Ask Nigel: March 27

Nigel received many questions regarding the recent rule changes instigated by the FIA to reduce costs in F1. This 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 Stephen,
I'm not a rally nut, by any means, but I have been watching, and enjoying, the Channel 4 coverage recently. Your point about Corrado Provera is interesting, particularly his obvious love of competition - all I can say is, Alain Prost would have relished any sign of it through those awful years when his team was using Peugeot engines! I don't think there's any doubt that Provera has considerably more enthusiasm for rallying than he ever had for racing.

Right from the start, when Peugeot arrived in F1 with McLaren in 1994, I never truly understood why they had become involved, and perhaps, as you say, it was nothing more than a response to Renault - who were winning everything back then, with Williams.

Perhaps things might have been different if Peugeot had done the whole F1 programme themselves, gone racing as 'Peugeot' pure and simple, as Toyota have done. Indeed, it was the company's decision not to do this which led to the departure of Jean Todt to Ferrari.

The fact is, Peugeot decided to be only an engine supplier, and always seemed to be, as the Americans say, 'a day late, a dollar short'. I have been surprised to hear recent rumours of a possible return to F1, because there was never evidence of the commitment, financial or otherwise, necessary to succeed. It was not, you know, by chance that Ron Dennis severed his ties with Peugeot after a single season, and Jordan, too, found the alliance a difficult one. Then there was the Prost saga...

You're quite right, though, in pointing out that Peugeot's commitment to rallying is on quite another level - and was even before they thought about getting into F1. Perhaps it's because they win all the time. When they announced their withdrawal from F1, Provera issued a whingeing statement, effectively saying that only one or two manufacturers got anything out of it, in terms of success, and the tone was very much one of, 'If we can't win, we're taking our bat and ball home'. in rallying, of course, they win all the time...




Dear Fernando,
I have often thought what a tragedy it was that we never saw Ayrton Senna drive an F1 car round the 'old' Interlagos, for undoubtedly it was one of the greatest circuits ever used for Grand Prix racing, and I find it ironic that fiddly little left-right at the end of the pit straight is these days called the 'Senna S'. A man like that should have an almost flat-in-top corner named after him.

Apart from its bumpy surface, the current track is still very good, particularly by the standards of today, but I must say that I agree with Nelson Piquet's verdict that it is a shadow of the old one.

In particular, what I remember most about the old circuit was the beginning of the lap: instead of braking hard for what is now the 'Senna S', the cars flew into an ultra-fast, downhill, left-hander - followed by another just the same! It was a simply fantastic spot to watch F1 cars in action, and also a real test of skill and bravery.

The circuit was also a great deal longer then than now, 4.95 miles (7.96 kms), rather than 2.68 (4.31 kms), and a quick lap - in 1980, the last year in which the old track was used - took nearly two and a half minutes.

The first World Championship race to be run in Brazil was in 1973, and predictably all of Sao Paulo went crazy, because it was won by the Lotus of Emerson Fittipaldi, then the reigning World Champion, and already a national hero. The following year, Fittipaldi - now with McLaren - won again, but I guess maybe the victory from that era which most sticks in my mind was that of Carlos Pace, for Brabham, in 1975.

Pace was a delightful guy, as well as a very underrated driver, and this was his first Grand Prix win, around six seconds ahead of Fittipaldi. Like Emerson, he was from Sao Paulo, and the celebrations were frantic. Sadly, Carlos, killed in a light aircraft accident in Brazil two years later, was never to win another race, but it always pleased me that he had his day of days in front of his home crowd. Today, of course, the track at Interlagos is called the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace.

Thereafter, Niki Lauda and Carlos Reutemann won for Ferrari in 1976 and '77, respectively, but in 1978 the Brazilian GP was moved to Jacarepagua, in Rio de Janeiro, and this was never a track that particularly appealed to me. I was glad when the race returned to Interlagos in '79 (won easily by Jacques Laffite's Ligier) and '80 (when Rene Arnoux won for Renault).

Thereafter, the race reverted to Rio for several years, coming back to Interlagos only in 1991, when victory went to Alain Prost's Ferrari. By now, though, the circuit had been shortened and changed fundamentally into the one still in use.

If I have a particular memory of the original track, though, I guess, it comes from a trip I made there late in 1978. It was the year Mario Andretti won the World Championship, and we were working on a book together. Shortly before Christmas, I flew to Sao Paulo to do most of the taping, for Mario was involved that week in a Goodyear test session at Interlagos. Only half a dozen cars were testing, and I was the lone spectator!

As much as anything, I remember going to and from the track, for I always felt that the drive from the city out to the circuit involved one of the scariest stretches of road on this earth. Countless unwieldy-looking trucks thundered along the dual-carriageway, most of them driven by would-be World Champions, but they did not proceed at the rate of an Andretti - even one driving a rented VW Passat.

It was the ease of it that sticks in my mind. Cigarette in hand, the lightest touch on the wheel, Mario calmly weaved his way through, constantly swapping lanes, using the tailgates of trucks like a series of clipping points on a twisting section of track. And chatting away at the same time. The first morning I was a little unnerved; by the evening I came to appreciate he was doing it by design.

One morning we were early at the track. "Wanna do a lap?" said Mario, and of course I said yes. In fact, we did several laps, and although the Passat was hardly the quickest of cars, it nevertheless seemed swift enough in Andretti's hands. "The secret, you see," he shouted, pitching the thing into a turn at some unimaginable speed, "is not scrubbing off too much speed!" We drove back to Sao Paulo that evening on slicks...

At one point, though, I recall a whoop of spontaneous exhilaration from Mario: "Goddam, this is one fantastic race track!" So it was.




Dear Mark,
Who knows what Jacques will do at the end of this year? At the moment he is into his fourth season with BAR, and - in terms of wasting the services of a hugely talented driver - it has been a complete disaster.

The problem Jacques has, of course, is that, for a driver of his class, there are only three teams worth driving for - and, barring the unforeseen, I don't see a vacancy cropping up at Ferrari, Williams-BMW or McLaren-Mercedes, any time soon. It is possible that Rubens Barrichello might be replaced in 2003, but I somewhat doubt that Michael Schumacher would agree to JV becoming his team mate.

Therefore, Villeneuve is stuck with the 'second division', and his problem is that the longer he is out of the limelight - his last victory was in 1997, the year he won the World Championship - the less likely it is that he will be wooed by a top team. For one thing, he is extremely expensive, second in the retainer stakes only to Schumacher. I think it highly unlikely he will be offered that kind of money when it comes to drawing up a new contract, be it with BAR or anyone else.

At Malaysia he drove flat out for the whole race, and was rewarded only with eighth place - and this is the situation he has been in for a very long time. If, as some have suggested, his motivation is not what it was, probably we shouldn't be too surprised. At the other end of the parc ferme , of course, were Ralf Schumacher and Juan Montoya, who had finished 1-2 for Williams-BMW, and I wonder how many times Jacques has regretted leaving Williams for BAR, at the end of 1998.

His reasoning at the time was that Williams were inevitably going into a period in the wilderness, making do with Supertec 'customer' engines until the arrival of BMW. BAR, too, were initially to use Supertecs, so there was no difference there. Jacques was much swayed by the fact that Craig Pollock, his manager and close friend, was the man behind BAR, and he liked the idea of a new challenge, of building something from scratch.

And, as well as that, there was the money. Pollock was able to offer Villeneuve considerably more than Frank Williams would ever contemplate.

Had he stayed with Williams, he wouldn't be as rich as he is - but neither would his career be in the doldrums. As things are turning out this year, another mistake was to turn down Flavio Briatore's invitation to lead the Renault team.

Now that Pollock has gone from the team, replaced by David Richards, an important link has been broken. Jacques will be feel less inclined to stay with BAR - and Richards will invite him to remain with the team only if he is sure that this is his best option.

Can BAR turn it around? I am a great believer in David Richards, and I think the recent changes in technical personnel should probably have been made long ago, because the cars have been poor, frankly, from the very beginning. I suspect that the 2003 BAR may prove a distinct improvement - but the car is only half the problem. Honda's latest V10 is reckoned to be giving even less power than the latest Mercedes, which is saying something.

There are those who believe that Villeneuve is washed up, finished, after too many years in uncompetitive cars, but I don't agree with that. They forget just how good Jacques was in his great years of 1996 and '97, with the Williams-Renault. For that matter, people said the same about Ronnie Peterson in the late '70s, and he proved them entirely wrong as soon as he rejoined Lotus in 1978, showing that all the old speed and flair remained. Personally, I don't doubt that JV could get it back - but, as things stand, I don't see him getting the car to prove it. Hope I'm wrong.




Dear Scott,
I think you're talking about a variety of factors here, rather than a common one. First, Ferrari. The new car is somewhat radical, and although Michael Schumacher was soon fundamentally convinced of its superiority over the 2001 car, its launch had been very late, and it was no more than commonsense to take the old one - very much the best car of last year, after all - to Melbourne, where it duly dominated. That being so, it was logical then to race it in Malaysia, but there I suspect the speed of the Williams/BMW/Michelin combination - in race trim - rather took Ferrari by surprise. Had this not been the case, I'm sure that the team would have completed the 'long haul' races with the old car - indeed, Rubens Barrichello is to race on at Interlagos on Sunday; as it is, I'm not surprised Schumacher is keen to take a chance on the new one. It's very quick - but will it last?

Next, Jaguar, and here we have a tale of complete woe, perhaps not unconnected with the fact that while the R3 was being conceived, two different wind tunnels - one in California, which is very handy for Milton Keynes - were used, and were not, it later transpired, calibrated identically. At the moment, it's a pretty terrible car, very short of downforce, but Eddie Irvine's suspicions that the old R2 was quicker were not borne out in post-Sepang tests. Therefore, he and Pedro de la Rosa stick with the new one, and keep their fingers crossed for significant improvements down the road.

McLaren's predicament is awful at the moment. From what David Coulthard says, the MP4-17 is a superb creation, perhaps McLaren's best since the dominant season of 1998, but - there's no getting from this - at present it is severely compromised by a distinctly down-on-power Mercedes V10. The word is that DC and Kimi Raikkonen are working with little more than 800-810 horsepower at the moment, while BMW have perhaps 870, and Toyota, Ferrari and Ford not much less. So while the car has oodles of downforce, much of it has to be sacrificed in trimming it out, running far less wing than is ideal, simply to avoid being blown away down every straight. And, as well as being short of horsepower, the Mercedes motor, on the evidence of Malaysia, is also low on reliability. Not a happy situation.

Jordan and BAR, both Honda users, find themselves in a similar situation. While the latest BAR looks like 'more of the same' - a fundamentally poor car - the Jordan EJ12 seems a pretty useful device, but the people in charge at Honda these days are not of the 'racer' mentality we once took for granted. Bluntly, the latest engine - at least at the revs currently being allowed to go through it - is hopelessly short of power. There seems to be a belief that a Honda engine expiring in a cloud of smoke on TV is going to change the mind of someone contemplating buying a Civic the following day. If that really is the thinking, Honda would be better off clearing out of F1: people also notice when a driver like Jacques Villeneuve works his nuts off in a Grand Prix, and trails in a distant eighth. Perhaps the impressive showing of new arrivals Toyota will bring about a change of attitude.

While Renault (nee Benetton) have clearly made very considerable progress over the winter, only Ferrari, Williams and Sauber appear to be in very good shape as the European season beckons. At tracks where sheer horsepower is not of paramount importance, McLaren will be very much in the picture, but at the quick circuits they will probably struggle.




Dear Rudy,
I guess there are similarities, yes. For many years, the Mercedes/Ilmor CART engine was right there on performance and reliability, and quite often the pick of the crop. I suspect, though, that the time and effort put into the F1 programme ultimately compromised it. As time went by, fewer and fewer teams used it, and eventually it became very much not the engine to have in CART. No one was too surprised when the programme was wound up.

The current situation with the F1 engine is a rather different matter, however. There is no question that Mercedes/Ilmor suffered considerably from the ban on beryllium, imposed at the end of 2000, and many were surprised when it was decided not to introduce a new engine for 2001, but rather to continue with a beryllium-less version of the original one. More than once last year, I heard the McLaren drivers mutter that they didn't have as much power as in 2000, rather that Ilmor were trying to get back to where they had been before the ban.

For 2002, however, there is a completely new V10, and so far it is proving a consummate disappointment, both on power and reliability. There is no getting away from the fact that the death of Paul Morgan, last summer, was a huge blow to the company, both professionally and personally, and there are those who suggest that perhaps Mario Ilien is trying to do too much. As well as being a genius, he is a splendid bloke, and it is to be hoped that he and his company will bounce back soon - by none more than Ron Dennis and his drivers...