Ask Nigel: March 6

Dear Chris,

I understand why you feel the way you do. If Michael Schumacher had run away with the Australian Grand Prix in Ferrari's 2002 car, that would have been one thing, but the fact that he did it in last year's car - albeit an updated version - is even more depressing for the rest.

Before we resign ourselves to a season of absolute Ferrari domination, however, it is worth bearing one or two things in mind. First, all right, this was essentially last year's car, but it was unquestionably not only the most reliable, but also the fastest, car of 2001 - remember its absolute supremacy in the final round of the championship, at Suzuka? The team had already run it in Melbourne once, and therefore arrived with a set-up 'template' from last year, which can't have hampered them.

The second thing is that, as the only major team now using Bridgestones, Ferrari effectively have 'bespoke' tyres this year - and that can't hamper them, either. There's no question that the Bridgestones were consipicuously superior to the Michelins in Australia - as Juan Montoya said of Schumacher, "As soon as his tyres got up to temperature, he passed me like I was parked".

Michelin is a very serious compnay, and there will undoubtedly be weekends this year - as last - when their tyres are the ones to have, but they really do need to find a way round this 'drop off' problem. And the signs are that their intermediate and wet tyres are some way from Bridgestone's, as well, which could cause McLaren and Williams problems in Malyasia in 10 days' time, if last year's 'wet season' race is anything to go by.

From talking to David Coulthard, I don't get the impression there's a great deal wrong with the latest McLaren - indeed, DC reckons it's the best car the company's produced since 1998, with good balance, and a very considerable amount of downforce. Frankly, from what I understand, the big problem at the moment lies with the Mercedes half of the partnership. Unlike last year, there is a new engine in 2002, but so far it is proving well down on power - I hear tell of 50 horsepower, and more - compared with the most powerful motor, which, as in 2001, seems to be the BMW.

The problem for Montoya and Ralf Schumacher, as they try to get on terms with Ferrari, lies not with power, but - apparently - with a relative lack of downforce. Williams are working hard on the problem, but it may be some time before a revised aero package is available.

For all that, both Williams and McLaren reckon they will be more competitive in Sepang than they were in Melbourne - and one also hopes that Michelin will be more on par with Bridgestone in the next few races. Otherwise, Michael could build a championship lead which will prove beyond reach. And then there's the new Ferrari, of course, which is reckoned to be a significant advance over the current one...



Dear Alejandro,

Would there have been a red flag if Michael Schumacher had been involved in the first corner shunt on Sunday? That's a very wicked thought, Alejandro, and you should be ashamed of yourself...

It's true that there have, er, been occasions when races have been stopped when Schuey was involved in an accident at the start, and times when the opposite has been true, giving rise to a certain amount of cynicism in both the paddock and the press room, but I get the impression we have now reached a point when a race is red-flagged only when there is evidence of injury, or when the track is blocked, and cannot be swiftly cleared. We'll see what happens in the future.

I'm equivocal on this point. On the one hand, I think it an absurdity to see a race dribbled away on a great many laps behind the Safety Car (as at Monza in 2000), and I also worry about shrapnel - razor shards of carbon - on the track. But on the other hand, I think - given the lamentable irresponsibility of some drivers in the early seconds of a race - it no bad thing to get into their head the thought that they cannot lightly risk a shunt away from the grid, that if they have one, they're done for the day. So long as as we have drivers veering and blocking as they acclerate away from the grid, I'm afraid it's no more than inevitable that occasionally we're going to have a major shunt.

Dare I say it, but we have to keep in mind the significance of TV on these occasions. The race starts at two o'clock, and time - and TV - waits for no man. I have heard it said that there is evidence that when a race is stopped, viewers less than totally devoted to F1 tend to switch channels, and this is clearly not a desirable state of affairs.

It's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it? What do you do - stop the race, and risk losing some of your audience, or keep going, under 'yellow', with a severely depleted field, and the consequent effects of that on 'The Show'? I don't envy Charlie Whiting...



Dear Michael,

Sorry to disagree with you, but no, I don't find the proposal to end Friday practice 'unbelievably foolish' - on the contrary, I'm very much in favour of it, although I grant you that I have a vested interest! Since first day qualifying was abolished, so as to focus on a single Saturday session (for the purposes of TV), Friday at a Grand Prix is often a stone drag, quite honestly, and I doubt that any of my colleagues in the press room would tell you different.

Nothing happens until 11 o'clock, for one thing, and inevitably - with the number of tyres restricted - teams are reluctant to run their cars any more than absolutely necessary; if it rains, quite often some sit out a session completely. Not great for those who are there to watch - particularly if they have paid for the privilege. At a place like Barcelona, where the teams test incessantly, and know everything about the track there is to know, Friday tends to be a completely dead day: they don't go out, because there's nothing to be learned.

The late Harvey Postlethwaite was campaigning for 'two-day' Grand Prix meetings years ago. "It would make absolutely no difference whatever," he would say. "The same people will be quick, and the same people will be slow - even if you had a month of practice, like at Indianapolis. We should arrive on Friday, practice on Saturday morning, qualify in the afternoon, race on Sunday, go home. Apart from anything else, think of the amount of money it would save."

Although few spectators turn up on Friday at most grands prix, the argument in favour of three-day meetings has always been that the circuit owners need the revenue from that extra day. When I talked recently to Gerhard Berger about chopping Friday from the schedule, he thought it a good idea.

"Jesus, I think the circuit owners would be better off if we paid them 10% of what we would save by not having that extra day! Since they got rid of qualifying on Friday, it's been a wasted day, hasn't it? I really think we should consider scrapping it. It would be a great cost reduction - think of hotels, travel, meals, and so on - and how much is Friday really part of the scene, anyway? It's not on TV, and there are hardly any spectators at the track. I really think it's worth looking at just how important it is."

Me, too.



Dear Paul,

People will argue far into the night about the greatest F1 designer of all time, but I suspect that if you polled the designers themselves, a majority would go for Colin Chapman. As an innovator, certainly, his place in history is secure.

In his leaner moments, Chapman, silver hair, pencil moustache and all, bore more than a passing resemblance to David Niven, for so long the world's favourite Englishman. And when Colin was in the right mood, his manner, too, could remind you of the movie star. His charm on these occasions was almost overwhelming. As a raconteur he was without equal in the business, and his humour - always barbed to some degree - could have you falling about.

Chapman's mood, though, was not always like this. He was probably as complex an individual as I have encountered in motor racing, capable in equal part of child-like rages, dignified stoicism. He was the best, the most free-thinking, originator of race cars probably that the world has seen. It was he who so often swung a lamp over uncharted territory, the irony being that frequently others, having been shown the way, exploited the new ground more effectively.

Lotus were always first - I'm talking about the last 40 years or so of F1 - with the great breakthrough, with the monocoque chassis, the use of the engine as a stressed member, the rear siting of radiators, the 'wing' car, the 'ground effect' car. But one of the problems with Colin was keeping his interest. Once the initial breakthrough was done, the superiority established, he was inclined in later years to lose interest, go on to the next thing.

He was never a man to suffer fools, nor one to allow sentiment to impede the Lotus path. People who worked for him, be they drivers, mechanics or company executives, always knew that their employment would last only until Chapman spied someone who could do the job better. But still men wanted to work for him, for they knew that when Colin was on song, being part of Lotus - ahead of the game - was uniquely satisfying.

What made Chapman tick? More than anything, I think, he adored challenges, loved, for instance, beating Ferrari at Monza, rubbing it in a little. In so many ways he was the English equivalent of Ferrari, and it was no surprise that the Commendatore acknowledged his genius quite freely, holding him in great esteem.

It was this same part of his personality that led him to Indianapolis, this desire to beat The Establishment. "And the money," he would smile. "Don't forget the money...

"We faced a hell of a lot of hostility at Indy," he once told me in an interview. "They had their ideas of what a racing car should be, and they didn't like to see it threatened. I could understand that, even if I couldn't go along with it. We decided that we were going to try our hand at Indy - but I obviously wasn't going to build a Lotus roadster for it! I hadn't built a front-engined car in four years, after all.

"Obviously, the logical thing was to build something on the lines of our Formula 1 car. And it was, after all, an American - Dan Gurney - who persuaded me that such a thing could revolutionise Indianapolis. The car was quick from the outset, and I think the regulars could see the writing on the wall. They started off by laughing at this tiny car - which they soon stopped doing! - and that just made me more determined than ever. There was no way I'd have dropped racing at Indy without winning there. No way...

"I think cussedness helped us at Indy. The more snide comments we got, the more we wanted to blow everyone off, vanquish all the taboos! We wanted to win with a European car and driver. We wanted the car to be green. We wanted to eat peanuts all the time - and, ideally, to smuggle a woman into the pits! Looking back on those times, they were terrific fun. And very satisfying."

It's a fact that I would never have wanted to get the wrong side of Colin Chapman, but I liked him very much, not least because he was a free spirit, who said what he thought, went his own way. He left an indelible impression on anyone who knew him, and his early death, at 54, in December 1982, was a shattering blow to motor racing.

A few years ago, I asked Bernie Ecclestone for his thoughts on the man, and this is what he said. "'Chunky' was my man. I really liked him. He was good company, one of the boys. He was a good businessman, he was probably the best designer there's ever been, and he was as quick as half the guys who ever drove for him. He was different from all the others, just a special guy."

So he was.



Dear Maddy,

Yes, Mark Webber's fifth place on Sunday was lucky, not least because half the field was wiped out in the first few seconds of the race, but he drove a superb race in a somewhat hobbled car, kept his cool through a disastrous pit stop, and did himself and Minardi proud. I was delighted to see it, not least because Mark is a very nice bloke, and I have a lot of time for Paul Stoddart.

Does this indicate that Minardi are in for their best season ever? That, I'm afraid, I rather doubt. For one thing, it doesn't often happen that 10 of the 22 cars disappear as soon as a race starts, and, frankly, Minardi, with the smallest budget and perhaps the least powerful engine (the Asiatech) in the business, are always going to be up against it. It's great that, thanks to the two points on Sunday, they may well qualify for 'travel money' in 2003, but financially they simply can't compete with the other teams - and I'm not talking only about the Ferraris and McLarens.

As for drivers, they have Webber, and an extremely good prospect he is, as we had already seen in F3000. Mark has the opportunity to make a name for himself at Minardi, as did the likes of Sandro Nannini and Jarno Trulli, but if he shows exceptional promise, one of the big teams will swoop for him, I'm afraid. As for Alex Yoong, we have to be realistic, and say that he's in F1 because he brings money, simple as that.

Was there ever a time, you ask, when Minardi 'looked more than just a back-of-the-grid team'? Indeed there was, Maddy. At Phoenix in 1990, in fact, Minardi was a 'front-of-the-grid' team! For that race, Pierluigi Martini qualified on the front row, behind only the McLaren-Honda of Gerhard Berger - and ahead of the likes of Ayrton Senna, Jean Alesi, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell! And the year before that, both Minardis finished in the points at the British Grand Prix...

More usually, though, it has been a struggle for a team which came into F1 in 1985. The affection for Minardi in the paddock has always been considerable, and remains so.



Dear Jimmy,

At the moment, I don't really know what to make of it, quite honestly, although I think you sum it up pretty accurately: it all seems a bit of a mess, and difficult to take seriously...

Will it happen? I shall be extremely surprised. Whether or not it is a serious attempt to form an F1 team, or merely asset-stripping, I cannot say, but I note that B.C. Ecclestone has stamped very firmly on any idea of the supposed team's competing in any races this year. And Bernie tends to have the final say in these things.

All looks a bit tacky to me, I must say.