Ask Nigel: June 13

Dear John,

The British drivers - past and present - manage very well when approached by the foreign media, for the simple reason that all conversations are conducted in English!

It is a shaming fact that, by and large, we Brits are lamentably incapable of speaking languages other than our own. We simply expect foreigners to speak English, and we're lucky that English is the accepted language of Formula 1, used at all press conferences, for example.

Non-British drivers sometimes arrive in F1 with very little English, but, if they're sensible, they swiftly come to understand that they'd better learn it. Olivier Panis stuck with French only for quite a time, but is now pretty fluent. A guy like Tora Takagi, on the other hand, never did make much progress with English, but he was very much the exception.

It has often occurred to me how lucky I am that this business is essentially conducted in my mother tongue. Although my French is reasonable, for example, it isn't good enough for subtleties, and I would hate to have to interview a driver in any language other than my own.



Dear Jeremy,

From the current crop of F1 drivers, I'd have Michael Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello, Juan Montoya, Ralf Schumacher, David Coulthard, Kimi Raikkonen, Jacques Villeneuve, Olivier Panis, Jarno Trulli, Jenson Button, Nick Heidfeld, Felipe Massa, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Giancarlo Fisichella, Takuma Sato and Mark Webber.

How many's that? Sixteen. OK, then I'd bring in Fernando Alonso and Alex Wurz, wasted as test drivers at present. Eighteen. From CART, I'd have Cristiano da Matta and Tony Kanaan. Twenty. From the IRL, I'd have Helio Castroneves. Twenty-one. Last, I'd lure Jeff Gordon away from NASCAR, because I think he has the kind of once-and-for-all talent that would succeed in any type of racing, and America desperately needs an F1 driver.



Dear Terry,

Funny you should say that! More than one team owner of my acquaintance has come out with similar sentiments over the years, and there's no doubt that not a few feel that they - the teams - should get a bigger share of the pie.

That said, there remains, certainly among the major teams, a fundamental belief that Bernie Ecclestone is fully entitled to a huge chunk of the pie - because he baked it in the first place! Not a few people in the paddock are hugely richer than they would have been without him, and this needs to be borne in mind.

Late last year, Ron Dennis discussed the future of F1, with regard to the Kirch Group, which had acquired a majority shareholding in SLEC (one of Eccelstone's companies).

"All the F1 teams," said Ron, "get income - TV and prize money - from SLEC, which amounts to between 12 and 15 percent of their budgets. That's important, certainly, but the fundamental thing we need is stability. Over 300 million people watch F1 on TV every two weeks. That's our audience, and if we don't have it, we'll never attract the sponsorship we need.

"I have no problem with someone - Bernie, who has created something, and made it happen - having the level of commercial benefit that his companies enjoy. But I have a significant problem with a third party, which has contributed zero, taking that same commercial benefit. Therefore the time will come when the teams feel completely justified in asking for a greater share of the revenue stream. What value a theatre with no actors?"

All reasonable points. And another one is that people like Dennis and Frank Williams have sympathy for teams financially up against it - but only up to a point. "F1," says Frank, firmly, "is like any other sport - it's a meritocracy. I had my bad times, too - and nobody helped me. More to the point, I didn't expect anyone to help me."

If Williams has limited patience with those pleading poverty in F1, perhaps it's because he went through all that himself - and to a degree that none of these people can imagine. At one point, indeed, he was operating out of a phone box, trying to disguise the fact that he didn't actually have an office!

I have a certain sympathy with Frank's point of view, in that I find it difficult to take seriously claims of financial hardship from people who travel in their own jets, and generally live well to a degree beyond the understanding of folk like you and me.

When I hear these people, I always think of Ken Tyrrell and his wife, Norah, during the team's last few years. The Tyrrell team's glory days may have been long in the past, but at least they won many grands prix and world championships, which cannot be said of any of those currently going on about cost-cutting.

Late in the life of Tyrrell Racing, money was extremely tight, and Ken and Norah, then into their 70s, would travel to the races on scheduled flights - and in economy, what's more! Yet I never, ever, heard Ken moaning about how it wasn't fair. All he knew was that, after his family, he loved F1 more than anything else in the world. This is not necessarily true of all team owners.

"You work for a huge publishing company," one major team principal said to me recently. "If it got into financial problems, would you expect its major rivals to help it out? No, of course you wouldn't. So why, because one or two people in F1 are under-financed, should the rest of us have to make compromises to accommodate them?" Seemed like a fair point to me, I must say.



Dear David,

I have no way of knowing whether or not the result of the Indy 500 is correct, because I don't know at precisely which moment the yellow lights came on in the cockpits of the cars: was it before Paul Tracy went by Helio Castroneves, or after? On that the whole thing hangs, and Team Green, in appealing against the decision, must feel it has good evidence to support its case.

The whole thing is to be 'heard' by Tony George, which is permitted by the IRL rules, but which to me seems unfortunate. Involved in this process, after all, are one IRL team (Penske) and one CART team (Team Green).

Whatever the outcome, there is no doubt that Tracy was hugely unlucky. Until the very end of the race, Castroneves was never a serious factor in this year's 500, and came into the reckoning only on 'economy'.

Had Laurent Redon not crashed when he did, Helio would not have been passed by Tracy, he would almost certainly have run dry before the flag.

I hope this thing doesn't run and run. In 1981, when the Indy 500 was sanctioned by USAC, Bobby Unser won the race, but was then penalised (for overtaking under yellow), and the win was awarded to Mario Andretti. Unser's team appealed against the decision, and months later - months later - Bobby was reinstated as the winner, his team suffering only a fine...



Dear Michael,

Only Schuey himself - plus, presumably, his wife, and Willi Weber, of course - knows what his future plans are; probably I don't know a lot more than you.

Some suggest that Rubens Barrichello's calm acceptance of what happened in Austria, and his especially relaxed demeanour this year, stem from the fact that he has a new, two-year, contract with Ferrari - and that he knows that he won't have to give way indefinitely, because he knows that Michael won't be there after this year.

Maybe, maybe not. It is a fact that several F1 folk 'in the know' have told me that they think Michael will stop at the end of this season, and while nothing in this business would be a shock any more, I have to say it would surprise me.

Should he stop, however, is there a chance that Jacques Villeneuve could replace him? Nothing is impossible, and personally I believe that Jacques, properly motivated and in the right car, is still the driver he was when he won the world championship five years ago - his drive in Austria proved beyond doubt that the 'racer' instinct within him is still very much there.

All that said, I doubt that Ferrari would take him. JV is already 31, for one thing, and at the moment is 'unfashionable' in F1 circles. For the last three and a half seasons at BAR, he has been hugely paid - only Michael has a higher retainer - and the results have been negligible. It's true that his cars have been lousy, but for the last 18 months he has been frequently outpaced by Olivier Panis - just as has Eddie Irvine by Pedro de la Rosa, at Jaguar - and the perception of both is that they have not given good value for money, that a 'cheap' young driver would have given better.

That being so, I can't see Ferrari taking Villeneuve, although I personally think he would fly in a red car. Whatever happens, Rubens Barrichello will be staying with the team, and it could well be that they will think to someone youthful like Felipe Massa. Without a doubt, the man they would really like - the man everyone would really like - is Juan Montoya, but I fancy Frank Williams would be extremely reluctant to let that happen...



Dear Gerry,

I have felt considerable sympathy for David Coulthard this season. He spent six seasons as Mika Hakkinen's team-mate, and although McLaren never has a 'number one' driver, as such, there was always the perception that Mika was regarded as the team leader.

In 2002 DC finally became the 'senior' driver in the team - and just as that happened, McLaren found itself far less competitive than expected. Why? Because, to be blunt, the Mercedes V10 has nothing like the horsepower of the best engines, from BMW, Ferrari - and Toyota.

McLaren personnel have been commnendably tight-lipped on this subject, declining publicly to criticise their engine partner, but it was significant that, after David's superb victory in Monaco, Adrian Newey commented that probably that was the team's last chance of victory until the Hungarian Grand Prix, in August. Why? Because, like Monaco, the Hungaroring is a slow, ultra-high downforce track, where horsepower is less at a premium than at most circuits.

In Canada last weekend, Mercedes made what is known in the business these days as 'a step', and modifications to the engine were certainly an improvement, albeit by not enough. Week in, week out, the problem is that, for the race, the team has to trim the cars out as much as possible - in other words, run with as little wing as possible - to keep from being easy pickings in a straight line. And this inevitably compromises what is fundamentally a very good car, with considerable inherent downforce.

(Having said that, mind you, it struck me during qualifying on Saturday that the McLarens looked horrible over Montreal's kerbs, over which everyone drives. When a car is bouncing all over the place, it doesn't have a lot of grip...)

Coulthard drove magnificently on Sunday, I thought, again revealing great fighting qualities in his late-race battle with Rubens Barrichello, but he was extremely surprised to finish as high as second, this position inherited, of course, when Montoya retired in the closing laps.

Can he be 'best of the rest', behind Schumacher, at the end of the season? Quite honestly, I think it's unlikely. Although Montoya has been on pole position at the last two races, Williams-BMW have had a poor run recently, but I can't see that continuing, and would expect to find both Montoya and Ralf Schumacher figuring strongly in the races to come. As a package, the Williams-BMW is much more competitive than the McLaren-Mercedes.

Yes, Kimi Raikkonen has often out-qualified Coulthard this year, but I'm not entirely surprised. Consider the circumstances: DC is into his eighth full season as an F1 driver, Kimi in only his second. For a driver of Coulthard's age and experience, it must be disheartening to be so short of power, and at this stage of his career it must be difficult to find full motivation in those circumstances. Raikkonen, on the other hand, is very young, new to McLaren, and at a point in his career when he simply gives it everything, every time he gets in the car.

Plus, of course, he is ferociously quick! He may not be a pretty driver to watch on a circuit, but his fundamental speed is prodigious. In my opinion, DC is facing a tougher challenge from Kimi this year than he usually did from Mika Hakkinen last season. In the circumstances, I think he's doing a tremendous job. The drive at Monaco, in particular, was absolutely from the top drawer.