Ask Nigel: January 17

Dear Poppy,
I guess you must be thinking of the drivers' strike at Kyalami in 1982; thinking back, it's the only one I can recall. A good story, too.

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..' Niki didn't go for that 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 didn't relent...



Dear Kevin,
I think what everyone enjoyed most about the inaugural US Grand Prix at Indianapolis was the atmosphere. The significance of being at Indy, on this hallowed ground, may have passed by some soulless contemporary F1 drivers, but for most people - certainly in the press room, anyway - there was great enthusiasm for the event as a whole.

When it came to the track itself, though, feelings were more mixed. Everyone was glad that it took in part of the traditional oval (albeit in the opposite from normal direction), but most felt that the infield section was way too tight and slow.

Before they got there, the drivers had speculated that Turn 13 (Turn 1 on the Speedway) might be a bit of a handful, particularly if it should rain, but in the end it proved no problem at all. "Flat, easy flat," commented David Coulthard, after the opening practice session. "Pity, really. We were hoping that maybe it would be just flat on a qualifying lap - and then not for everyone. Problem is, the turns immediately before we come on to the oval section are too slow - we're still accelerating as we go through the banked turn..."

In fact, the tightness of the infield section took the teams by surprise. Although no one had tested there prior to the race weekend, all the teams had done elaborate computer studies of the new track, and it was confidently predicted that, at the end of the main straight (immediately before the first corner), the F1 cars would be reaching speeds they had never attained before.

In the event, though, they found that if they ran minimal wing, so as to be quick on the straight, they lost more time through in the infield than was acceptable. Consequently, everyone had to run way more wing than they had anticipated - which, of course, made for disappointingly slow speeds on the main straight, past the grandstands. The highest figure seen all weekend was 206mph, by Pedro de la Rosa's Arrows-Supertec; at Hockenheim, in July, Coulthard's McLaren-Mercedes wasn't far off 230...

As they reflected on the weekend, the drivers felt that the infield section should be speeded up, and quite considerably in places. Tony George told me, a year or so ago, that if the event proved a big success, he had in mind to extend the track (taking it up to Turn 3), so as to make use of the grandstands at that point. Everyone hopes that these modifications will be carried out, and that some of slowest turns will be eased.

I take your point about Road America (or Elkhart Lake, as we tend to refer to it in Europe). It undeniably is one of the great road circuits in the world, and to my mind worthy of comparison with Spa-Francorchamps. From a safety point of view, though, I fear that the F1 drivers would take one look at it, and say, 'No ta for us, thanks very much'...




Dear John,
I fear this is something of a can of worms you're opening here...

I'm somewhat equivocal on this subject, I must admit. On the one hand, I'm no different from anyone else, in that I hate it when a racing driver is seriously injured, or worse, in an accident. Over 30 years of working in this sport, I have been to many funerals and memorial services, and the death of Gilles Villeneuve, in 1982, to some degree changed my feelings about racing for ever. I will always applaud Jackie Stewart for his unflagging work in improving safety standards, which were plainly and completely unacceptable during his era.

"I'm old enough to remember a time when racing was dangerous, and sex was safe," Frank Gardner famously said. All drivers of the past tend to be of one mind when safety is discussed: they rejoice that fatalities are such a rarity these days - but they point out, quite reasonably, that massively improved safety standards have fundamentally changed the whole nature of the sport - and have certainly, in my opinion, caused ethics on the race track to go into free fall.

"The things some of these guys do these days... well, they feel they can get away with it, I guess," says Phil Hill, World Champion with Ferrari in 1961. "That's the only possible explanation. If guys drove like that in my time, they usually sorted themselves out pretty quickly with a big accident - or else somebody else did it for them. Some of the stuff that goes on today... I just don't know what to think. Doing that in my day... so many of them would have ended up in fatal accidents. It was just unthinkable, really, to touch another car, because of the potential consequences. I know it sounds corny, but those were the facts."

Stirling Moss remains firmly of the belief that danger is an essential ingredient in motor racing. "In my era, if it was too hot in the kitchen, fine, don't come in the kitchen. It's very difficult to propose a lessening of safety, because people say, 'My God, we don't want these poor boys to hurt themselves...' No, you don't, but the point is, if you want to bring back the taste of what racing really is, it has to be unsafe, in my mind. Otherwise, you're lessening the challenge. I mean, I'd try to walk on a wire two feet from the ground, but I wouldn't try to walk across the Grand Canyon on it, you know. Now the skill required is exactly the same thing in both cases, but the challenge is not..."

Summing up my own feelings on the matter, I'm glad that these day even an enormous accident rarely results in serious injury - but I do feel, too, that the hugely improved safety standards have exacted their dues in other ways, by no means all of them desirable.




Dear Victor,
I think you're right. If longevity in service is an essential ingredient of a 'classic' Grand Prix car, then those days are gone, and - barring an economic recession of earth-shattering proportions - will never return.

Time was when you had cars like the Maserati 250F, which won races in 1954, '55, '56 and '57, like the Lotus 49 (1967, '68, '69, '70), the Lotus 72 (1970, '71, '72, '73, '74), and the Williams FW07 (1979, '80, '81), but nowadays the norm is to build a new car for a new season - or get left behind. Way of the world.




Dear Brian,
Gordon Murray's Brabham BT49 was indeed a fantastic car, and achieved great success in Nelson Piquet's hands. I'm inclined to think that Patrick Head's Williams FW07, the BT49's contemporary, was a greater car, but perhaps I'm thinking only in terms of results: Frank Williams did, after all, make a practice of running the two best drivers available to him.

Bernie Ecclestone, however, did not. To this day, Bernie believes most Grand Prix drivers to be grossly overpaid, and one 'expensive' driver on the payroll (in this case Piquet) was quite enough for him. In his second car, he preferred to have someone who was paying for the privilege, and thus we saw such as Ricardo Zunino and Hector Rebaque partnering Nelson. Probably, the BT49 did have the ability to bring a constructors' title to Brabham, but with only one driver able to score points, that was never going to happen...




Dear Sara,
For me, there's no discussion to be had on this subject. Standing starts are part of the very culture of Grand Prix racing, and must never be allowed to disappear. In this era, particularly, the first five seconds of the race are invariably the most exciting of the afternoon.

I've always said that the day I don't reach for my cigarettes as the cars come up to the grid is the day I'll know it's time for me to quit this job. I've been like that since I was a kid (apart from the cigarettes, of course...), and so far it's still with me.

Of course, to some degree, they are a potential recipe for disaster - the more so since Herr Schumacher introduced the practice of immediately swerving into the path of one's nearest rival - but that in itself is no reason to go to rolling starts. Along with many other people, I was appalled when last year's Belgian Grand Prix had what amounted to a rolling start, simply because the track surface was damp.

Remember something else, too: perhaps the biggest startline shunt of all time was at Indianapolis in 1966 - and that, of course, was a rolling start.

No, standing starts in F1 must stay - together with severe punishments for people who make them unnecessarily dangerous by veering around...