Ask Nigel: March 20

Nigel received many questions regarding the incident between these two at the first corner in Malaysia. The clash is the subject of Fifth Column in AUTOSPORT magazine this week so, to avoid repetition, we have not published his views in this column. To check out Nigel's opinion, see this week's magazine, on sale from Thursday.



Dear Richard,

First of all, this isn't a new problem. To my mind, the televising of Formula 1 - in terms of the picture you see on your screen - has long been compromised by local TV directors who were either inept and unimaginative, tending to stay endlessly on the leading car (even if it were leading by a minute), or...influenced by local factors, let's say. The Brazilian GP, next on the schedule, has long been particularly poor in every respct - the camera angles are lousy, and I think it's a fair bet we shall see an awful lot of Rubens Barrichello in 10 days' time.

No disrespect to Rubens, who's a nice bloke, and a hell of a good racing driver, but you take my point. Other 'local' TV directors are every bit as bad, and I suppose that to some extent we must expect that.

The great limitation of terrestrial TV, of course, is that you can only show one thing at one time, whereas with Sky's F1 Digital you have choices. If you're bored with watching the leader tooling round on his own, you can switch to the battle that's going on for fourth place, or whatever. If I were not going to the races any more, I'd happily pay my 12 quid every fortnight, and regard it as money very well spent. To me, it's like private health insurance in Mr Blair's wonderful modern Britain: you can't afford to be without it.

As far as appointing a special director to cover all the races for the terrestrial feed is concerned, I'm afraid the idea simply isn't feasible, because the feed comes from a different company at every Grand Prix, and these companies simply wouldn't entertain being 'run' by an outsider. Sorry, but those are the facts of life.

Even if such a thing were to happen, would it undermine 'Bakersville' and Bernie's digital TV operation? Quite honestly, no. The service offered by F1 Digital is quite different from any terrestrial coverage, for it is aimed at the purist, who wants to watch every session, wants to see the order and the gaps on his screen, who wants a lot of in-car coverage, wants the facility to switch from picture to picture, can't abide interruptions from ads - and is prepared to pay for it. It's that simple, I'm afraid. Life's old lesson: if you want the best, you've got to pay for it.



Dear Gary,

I suppose that, to some degree, James never quite got the recognition he deserved, although back in the mid-to-late '70s he was trumpeted by Fleet Street in much the same way Nigel Mansell later was.

If James didn't get the recognition he deserved 'as a topline racing driver', this is probably because his time at the top was comparatively short. In Formula 1, he began to make his name in 1973 and '74, won his first Grand Prix in '75, the World Championship in '76, had another great season in '77, faded badly in '78, retired early in '79.

I suppose it was only inevitable that many should have felt that Lauda was the rightful World Champion in 1976, because Niki built up a huge points lead in the first half of the season, then had his awful accident at the Nurburgring, missed two races, and came back long before he was anything like fully fit - and even then James only just won it, clinching it at Suzuka, the last race, when Niki withdrew on the second lap, considering the awful weather conditions unacceptable.

Although I wouldn't classify Hunt among the all-time greats, in terms of natural ability I always thought him ahead of Lauda. Problem was, as he freely admitted, he lacked Niki's dedication to the job. "I was never much of a worker, never that much involved with my racing, outside of when I got in the car, and started to drive it. It's the same with squash - but put me on a court, and I give everything. I turn on in a competitive situation."

James would admit willingly that his approach to racing was not particularly deep, and that he believed both good and bad. He was never a man to 'think himself' into a Grand Prix for a week beforehand, never one to allow distractions to get to him. "Conversely, in bad times some drivers will get stuck into the root of the problem, and regenerate enthusiasm in the team. I was never the man to do that."

It was in such circumstances that James retired, and, typically, he did it in the middle of a season. Following his championship year, he won several races for McLaren in 1977, but after a poor season in '78 left to join Walter Wolf's team. At the Monaco Grand Prix of 1979, his car broke down, and he walked away from it without a backward glance. "It was over," he said. "I knew this was my last race, and I hated that car, anyway. I felt no sadness at all, just immense relief."

If Hunt always raced with consummate bravery, he was well aware of the risks in an era far more perilous than this one. Often he was sick before a race, but from tension rather than fear. Once in the car, he was all business.

There has always been a sprinkling of drivers prepared to fight as hard for 10th place as for first, but Hunt was emphatically not of their number. "I always needed to feel I could win," he said, "and in my last couple of seasons I didn't have the car to do it. I wasn't prepared to go on risking my life to finish seventh, or whatever."

In a car, his natural ability was high, his audacity considerable, his racing brain unusually sharp. Tactically, James was always strong in a race, and this was also to serve him well in his BBC TV work, when, partnering Murray Walker, he became one of the great sports commentators.

Ultimately Hunt came to love racing a great deal, but it wasn't always so. While he was actually doing it, he once told me, he didn't really like it very much. He retired young, a few months short of his 32nd birthday, and never regretted it.

It takes a brave man to admit to fear. "I was getting scared of hurting myself," he said. "I don't think that would have happened if I had been in a car that could win, because that's the way I am: in a competitive situation, everything else goes out of my head. But I didn't have that for my last couple of years, and I was never the type to get pleasure from simply being a racing driver. Driving a racing car, when you've got the ability, is like riding a bike. You don't get worse at it. It's only your head that moves around, right?"

It's true that Hunt struggled in the lower formulae to some extent, but by 1970 he was very successful in F3, which was unbelievably competitive in those days. And, when all's said and done, what you do in the junior formulae does not necessarily reflect how good you will be in F1. Johnny Dumfries, for example, was highly successful in F3, while Nigel Mansell won but one race in that category - and that was only because the bloke who won 'on the road' was disqualified!



Dear Anthony,

When Keke Rosberg rang me with the news that he was no longer managing Mika Hakkinen, I immediately concluded, like you, that probably this meant we would not see Hakkinen in an F1 car again.

Never say never, of course, but I will be very surprised if Mika comes back. Although he drove some quite brilliant races in 2001, notably at Barcelona, Silverstone and Indianapolis, there were many more which were lacklustre by Hakkinen standards, and through the summer I increasingly got the impression that he had lost much of his taste for racing. I think, without a doubt, that the suspension failure in the first race, Melbourne, when he was chasing Schumacher for the lead, made a huge impression on him. Although he was unhurt, it was a big accident - and it occurred very soon after the birth of his first child.

If he were to come back, for whom would he drive? It's true, as Keke said, that 'contracts are in place with McLaren', but I would doubt that this amounts to a firm deal to drive for the team if he should so choose. If not McLaren, then who? Hakkinen has enough money for several lifetimes, so if he were to come back, it would be purely for the sake of it, and I suspect that the only other option which might tempt him would be Ferrari.

All that said, though, I seriously doubt that Mika will return to F1.



Dear Dino,

Giuseppe Farina, driving for Alfa Romeo, won the first World Championship, in 1950, and must be considered one of the great drivers of history. Extremely fast, he was also very stylish, sitting well back from the wheel, arms almost straight, Stirling Moss admitted that he consciously copied Farina's driving style, simply because he thought it looked so good!

While agreeing that Farina was a great driver, however, Moss has never made any secret of his contempt for his utter ruthlessness: "On the track, he was an absolute bastard. God knows what he'd have been like now, when everything is so safe!"

Even before the war, when Farina was a young man, his reputation was notorious. In the 1936 Deauville Grand Prix, for example, he shoved a French driver, Marcel Lehoux, off the road, and in those days this was not the almost trifling matter it has become today, when the cars are strong, the run-off areas huge, and the drivers well protected. Lehoux was killed.

It may be said that Farina's greatest years were lost to the war, for he was 33 when it started, 39 when it ended. Nevertheless, he remained a very formidable driver, with Alfa Romeo and then Ferrari, right through to his retirement in the mid-'50s. Never, though, a man to engage in wheel-to-wheel combat.

Years ago I asked Juan Fangio, his team mate at Alfa, what he thought of Farina. "He was not in the category of [Alberto] Ascari or Moss," he said, "but still a great driver." And on the track? "A madman! Completely loco! And even worse on the road. I hated to drive with him in traffic."

In 1966 Farina was involved in the filming of the movie, Grand Prix. En route to Reims, for the French Grand Prix, he crashed his Lotus Cortina on any icy road near Chamonix, and was killed.



Dear Robert,

You're right, by the look of things, Renault (nee Benetton) is the team which has made the most progress between last year and this. In Malaysia, the radical 111-degree V10 couldn't hold off Juan Montoya's Williams-BMW, but nor was it reeled in down the straights the way it would have been in 2001. All in all, it's clearly a pretty handy car, as Jenson Button demonstrated on Sunday.

On the strength of his drive in Sepang, yes, Jenson is about to rejuvenate his reputation. Some of his drives for Williams in 2000, his debut season, were outstanding, but last year he made a very poor impression at Benetton. Undoubtedly, it was an awful car, but Giancarlo Fisichella - far more experienced, I accept - did a great deal more with it than Jenson, who went on about how it didn't suit his style. Frankly, so bad was the car that I doubt it would have suited any driver's style, Fisichella's included.

It wasn't just poor performances, relative to his team mate, that damaged Button last year, however. In a very short time he had become very rich, and clearly a great deal of that money was spent on 'toys'. You can get away with this if you're delivering, but inevitably the murmuring began that Jenson had taken his eye off the ball, that he was more interested in the good life than in the development of his career. Flavio Briatore made little secret of his dissatisfaction with him.

Since then, there have been changes. Button has got rid of his old management, really knuckled down on his fitness, and come into 2002 with a different attitude, refreshed and ready to go for it. At the wheel of a very much more competitive car, his confidence is back, as we saw so clearly last weekend. Jarno Trulli's sheer pace, particularly in qualifying, is a matter of record, and if Jenson can continue - as in Malaysia - to outshine him, the memories of 2001 will quickly fade. Without a doubt, he has the talent; it's up to him to make the most of it.



Dear Chloe,

In F1 circles, it is no secret that in 2002 Mercedes, like Honda, are seriously short of power, compared with Ford, Ferrari, Toyota and, above all, BMW. Before the first race, someone-who-should-know told me the latest Mercedes V10 was struggling to get over 800 horsepower - and someone else-who-should-know reckoned the BMW was giving around 870...

For David Coulthard (and Kimi Raikkonen), the tragedy is that this is compromising perhaps the best McLaren chassis since 1998. From the beginning, DC enthused about the car, its balance, its abundant downforce, but of course much of that goes out of the window if you have to 'trim the car out', in the search for some straightline speed. Take off wing, and you lose grip - lose grip, and you screw your tyres...

Ron Dennis is famously discreet in situations like this, and will probably never utter a word of criticism - publicly, anyway - of McLaren's technical partner. But unless a good deal more power - and reliability, too - is found, chances are that McLaren-Mercedes will not be able to mount a serious challenge to Ferrari and Williams-BMW for this year's World Championship. I'd be very surprised if the team didn't win some races, but over the long haul that power deficit will be crucial.

Problem is, lack of power is only part of it. On Sunday, in the enormous heat of Malaysia, the two BMW-powered cars ran like watches, and finished 1-2, while both Mercedes-engined cars smokily expired. In
Germany, particularly, this will not have gone unnoticed.