Ask Nigel: March 28

Hello Nigel,
Thanks for a great article on the underrated Gunnar Nilsson last week, it was very touching. On that note, I'm glad that Gunnar got to drive some of the prettiest machines ever raced, and here I refer to not just the design of the car, but also the colour scheme, whether it be the striking JPS black or the reasonable Imperial Tobacco red. So my question is: in your decades of covering both Grand Prix and F1, what colour schemes have caught your attention, for better or worse?
Raymond Quan, Toronto, Canada

Dear Raymond,
Having started to go to races when I was a kid, in the '50s, there's a part of me that will always have a particular affection for that time, when racing cars were routinely in the colours of their country of origin: thus, Ferraris and Maseratis were in Italian Racing Red, Vanwalls in British Racing Green, Gordinis in French Racing Blue, Mercedes in silver (in fact, strictly speaking, Germany's national racing colour is white, but who's counting?), and so on.

At that time, the cars were completely uncluttered with any kind of signage or sticker - not even for Pirelli or Champion or whatever - and I thought they looked very attractive. Of course, it didn't hurt that many of them - particularly Maserati's 250F - were things of beauty in themselves, unlike most of today's high-nosed creations. Wind tunnels may be invaluable when it comes to aerodynamic efficiency, but they know damn all about elegance!

I can still remember the shock I felt when first I saw a photograph - on the front cover of Autosport - of Jimmy Clark sitting in a Lotus 49 in Gold Leaf livery. Gold Leaf Team Lotus?! What the hell was going on? And 'ere long, of course, we had Yardley BRM, and so on - the era of commercial sponsorship had arrived.

It wasn't completely new, of course. As a rabid Jean Behra fan, I knew that his Gordini had raced in the 1952 Carrera Panamericana with - very discreet, it must be said - backing from Dubonnet. And in America, the Indy roadsters had long been festooned with sign-writing and decals.

In Formula 1, though, it was new, and it took some getting used to. I agree with you that the black and gold colours of the John Player Special brand very well suited a whole range of different Lotus cars over a long period of time - to my mind, the last truly beautiful F1 car was the Lotus 79 of 1978, and its colour scheme suited it to a tee. That said, I think it might have looked even better in Colin Chapman's traditional colours of green with a yellow stripe...

A great deal of time and money is spent by the teams on arriving at an integrated colour scheme, which gives each sponsor the amount of space it has paid for, yet tries to achieve a harmonious whole. Quite often, it seems to me, the result is less than successful - the Benettons, for example, always strike me as a bit of a mess.

There was a period when I thought McLaren and Marlboro had it absolutely right, so that the red and white cars looked clean, crisp and uncluttered. Of today's colour schemes, I have to say that my preference is for the West McLaren-Mercedes, whose silver evokes memories of times past in the Mercedes racing history. I also like the metallic blue used by Alain Prost's team.

For a long time, I rejoiced that the Ferraris remained true to their heritage, in red, with just a few decals here and there. Enzo always said that any product which actually contributed to his cars' performance could be... acknowledged on their bodywork, but equally he was adamant that he would never countenance, say, a cigarette brand splashed all over them.

Towards the end of his life, he began to relent a little, insofar as he allowed Marlboro stickers (also bearing the driver's name) on to the side of the cars. It was a canny deal by the Old Man - for, in return, Marlboro paid the drivers' retainers!

Since Ferrari died, though, in 1988, the red cars have been ever more covered with endorsements, and at the end of 1996 Marlboro parted company with McLaren, and switched their allegiance to Maranello. Thankfully, a frightful period in which the cars were orange, rather than red, was brought to a halt, and even the Ferraris of today are more uncluttered than most of the other cars. That said, whatever Enzo would have made of 'Tic-Tac Mints', I really cannot imagine...




Dear Simon,
The day after the Malaysian Grand Prix a friend of mine - an ex-driver - called me. "I thought," he murmured, "that four-wheel-drive was banned in Formula 1..."

He was kidding, of course, but he thought, like me, that Ferrari's superior traction - which showed itself to particularly dramatic effect in the wet, of course - had made the race into something of a joke. Rubens Barrichello and, particularly, Michael Schumacher are brilliant racing drivers, but in Malaysia software enabled them to make the rest look, by comparison, somewhat pathetic, and that I didn't care to see.

Heinz-Harald Frentzen raised the whole matter after the Australian Grand Prix, pointing out that Ferrari had engine software which helped control wheelspin. He didn't say it was illegal, merely that it unquestionably existed.

This was not exactly news to anyone in the F1 paddock, but Heinz was the first man who dared to stick his head above the parapet, and give the matter a public airing.

The FIA maintains that all is above board in Ferrari's software, which means that it has been inspected, and passed, by Charlie Whiting, the governing body's technical delegate.

Fine. What I object to - HUGELY - is the consequences of what Ferraris has done. In the interests of the sport, Max Mosley rightly banned the electronic 'gizmos', including traction control, at the end of 1993, expressing the opinion that such systems were 'driver aids', and had no place in something calling itself Formula 1, Grand Prix racing, the World Championship, the top of the tree, anything else you care to call it. A competition primarily for DRIVERS.

Virtually everyone in the sport - apart from second-rate drivers, who obviously benefit from something helping them to do their job a bit better - was delighted by Mosley's action. Indeed, Max has told me that what really strengthened his resolve was a letter from Ayrton Senna, pleading with him to rid F1 of the 'gizmos'. That tells you something.

While I am prepared to accept that what Ferrari has done is legal, by the letter of the rules, it is very clearly contrary to the spirit of them. Very well, you can call me naive, say that this is F1, that everyone seeks 'the unfair advantage', and will do whatever it takes to win. What I hate, though, is that, because the FIA has declared itself incapable of properly policing the rules on certain electronic gadgetry, we have to have what is always known as 'a level playing field'.

Thus, from Barcelona on, everyone will have traction control (and fully automatic gearboxes - no more pesky finger-flicking), and to my mind that is massively damaging to what Grand Prix racing is supposed to be.

After the events in Malaysia, one fully understands why Ferrari declined to give unanimity to a vote on the re-introduction of traction control from the beginning of the season. In the first four races, their 'incipient wheelspin detection' - or whatever the hell you want to call it - will doubtless have served them well.

Beyond the fact that everyone will have traction control from the second European race on, there is nothing 'magical about the start of the European season'. However, with the start of the schedule being arranged the way it is - Melbourne/Sepang/Interlagos - any real development work is mighty difficult. Therefore, what one has in Australia, one is more or less stuck with until after Brazil. For now, though, the other teams are not 'making the predictable excuses'. Anything but, in fact...




Dear Dave,
Following the death of Bruce McLaren, the company and team were run primarily by Teddy Mayer, who had been involved from the very beginning. Others were involved, too - Phil Kerr, Tyler Alexander, and so on - but Mayer was the man at the helm, and that remained the situation until Ron Dennis, with the support of Marlboro, came aboard before the 1980 season.

By and large, you would have to say that the '70s were pretty good for McLaren, both Emerson Fittipaldi and James Hunt winning World Championships with the team, but after the highly successful M23, subsequent F1 cars - notably the M28 - were far less competitive, and McLaren went into one of those periods of doldrum which afflicts all teams from time to time. Simply, they had been left behind by Brabham and Williams, teams very obviously on the up.

Even the arrival in F1 of Alain Prost, in 1980, failed to arrest the decline. Alain was obviously a phenomenal talent, but he grew weary of constant suspension failures, and at the end of the year departed for Renault.

Everything began to turn around in '81. By now Dennis was firmly installed at the helm of things, and John Barnard - also new to the team - designed the MP4/1, which featured the first carbon-fibre monocoque in F1, and changed for all time the way tubs were built. John Watson - somewhat fortunately - won the British Grand Prix, and the following year Dennis persuaded Niki Lauda to come out of retirement, and return to the cockpit.

In 1984, Prost returned to the team, as Lauda's team mate, and the flow of World Championships for McLaren drivers began anew.




Dear Shaun,
First, thank you for your kind words.

Now, the Lotus 88. At the end of 1980, the FISA (then the sporting arm of the FIA) banned the sliding side skirts which had become standard wear in the 'ground effect' era, enabling the cars to have effectively a permanent seal with the ground. Their reasoning was that they wished to cut cornering speeds, but the British teams felt extremely aggrieved, for they had been particularly adept in getting sliding skirts to work efficiently.

For 1981, the FISA decreed there must be a six-centimetre gap between the bottom of the car and the ground, and they added that this would be rigidly enforced, and checked frequently, when cars came off the track into the pits.

Obviously, for maximum aerodynamic grip, it was desirable to have the car as close to the ground as possible, so Colin Chapman put his innovative mind to work, and what he came up with was the Lotus 88, in effect a car with two chassis - indeed, it became known as the 'twin-chassis' car.

In truth, this car, with its conventionally-sprung traditional monocoque and 'floating' bodywork, was a very elegant solution to the minimum ride height regulation - but the other constructors did not agree.

By the second race, Brabham had come up with a hydro-pneumatic suspension system, which allowed their car, the BT49C, to meet the 'six-centimetre gap' rule when it was stationary - but ran virtually on the ground at racing speed. It was a blatant way of circumventing the rule, and if that were not enough, the car also had skirts, albeit fixed ones.

Sadly, the FIA then went and announced that this package - hydro-pneumatic suspension and fixed skirts - was legal, and so what followed was a farce of a season, with every car in the race blatantly flouting what had supposedly been a hard and fast rule.

The 88 was another matter, though. This was imaginative, and - if successful - potentially far more difficult to copy. Whenever the car turned up at a race, it was thrown out by the scrutineers, after protests from other teams. Finally, at an FIA Court of Appeal, at the end of April, it was banned for good, leaving Chapman shattered and disillusioned, and Lotus's season in disarray.

That said, the news was taken rather by better by Colin's drivers of the time, Elio de Angelis and Nigel Mansell, both of whom disliked the car, and doubted its ability ever to be competitive...




Dear Iain,
Actually, I enjoyed most of Bob Judd's books - particularly 'Indy' - but then he's a friend of mine, so perhaps I'm biased. The thing is, I know Bob to be a very serious student of motor racing, and he has written some very sharp and pithy magazine features over the years. He knows whereof he speaks, in other words.

I have to confess that, from time to time, I have thought of trying to write a novel - indeed, some years ago I had serious discussions with a publisher on that very subject.

It came to nought, I suppose, for two reasons. First, if I were to base it on my own experiences in the world of F1, it would be very difficult to carry on working in that milieu afterwards! And second, there is very real problem in writing fiction about motor racing which would be of interest to a wider world - in other words, to folk only slightly interested in it - and yet be believable to myself, and also to other hardcore fanatics.

Two novels I have recently read - 'The Last Open Road' and 'Montezuma's Ferrari' - I have much enjoyed, I should tell you. Written by American historical racing writer, B.S. Levy, they are concerned with sports car racing in the US in the '50s. I found them very funny, and remarkably evocative and accurate, and would recommend them highly.




Dear Bill,
You have every right to be proud of New Zealand's Formula 1 heritage, in terms of drivers, designers, engineers, mechanics and journalists. You mention Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme, but don't forget Chris Amon, to my mind more naturally talented than either of them.

Sadly for me, I never knew Bruce, for I started as an F1 journalist in 1971, the year after his death in a CanAm car testing accident at Goodwood. He was clearly one of those very rare people who seems to have left his mark on anyone who ever knew him - it doesn't matter who you talk to, all remember him with affection and tremendous respect. Obviously a quite exceptional man.

Denny I did come to know, and like enormously, for I relished his bone dry wit, and irreverence. He was very good fun, but also had a deeply serious side to his nature: when he told me, for example, of Kyalami the day Peter Revson was killed, it moved me almost to tears. Very straightforward, very direct - and, when in the right mood, a really tremendous racing driver.

As for Chris...well, I've written countless words about him over the years. When I started work as a racing journalist, the very first race I ever covered was a Grand Prix - the Spanish in '71 - and I arrived there knowing literally no one. Amon was the first man in the paddock to befriend me, and although I see him very rarely these days, it's one of those friendships that picks up again instantly. And as a driver, yes, I know he was chaotically disorganised, and perhaps too nice a fellow to be in that trade, but his natural ability was on a par with anyone I have ever seen.

Then there's Mr Young - Eoin, that is. No one ever wrote about motor racing with a more laconic wit, I think, and to read him is to hear him. For 20-odd years Eoin has been among my closest friends, although I see less of him these days, because he chooses to spend England's winter months at his other house, in Christchurch.

I've only been to New Zealand three or four times, but have often said that if it were where France is, I'd move there tomorrow. Problem is, so would half of England...

If you have a question for Nigel, e-mail it to AskNigel@haynet.com.