Ask Nigel: Jan 9

Dear Joe,
I was sad to hear the news about the end of Kyalami, but quite honestly far less sad than when I heard, years ago, that the old circuit was to disappear. I went to the races in '92 and '93, at the new track, and, compared with the original one, it made me want to weep.

The old track was one of the very best I ever went to, a true driver's circuit, although it's inevitable, I suppose, that mention of Kyalami quickly brings to mind Peter Revson and Tom Pryce, both of whom were killed there. I wish it weren't so, but it is a fact that certain circuits do trigger memories of that kind.

That said, sad days at a race track should not detract completely from one's good memories, and I have many of Kyalami, which, in its original guise, was one of the greatest Grand Prix circuits I ever saw. It was mighty dangerous, of course, and considered so even 25 years ago, when far less attention was paid to safety than is the case now. I think particularly of that endless straightline blast down to Crowthorne, where there was no run-off at all; simply an earth bank awaiting anyone who had a problem there.

It was indeed a track for the very brave, in particular the long downhill right-handed Barbeque Bend, and the daunting uphill left-handed Jukskei Kink. Watching qualifying here in the turbo era, when such as Nelson Piquet and Keke Rosberg were on the limit, boost off the clock, is something I will never forget.

In terms of actual races, I suppose one that comes readily to mind was the 1983 South African Grand Prix. It was the last round of the World Championship that year, and up for the title were Piquet (Brabham-BMW), Prost (Renault) and Rene Arnoux (Ferrari). Arnoux pretty well acounted for himself during practice, when he contrived to allow a car's wheel to be pushed over his foot. He raced, but really the thing was between Piquet and Prost.

Actually, Nelson blitzed it. In the early laps he simply left everyone behind, and when Prost retired, he knew the title was safe, and ultimately backed off, falling back to third, allowing his team mate Riccardo Patrese to take the victory.

Only some years later did we learn that the fuel used by Brabham-BMW in the late races that year was not quite...how can I put this, what the governing body had in mind.

The last time the 'old' Kyalami was used was in 1985, and that was a fantastic race. The Williams-Hondas of Keke Rosberg and Nigel Mansell ran away with the early laps, but then Piercarlo Ghinzani's Toleman expired at Crowthorne, dumping oil all over the place. Rosberg, the next man through, spun on it, but Mansell, seeing what had happened to Keke, backed off, and just made it through. Nigel went on to win the race, and Keke, driving absolutely at the edge, came back to finish a brilliant, if frustrated, second, passing Prost's McLaren-TAG Porsche five laps from the end.

It was always delightfully informal at Kyalami, even by the relaxed standards of the day. The 'post-race press conference', I remember, was in a small tent, Mansell simply standing around with the rest of us, answering our questions.

After a seven-year gap F1 went back to Kyalami, in 1992, and again Mansell won, this time in the 'active' Williams-Renault FW14B that was to dominate the season. By now, though, the magnificent old track had been laid to rest, and what we had in its place was just another 'modern circuit'. Inevitable perhaps, but no less sad for that.

The other thing that mention of Kyalami unfailingly brings back is the drivers' strike, in March 1982. It happened like this. Prior to the '82 season, the F1 drivers, as usual, each received an application form for the 'Superlicence' required to take part in the World Championship, and most blithely signed it without troubling to read the small print. Niki Lauda, though, noted a clause for which he didn't care, and drew it to the attention of Didier Pironi, then president of the Grand Prix Drivers Association.

Worrying to Lauda was the proposal that in future superlicences be issued to a driver and team; at its foot, the form read, 'I am committed to the above team to drive exclusively for them in the FIA World Championship until the .....19..' That Niki didn't go for at all, envisaging trading between teams, with the drivers being passed around like a tray of cakes.

Away everyone went to South Africa, but when the drivers arrived at Kyalami on the first morning of practice, they found at the entrance to the paddock a coach, which Lauda and Pironi invited them to board. Some, including Keke Rosberg, were reluctant to do so, but only Jochen Mass actually refused.

Once loaded up, the bus trudged off to Johannesburg, to the Sunnyside Park Hotel, where the drivers installed themselves, while Pironi, at the circuit, negotiated with Jean-Marie Balestre, President of the FISA (then the motor sport arm of the FIA), and Bernie Ecclestone, President of FOCA, these two in agreement for once.

Ecclestone, predictably, had snapped into combat mode from the first: if his Brabham drivers Piquet and Patrese were not on parade for the first session, he said, they were sacked for breach of contract. As 10 o'clock came and went, Nelson and Riccardo, like their colleagues, were lounging by the pool, now apparently out of work.

Up at the circuit it was difficult to have too much sympathy for anyone, save the spectators, who had not come to look at a deserted track. The feeling was that either the dirty linen should have been washed in private, and somewhat earlier, or that it should be allowed to fester until after the race.

In the best traditions of the French truck drivers, however, Pironi was no more in a mood to compromise than were Balestre and Ecclestone. "It was," Rosberg observed, with some distaste, "like a high point in his life." Not too much was achieved, and late in the afternoon the FIA stewards announced that the race was to be postponed, that an application was to be made for the suspension of the drivers' licences.

This was followed by an asinine statement from Bobby Hartslief, the MD of Kyalami Entertainment Enterprises, which stated that none of the drivers would be eligible for the World Championship - ever again! - and added that the teams would be looking for new drivers.

Back at the Sunnyside Park Hotel, the drivers pondered their next move. Clearly they would now have to spend the night there, and Lauda decided that some sort of dormitory was the only answer; if they took single rooms, he reasoned, unity would be lost, and with it the fight. Therefore he organised a small banquet suite, in which a number of mattresses was installed.

Through the day, a gung-ho schoolboy atmosphere had prevailed, although the more junior drivers were mighty nervous as they contemplated the possible repercussions of going AWOL. Lauda and others stressed to them the importance of sticking together, and then Gilles Villeneuve found there was a piano in the room, and began playing Scott Joplin rags with some expertise.

Periodically, Pironi would arrive with news from the front, and Villeneuve would preface Didier's every announcement with the dramatic opening chords of Beethoven's Fifth! Gilles's sense of irrepressible fun was never more appreciated than that night.

Then, after a lecture on the finer points of Italian terrorism from Bruno Giacomelli, de Angelis moved to the piano, quietly sat down, and began to play some Mozart. "Elio was a close friend of mine," Rosberg said, "so I knew he could play the piano. But no one knew he could play like that..."

The piano soothed everyone, and was later to serve another, rather less spiritual, purpose. When Arrows owner Jackie Oliver arrived with a local heavy, and tried to force his way in, the drivers shoved the piano against the door, which was thereafter locked.

That being so, the next problem was the loo, which was across the hallway. Eventually it was decided to leave the 'dormitory' key on a plate in the middle of the room, and all present were put 'on their honour' to relock the door and replace the key. All did - except Toleman's Teo Fabi, who went out, and didn't come back.

"He ran like a chicken," said Rosberg, "and lost all our respect for ever - not because he decided to leave, but because he betrayed us all. He went straight to Ecclestone and Balestre, and related everything we had discussed..."

Late that evening the stewards declared that if the drivers turned up the following day, and that at least 15 of them practised, the race would go ahead, after all. But it wasn't until 10 o'clock that morning that Pironi telephoned Lauda from the circuit, to say that the drivers had won the day, and should immediately go up to the track.

After a night of indifferent sleep, and not really sure what had been agreed, they complied. A brief practice session, then an hour of qualifying, and that was it as far as race preparation was concerned.

The following day, Alain Prost drove one of his greatest races, puncturing a rear tyre while leading, crawling back to the pits, rejoining in eighth place, taking the lead again nine laps from the flag.

There weren't too many smiles on the podium, though, for during the race - during the race - a statement was issued by the stewards: 'For the purpose of running a race, a temporary truce was called in the disagreement between the drivers and officials. The truce lasted until the end of the race. At the end of the race, the truce was terminated. This means that the position which existed prior to the agreement is effectively reinstated. All the drivers named are suspended indefinitely.'

Duplicitous this may have been, but it was all hot air. When they got to Rio, for the next Grand Prix, it was still Lauda in a McLaren, Rosberg in a Williams, Prost in a Renault, Villeneuve in a Ferrari, Piquet in a Brabham. And while most of the FOCA team owners may have been livid about the drivers' behaviour, within a few weeks they went on strike, at Imola. And they stuck to it...



Dear Ian,
That was an awful, awful, day at Zandvoort in 1973, one of the worst I can remember at a race track. When Roger Williamson crashed, there were no marshals in the vicinity with fire-fighting equipment, and it was left to David Purley, who immediately pulled off at the scene, to try and do what he could to help.

Williamson's March was upside down, and although the driver was essentially unhurt in the accident, his car was on fire. On his own, Purley was unable to right it, and Williamson was burned to death. They did not, of course, stop races in those days, for any reason.

At the next race I talked to Purley about it. "What surprised me," he said, "was that no other drivers stopped to help. There was all this talk of 'Purley trying to rescue his friend' and so on, but that wasn't the case - I didn't know Roger well at all. What happened was purely a reflex action. In Aden, if one saw a burning tank one tried to help the people inside, and it was exactly the same at Zandvoort. A matter of a man needing help. That car burned for several laps, and all the 'safety crusaders' just kept on bombing through the accident scene without even backing off..."

David had no recollection of the accident. He remembered neither stopping his car, running across the road nor anything else. What maddened him was the marshals' inability to tackle the fire.

"If you want to talk safety, that's where I do have strong views.
One of those guys was wearing a plastic mac! If he goes near that car, he's dead, isn't he? And something like that I found totally unacceptable. If a bloke does have an accident, he should have the right to expect that everything possible will be done for him."

True enough. Williamson's death was a huge tragedy within the sport, and took away a man who assuredly was heading for a great career in
F1. This was only his second race, as far as I remember.

If there's a race of his that sticks in my mind it is the supporting F3 race at the French Grand Prix meeting at Clermont Ferrand in 1972. At this, one of the greatest circuits there has ever been, Williamson alone took on the French F3 brigade on their home territory, and squarely beat them.

In the space of four years, Britain lost three drivers - Williamson, Tony Brise (in the air crash with Graham Hill) and Tom Pryce. It's easy these days to be unaware of just how dangerous motor racing was a quarter of a century ago. In terms of talent, those three were from the top drawer, and if I didn't feel that Roger was quite on the level of Tony and Tom, there were plenty who did, not least Tom Wheatcroft, his great mentor. Without any question, he would have won Grands Prix.



Dear Wayne,
It's certainly not impossible - although 'budgetary considerations' will work emphatically in favour of Jaguar. The Cosworth engine deal, I'm told, will cost Tom Walkinshaw around $20m in 2002, and at present his team, like many others, is known to be short of sponsorship.

Will Ford 'allow' Arrows to out-perform Jaguar? I don't see how they have any say in the matter, because the deal agreed between Niki Lauda and Walkinshaw was that Arrows would get not 'customer' engines, such as Ferrari supply to Sauber, but state-of-the-art Cosworth motors, to exactly the same spec as those supplied to Jaguar. No one can ever recall a deal of this kind being done before, and it is known that members of the Ford hierarchy in Dearborn - to say nothing of the Jaguar Racing personnel - were less then impressed when they heard about it.

Still, it's by no means impossible that Arrows will out-perform Jaguar, at least on occasions. For one thing, in Heinz-Harald Frentzen, they have the best of the four 'Ford' drivers. I was hoping that Jos Verstappen would keep his drive with Walkinshaw, but the likelihood is that the second Arrows will be driven, as last year, by Enrique Bernoldi.



Dear David,
This, I imagine, will be settled in the next few days. Jacques Villeneuve is due to drive the latest BAR-Honda for the first time today (Wednesday), and has said that he will make a decision about his future after that.

Given his unhappiness at Craig Pollock's departure, and the rumours that Honda's new engine is less than spectacular, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see JV move to Renault before the start of the season, with Jenson Button moving in the opposite direction, to BAR, now run by David Richards.



Dear Chloe,
I, too, am pleased to see Allan McNish in F1 at last. I'm ashamed to say I really haven't seen much of him through his career, apart from the odd F3000 race, but colleagues who work in the sports car racing world always told me he was quantifiably quicker than his team mates at both Porsche and Audi, and it really wouldn't surprise me at all to see him make a very much better impression than some expect.

Another question altogether, though, is whether or not he will prove a success at the highest level. For all his experience, he is new to F1, although he has done a phenomenal amount of testing over the last year or so. As well as that, Toyota, too, are new to the business, and although I hear tell of very impressive horsepower figures from their V10 engine, it will inevitably take them time to find their feet in a strange world.

I like Allan a lot, not least because he has a good sense of humour, which he may well need frequently in 2002. That said, I don't expect Toyota to be a joke - certainly not in the longer term, anyway - and I suspect McNish will figure rather more prominently than some have suggested. We'll see.