Ask Nigel: March 13

Dear Nigel,

When did weaving become acceptable in F1? For many people - and I am one of them - weaving has never been acceptable, and never will be, but then I'm in my 50s, and thus able to remember a time when a batsman, knowing he was out, didn't wait for the umpire's decision, but simply 'walked'. I guess anyone who behaved like that now would be ridiculed.

Similarly, in motor racing there was a time when weaving, blocking, baulking, call it what you like, was decried as 'dirty driving'. People in their 20s and 30s tend to blink in disbelief when they hear something like this, but, believe me, it was once the case. For one thing, 'sportsmanship' was considered important, and there was the belief that chopping across a driver who had beaten you to a corner was not only unethical, but also rather pathetic: anyone, after all, could keep ahead if he were prepared to do that.

For another, back then if you interlocked wheels with someone, and got upside down, chances were high you would leave the circuit in a box.

Consider the thoughts of three great drivers from the '50s and '60s. First, Phil Hill, World Champion for Ferrari in 1961, who admits that the driving tactics of today leave him bemused. "They feel they can get away with it, I guess. That's the only possible explanation. If guys drove like that in my time, they usually sorted themselves out pretty quickly. Back then it was just unthinkable, really, to touch another car, because of the potential consequences. I know it sounds corny, but those were the facts. Over the long term, you just couldn't do it, and get away with it."

Next, Tony Brooks, perhaps the most underrated Grand Prix driver of all time, who won at places like the 'old' Spa, the 'old' Nurburgring, the 'old' Monza. "The big attraction was driving a racing car on closed roads, and we accepted that the name of the game was keeping the car on the island. If you went off, you were in the lap of the Gods. You might get away with it, you might not. Nobody will persuade me that there isn't more of a challenge to the driver if he knows he might hurt himself if he goes off the road. So, believe me, there was no messing around with this weaving business - trying to intimidate another driver into backing off."

Last, Stirling Moss. "I always get criticised for saying this, but, in my opinion, racing has become too safe. By that, I don't mean that I want to see the little boys hurt themselves, but that I think all this massively increased safety has had its price - which you see in the track manners of the drivers. They feel so safe that they do things that would never have been contemplated at one time. I mean, we had Giuseppe Farina, who was the most ruthless bastard on the track you ever saw, but he was the great exception."

All right, these three raced a long time ago, and the world has changed out of sight, but similar thoughts have gone through the minds of more recent drivers, too. In the '70s there was an extremely average driver by the name of Mike Beuttler, who was sponsored in F1 for reasons we needn't go into here; Beuttler was notorious for chopping across other drivers into corners - but, the thing was, that kind of behaviour was so unusual back then that he acquired a nickname: 'Blocker'...

Everything really began to change in the '80s. "Today," said Keke Rosberg, in 1984, "we're coming to a situation where weaving and blocking are totally acceptable - even praised! And I find that a shame. What angers me is when a guy chops across straight at you, so you either give way - or hit him. That's not Grand Prix racing. There's a difference between being tough and being unfair. If someone outbrakes me, I take my hat off to them and say well done. But when someone swerves around in the middle of the straight, that's a different matter.

"I guess I'm basically talking about respect. And today I don't think there is very much respect in this business. I think the common attitude - the discipline - has changed."

At Spa in 1998 Martin Brundle drove some demonstration laps in a 1955 Mercedes-Benz W196. Drove them pretty quickly, too. Afterwards, exhilarated by the experience, he allowed that it had given him pause for thought.

"What's never changed about Grand Prix racing," Brundle said, "is that the limit is the limit is the limit. In other respects, though, I'm starting to understand there are huge differences in the job of the driver from one era to another. Physically, I found the car easy, because the g-forces are low, but mentally it was incredibly hard.

"When you're up around 150, going through fast corners, you begin to think about the absence of seat-belts, roll-over bars, and the like. In a modern car, if you're going to crash, you make sure you do certain things beforehand, but in this case I really had no idea what I'd do.

"All right, in the back of a current driver's mind is the acceptance that he might get hurt doing this, but then it must have been right at the front of your mind, I'd have thought."

What's really different about this era, however, is that blocking and weaving are tacitly allowed by the powers-that-be, for we now have the unwritten rule that 'one move' is permissible. And once you get into the mindsight that blocking once is all right, then, hey, who's counting?

Undoubtedly, launch control must be to some extent exacerbating the problem, because now 'good starts' and 'bad starts' are only relative: everyone gets away pretty well, and therefore there is even greater incentive to protect your position any way you can.

All I can say is, when there is an accident at the start in which someone gets badly hurt, I don't want to hear that no one could have seen it coming. And, for that matter, I'm not really too interested in hearing drivers moan about safety: what happens at the start - and elsewhere - these days is a quite unnecessary danger, for which they, and they alone, are responsible.



Dear Richard,

First of all, Jean Alesi and Gilles Villeneuve were 'throwbacks' to an earlier time, not so much for their driving styles as for their attitudes to racing and to life.

While there may be vintage 'crops' of drivers at different times, I don't think the quality of the very best - Nuvolari, Fangio, Ascari, Moss, Clark, Stewart, Rindt, Lauda, Prost, Senna, Schumacher - changes from one era to another; in other words, I think a great driver is a great driver, that talent of that order would flourish at any time.

That said, demands on drivers have certainly changed down the years. Today, for example, they are required to be very much more circumspect in what they say to the press, and in that respect I think Rudolf Caracciola, the great German Mercedes driver of the 1930s, would have been perfect for the current era, for he was unusually discreet in his own time. And I reckon that Bernd Rosemeyer, believed by many to be the greatest 'natural' of all time, would have been ideal for the racing today, because he drove absolutely flat out at all times, much in the manner of Michael Schumacher, and the format of today's F1 calls for just that.



Dear Alexis,

My memories of the BRM H16 engine are that it sounded wonderful - and that it was a complete waste of time and money!

I remember watching Jackie Stewart take pole position in the BRM H16 at the non-championship F1 race at Oulton Park in the spring of 1967, and a most memorable sight it was, because it was a big, handsome, car, and the sound of it pounding up Clay Hill was something else.

Trouble was, the engine was massively heavy and complex, and suffered from appalling reliability. As well as that, on horsepower it was also well short of the then-new - and much simpler and lighter - Cosworth DFV. Towards the end of 1966, awaiting the arrival of the Cosworth, Lotus played briefly with the H16 engine, and, as you, say, Jimmy Clark won the US Grand Prix with it. But that was mainly because the front runners - Jack Brabham (Brabham) and Lorenzo Bandini (Ferrari) - both retired.

BRM's H16 motor was not quite the fiasco that the same company's earlier V16 had been, for it did at least win an important race. But it wasn't far behind.



Dear Andres,

Somewhat over the top, I think! The idea of having a Grand Prix every fortnight, the whole year round, is more than most people involved in F1 would even want to contemplate - even now, with only 17, many believe there are too many races, and simply cutting Friday practice out of the equation wouldn't make a lot of difference: you'd still have to travel to all these places, after all.

I know Jacques also sees the idea of 25 races being linked to a virtual ban on testing, but even that wouldn't compensate. To have that many races, you'd need, for example, to employ two crews of mechanics, sharing the workload, as has become increasingly the norm, for example, in NASCAR, where they have over 30 races each year, albeit in the same country. It is not by coincidence that the divorce rate in NASCAR is staggeringly high!



Dear Richard,

Back in 1980, McLaren were not achieving a great deal, and Marlboro, the team's major sponsor, was becoming dissatisfied, feeling that new management blood needed to be injected.

At the time, Ron Dennis had a team - also sponsored by Marlboro - called Project 4, which ran cars in Formula 2 and Formula 3, but RD had F1 aspirations, and Marlboro suggested to Teddy Mayer, then the boss of McLaren, that that two teams should merge. This duly came to be in September 1980, and the new company was called McLaren International, with Mayer and Dennis to be joint Managing Directors. Two years later, Ron 'bought out' Teddy.

Prior to the formation of McLaren International, the model numbers of the company's cars had always been prefixed by 'M', for 'McLaren', in honour of the founder, Bruce, who had been killed at Goodwood in 1970. Thus, the last in the line were the 1980 F1 cars, the M28 and the M29.

After McLaren International came into being, the first car produced, for 1981. was designated 'MP4', this to reflect the merger between 'McLaren' and 'Project 4'. And 'MP4' it has been ever since.



Dear James,

Yes, I'm extremely frustrated about the lack of CART coverage on British TV, because, like you, I'm a huge fan of the series - and this is the last year in which they'll be running 'proper' CART cars, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm sad that Eurosport has decided not to continue showing the races live, as they have done for many years, but the fact of the matter is that not enough of us watched them, James. Had the viewing figures been good, the coverage would have continued, you may be sure of that. It's not that CART could have made more of an effort to land a British TV deal, I'm afraid; it's that there are no takers.

Essentially the same problem exists - in reverse - in the USA. Just as we have a CART round here, at Rockingham, so they have a Grand Prix there, at Indianapolis, yet setting up a TV deal with one of the major networks for F1 is like pulling teeth. The viewing figures don't cut it. ABC has just agreed to show four of the 17 races: Monaco, Montreal, Monza and Indianapolis. Sad, but that's the way it is.

To add to my own distress, I won't even be able to go the Rockingham race this year, for it clashes with Monza. I'll be at Milwaukee in June, the weekend before the Canadian Grand Prix, and that, I guess, will be my last sight of an honest-to-God, turbocharged, Indy car.