens, and not only in Formula 1. In NASCAR, for example, Cale Yarborough was one of the very best drivers the sport has known, yet he got nowhere as a team owner, and the same, albeit to a lesser extent, is true even of Richard Petty. Conversely, Richard Childress, who never raised a blip as a driver, went on to become one of the most successful team owners in NASCAR history, with Dale Earnhardt in his car.

In Formula 1, both Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren went on to found very successful racing teams, but John Surtees, undeniably a great racing driver, for a great many years ran an F1 team which never won a Grand Prix. Same with Emerson Fittipaldi.

What I'm saying is that there is nothing new in this. Some, like Roger Penske, who began as drivers, turn out to be born businessmen, but it ain't necessarily so. In the case of Prost, I'm tempted to say that Keke Rosberg is right: "Alain is too nice a guy to run a modern F1 team."

Just because you have a genius for driving a racing car doesn't mean that that genius will transfer to anything else in the business - or any other business, for that matter. "I never realised," Prost said to me last year, "how easy life was when I was winning World Championships..."

Ironically, the longer the proceedings at the Tribunal de Commerce in Versailles dragged on, the more Alain's employees and supporters had cause to believe in a favourable outcome, but on Monday the administrator, Maitre Franck Michel, concluded that the company had insufficient backing to continue in business, and the company was put into liquidation.

If no one ever made the driving of an F1 car look so easy, by the same token rarely has anyone ever made the running of an F1 team look so hard. Since Prost bought the Ligier team in 1997, and put his own name to it, there were occasional glimmers of real promise - Jarno Trulli dominated that year's Austrian Grand Prix before blowing up, for example - but more usually Alain's professional life has been a struggle.

Not the least of his problems was an engine deal with Peugeot which began in 1998. Almost from the moment of signing the contract, he sensed Peugeot's lack of commitment to F1, and wished he had remained with Mugen-Honda, but it was too late. Peugeot's approach - half-hearted, yet hyper-sensitive to criticism - drove Prost team members to distraction over time, and there were few regrets when the company pulled out of F1 at the end of 2000.

Except in one respect, that is. Peugeot's V10s may have been second-rate, but they did have the abiding merit of being free. For 2001, Prost had to look elsewhere, and intially he had high hopes of Mercedes; when these were dashed, it was necessary to 'buy in', and a deal was done with Ferrari.

This was prodigiously expensive - and came, moreover, at a time when the team's financial position was already precarious. In 2000, the last year with Peugeot, Prost Grand Prix scored not a single world championship point, which meant there would be no 'travel money' for the long-haul races in 2001. Simultaneously there was a mass exodus of sponsors - Gauloises, Yahoo, Total, Agfa, Playstation - from the team.

In situations like this, problems snowball. To attract new sponsors, you need to show competitiveness, which means constant testing - which you can't do, because you can't afford it. The deal with Ferrari included not only the engine and gearbox, but also the entire rear end - which had been designed, of course, to work with Bridgestones. Prost by now was with Michelin, and in its straitened circumstances the team necessarily took a long time to resolve the problem.

Late last year, when Heinz-Harald Frentzen moved from Jordan to Prost, he had many good things to say about both car and team, and very much wanted to stay for 2002. Ultimately, though, for Prost Grand Prix the events of September 11 were perhaps the difference between survival and extinction, for sizeable financial backing, promised for 2002, evaporated in the world's new uncertainty.

Maybe, had Toyota not arrived this year, means might have been found to bail Prost out, if only to keep the grid at 22 cars. As it is, an F1 team, even one bearing the name of one of motor racing's greatest figures, has gone to the wall this week, and a cold shiver will have gone down many a back.

Speaking personally, I'm very sad about the situation, if not surprised that it has arisen: sad, not least, for the 300 folk who now find themselves out of work. As for Alain himself, I've known him since 1979, when a shy French F3 star began showing up at the Grands Prix occasionally, and I've always liked him very much as a bloke, and admired him tremendously as a driver. In recent years, he has been something of a haunted figure in the F1 paddocks, plainly not enjoying life. At least now he'll be able to play golf again.



Dear Malcolm,
The answer, I'm afraid, is depressingly simple. They're taking the long straights out of Hockenheim, because what TV likes is short laps, and many of them. In commercial terms, those long straights make no sense at all - even to the circuit owners, for there are no spectators over three-quarters of the lap.

I can't say Hockenheim has ever done very much for me, particularly since the insertion of all those chicanes, but there's no doubt that the layout of the circuit has at least made for far better racing than most of today's tracks afford. It had the merit of being different from the bulk of contemporary Grand Prix circuits, but when the work is completed it will conform nicely to the F1 template of today. I just hope they build in an effective overtaking place.



Dear Mr Byrne,
The very same thought occurred to me, at one point - soon after Frentzen had left Williams, at the end of 1998, I asked Frank if any comparison between Heinz and Carlos Reutemann were valid. FW had, after all, long ago acknowledged that the team might have treated Reutemann with more sensitivity.

"In terms of equipment," Frank said at the time, "we gave Carlos exactly the same as Alan Jones, but there was more to it than that. Carlos needed more psychological support than most drivers. He needed to be aware that everyone in the team was wearing a Reutemann lapel badge and an Argentine scarf. We probably didn't appreciate that sufficiently at the time - which is why we didn't achieve as much together as we should have done."

So was the Frentzen situation similar? Williams said not. "No, I don't think that was the case with Heinz-Harald. But you're asking me to comment on - and therefore criticise - a driver, which I don't want to do. There were faults on both sides, let's leave it at that." And that was all he was prepared to say.

I still think there are similarities, though, I must say. While it is clear that Frentzen is not on the same plane as Reutemann, in terms of driving ability, I think your point - that neither man had 'the hard-headed aggression and confidence necessary for success at the very highest level' - is valid. I doubt that any man yet put on earth had a greater natural gift for driving racing cars than Carlos, but his temperament was too uneven: on his day, no one could get near him, but there were too many other days when he signally failed to do justice to his talent. The same, to a considerably lesser degree, was - and is - true of Frentzen, I think.

The fact is, however, that neither truly fitted in at Williams, as you say, and I think both rather got on the nerves of Patrick Head, which is never a recipe for success in that team! Patrick tends to like straightforward, no-nonsense, racing drivers, like Alan Jones, Keke Rosberg and, in this era, Juan Montoya. If you need to be cossetted, Williams is not the team for you - and I say this not at all as a criticism of Frank and Patrick, both of whom I admire deeply, and like immensely. They will, I think, be the last men in motor racing ever to seek 'counselling'...



Dear Alex,
I once asked Bernie Ecclestone the same question, and he just rolled his
eyes. "It would have been magic, wouldn't it?"

So, too, it would. First of all, let me say that, had it not been the tragedy at Imola, I have no doubts that Senna would have won his fourth World Championship in 1994. In its early guise, the Williams-Renault FW16 was a very difficult car, yet, at each of the three races in which he drove it, Ayrton started from the pole. Later, the car was honed into something extremely competitive, and Senna would undoubtedly have won many, many, races with it.

Consider next the Williams-Renaults which came later. By common consent, they were superior to the opposition: Damon Hill should have won the championship in 1995, did win it in '96, and then Jacques Villeneuve took the title in '97. Who knows what these cars would have achieved, with Senna at the wheel? One can imagine his winning the championship every year.

At the same time, though, it is a fact of life that every racing driver, even the greatest of them, reaches a peak, and then begins - perhaps, to the outside world, impercepibly for quite a while - progressively to lose his edge, while the next great driver, still young, still improving, moves up on him, until eventually there is a changing of the guard.

Senna was 34 at the time of his death, and still very much at the height of his powers. We can say - quite reasonably, I think - that he could have been World Champion in 1994/95/96/97, which would have given him a total of seven titles. At the end of that spell, though, he would have been approaching his 38th birthday.

One or two points to consider, though. First, Senna's great friend Jo Ramirez has always suspected that, after winning five titles, Ayrton would have retired, not least because he wanted to equal, but not beat, the record of Juan Manuel Fangio, whom he held in reverence.

Second, I think that Martin Brundle is right when he says that, in the case of these two, there never would have been a 'changing of the guard'. "We might not have noticed when Ayrton was not quite the driver he had been," Brundle says, "but he would have known it immediately, and as soon as he did, he would have stopped - instantly. He had too much pride to do anthing else."

Last, one has to wonder how a real head-to-head between Senna and Schumacher might have resolved itself. They were not friends, by any means, and I don't find it too difficult to envisage a feud developing between them, such as that between Ayrton and Alain Prost. Many a time, a potential accident between Senna and Prost was avoided only because Alain backed down, but Schumacher has frequently exhibited the sort of ruhtlessness on the track for which Senna, too, was known.



Dear Ian,
I have to admit it, F1 car launches bore me stiff these days, and I tend to attend rather few of them. Over time I've spent too many days, squinting through dry ice, and listening to flim-flam from people who are serious this time, going to take on the world - and then finish up the season, as always, with a handful of points.

They're PR occasions, that's the point. The team owners, engineers and drivers stand there under the lights, giving homogenised answers to predictable questions, after which the wraps come off the new car, the photographers do their thing, and, er, that's it, really.

What's always struck me is how much these events must cost - particularly when they're staged at some track in Spain, or wherever, and thus require large numbers of hacks to be flown out there, accommodated, fed and watered. Presumably, they're considered worthwhile, but I've always thought there must be better uses for the money involved. Still, what do I know?

At one time, formal launches were unknown. If a team chose to 'announce' a new car, it was simply a matter of inviting a few journalists down to the factory, for a cup of coffee and an informal chat. And what you say is true enough: in the days when the F1 rules were much more relaxed than now, there was always the possibility of something revolutionary, particularly when Colin Chapman was involved.

As for the Tyrrell P34... In the autumn of 1975 I happened to get talking to a bloke in my local pub here in Surrey, and he asked me if I'd heard anything about Ken's new car. No, I said. "Well, I've heard - don't laugh - that it's got six wheels..." I did laugh, I'm afraid, then went home and forgot about it. A few weeks later we gasped when the car was unveiled - and that lunchtime chat came back to me...

Since then, believe me, I have never discounted anything anyone has ever told me about 'secret' F1 cars!



Dear Joseph,
I'm pleased Mark Webber has found an F1 drive, because - on the strength of what we've seen in F3000 - he is an extremely good driver, and also a thoroughly nice bloke. It's too long since we had an Australian in F1, and the same is true of America.

Does Mark have any chance of making the grade? It's the old question, and the old answer, I'm afraid: at this stage of the game, who knows? I admire Paul Stoddart very much for what he is trying to do with Minardi, but the fact remains that the team does not have a huge budget, nor - with Asiatech - state-of-the-art engines.

All that said, if Webber really has what it takes, it will come through, just as with Fernando Alonso last year. I think it a pity, from Mark's point of view, that his team mate is Alex Yoong, because merely out-qualifying and beating Yoong is not, in itself, going to impress people very much. Perhaps, for a start, what Mark needs to do is excel in 'equalising' weather conditions; many a driver has attracted attention that way down the years. I think he's got the talent; I hope he gets the opportunity to show it.