Ask Nigel: May 16

Dear Sandro,
I'm a romantic about motor racing, too - there don't seem to be many of us left! However, I don't think you need to be a romantic to feel it's unfair that Toyota should have treated Minardi the way they have. It's just a question of ethics, old-fashioned morals, whatever you want to call it.

Was I appalled by what Toyota did? Yes. Was I surprised? Not really. This is 2001, after all, and these days no rules seem apply in any walk of life, let alone the world of big business, and corporate giants. A contract is merely something to buy your way around.

If I'm disappointed in Gustav Brunner, I do have a certain sympathy for him, in the sense that if I were offered what he was - the word in Austria at the weekend was $12m for a three-year contract - I'm not entirely certain I would have the strength of character to turn it down... And that, of course, was doubtless in Toyota's mind when their offer was made.

On the face of it, what we have here is a case of corporate bullying, of head-hunting a man known to be under contract with another team. When they considered the deal, Toyota no doubt built into their calculations what they will have to pay Paul Stoddart in compensation for stomping through the contract he already had with Brunner.

You're right to be disgusted, but probably you shouldn't be surprised. The consensus in the paddock, when it comes to Toyota's forthcoming onslaught on F1, is that so far they've made about every mistake in the book: opting to build a complete car, rather than simply an engine, basing the team in Germany, rather than the UK, not hiring a top designer in the first place, and so on.

Someone who should know told me last weekend that the programme is currently "in dire straights", and he added that Brunner would have to earn every cent of what he's being paid.

I don't think guys like Stoddart are necessarily on to a loser, but the odds are heavily stacked against them, because someone like Paul - while immensely wealthy in his own right - simply doesn't have the financial firepower to resist a monolith like Toyota. I hope he separates them from a bundle of money...




Dear Felipe,
People very often knock Bernie Ecclestone for restricting numbers in F1, for making it extremely difficult - and costly - to join the ranks of the Grand Prix teams, but I'm entirely with him on this. As far as I'm concerned, F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of motor racing, and there's no room for dross in it.

In 1996, the 107% qualifying rule was introduced, and its specific aim was to discourage folk from coming into F1 unless they were absolutely serious about it: if you didn't qualify within 107% of the pole time, you didn't race - and if you didn't race, you didn't get paid.

At the time I asked Bernie about it, and this is what he said. "I think we'd got a little bit back to the startline specials there used to be years ago. These people got their sponsors to turn up, and they broke everyone's balls, saying they didn't get seen on TV. The reason they didn't get seen is obvious: they were only on the screen when they got lapped! In fact, they got seen more than most people, because they got lapped about five or six times...

"We're the best, right? Formula 1 is the best, and we don't need anything in it that isn't the best. The people who are affected by this are the people we think should start getting on with their programme. The 107% rule is in now, and that's it. And if they don't want to enter for the championship, they don't have to. That's the way it is.

"People go on about only 20 or 22 cars in the race. OK, so what? What I wanted to get away from was breeding people who shouldn't be in Formula 1. Frankly, last year we had people in it who shouldn't have been in it, and they will admit it, as well.

"Why were they here? Because they thought it was easier than it is. Look at Simtek. Last year, they should have known that they were never going to make the whole season. The chances of getting big sponsorship - even if they'd won a race - were negligible. And if they were going to die, they should, in my opinion, have died in a dignified way. They should have pulled the blinds down, and said, 'We couldn't cut the cake. It's a pity, but we did our best, and it was a creditable effort. We didn't estimate properly what it was going to take to get the job done, and we're going to try and come back.'

"What I don't like is people walking around with begging bowls, and crying as if it is everyone else's fault. People who do that we should never have let in in the first place, and it's my fault for allowing them to do it. If they hadn't come in, we wouldn't have had the embarrassment of them going under.

"I think the biggest problem with Nick Wirth (of Simtek) was that he was frustrated that he'd built a team, built a car, built everything - and probably had a better team and car than some people who did have sponsorship. He was frustrated that he didn't have sponsorship, but - I'm sorry if this sounds harsh - it's not Formula 1's problem, any more than when anyone else goes out of business.

"The size of the field doesn't bother me at all. It is much better for us to have a smaller, better quality grid, than have a lot of... We're in the quality business, not quantity."

You know where you are with Bernie, don't you? And, five years on from that conversation, I must say I agree with every word of what he said.

The point is, over time we've had some truly appalling teams in F1 - teams that I wouldn't trust to service my road car. Andrea Moda comes instantly to mind, but Life - by any standards - were on another level again...

This Italian creation really was a quite dreadful thing, powered by a W12 engine, which gave very little power, and, on the rare occasions when it could be persuaded to fire up, invariably expired within a few seconds.

It appeared at the start of the 1990 season, driven initially by Gary Brabham. At Phoenix, the first race, its fastest practice lap was 2m07.147s, compared with Gerhard Berger's pole time of 1m 28.664s. The team left for home when the ignition box failed: they didn't have a spare...

At Interlagos, in the pre-qualifying session, a con-rod broke on Brabham's 'out' lap, and at Imola, now in the hands of Bruno Giacomelli, it again failed to complete a single lap. In Monaco, Giacomelli was 16 seconds away from a time which would have got him on the back row, and in Montreal it was 25s...

Starting to get the picture? Not one lap was completed in Mexican pre-qualifying, nor at Magny-Cours. At Silverstone, though, the Life was back on form, setting a best lap only 18 seconds away from Mansell's pole time; at Hockenheim, it was 20 seconds slower than any other car, and the same was true at the Hungaroring, Spa and Monza. At Estoril, it went back to its bad old ways, and failed to complete even a single lap, and after a similar fiasco in Jerez, it was wisely decided not to bother flying the vehicle out to Suzuka and Adelaide.

The worst team in F1 history? Even in the face of a great deal of strong competition for the title, yes, unquestionably. Long live the 107% rule, say I...




Dear Mike,
Thanks for your kind words.

Your question is actually very simple to answer. While it's true that spectators did indeed get confused by the similar liveries of the McLaren and Alfa Romeo teams in the early eighties, this was permitted because both had primary sponsorship from Marlboro - and Marlboro's preferred racing colour scheme was red and white, as on their cigarette packets. Simple as that.

Would such a thing be allowed today? Difficult to know, because the situation has never arisen - and, given the daunting cost of sponsoring an F1 team these days, I think it's fairly safe to say that it never will! As you say, the only firm rule, regarding colour schemes, is that both a team's cars must be identical.




Dear Peter,
Glad you enjoyed the column about Montjuich - I enjoyed writing it, as a matter of fact. The afternoon in the old park gave me a lot of pleasure.

So where else have I stood that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up? Putting F1 to one side for a minute, there is always Le Mans. Time was when I really loved sports car racing, when there were major factory teams fielded by Ferrari, Ford, Porsche and so on, and although I've only been to Le Mans twice in my life, both those visits were during what I consider the heyday of the race, in 1965 and 1967, right after I left school.

On each occasion, I went out to the Mulsanne in the middle of the night, and the sight and sound of the Ferrari P4s, the 7-litre Fords and the Chaparrals blasting by is something I have never forgotten.

A circuit I used to adore was Clermont Ferrand, which I visited for the first time in 1969, before I was involved in motor racing directly. Not long ago I came across some photographs I took during that year's French Grand Prix, and it astounds me to see where - as a spectator - I was allowed to stand. I positioned myself at the exit of a downhill right-hander towards the end of the lap, and took many shots of Jochen Rindt's Lotus 49, Chris Amon's Ferrari, etc, proceeding through the corner on full opposite lock. What was there between me and them? A few small bushes...

More than anywhere, though, I suppose the old Nurburgring is the place that always comes to mind - the sight of Ronnie Peterson blasting down the Foxhole during qualifying, and so on.

In my first year as a journalist, 1971, I went down to the South Curve, the second corner of the 14-mile lap, and took photographs throughout one of the qualifying sessions, standing literally a few inches from the inside kerb at the apex of the corner. Using a 'standard' 50mm lens, I was getting full-frame shots of the cars, and really felt I was part of the action. As I said in the column about Montjuich, the blessed ignorance of youth...

I had left my camera bag some feet further back, and at one point went back to it to get a new film. While I was away from my 'post', Jo Siffert lost it coming into the corner, and his BRM ploughed straight over the spot at which I had been standing for an hour or so! I was a little more circumspect after that...

These days, of course, rules and regulations are much tighter than they were, but even so it's as well to have your wits about you. A few years ago, I was watching the Hungarian Grand Prix towards the end of the pit straight, not taking photographs, but simply keeping a lap chart. At one point, I looked up from my notebook just in time to see the rear wing of Michael Schumacher's Benetton part company with the car. It was as well I did, too, because the wing - like a piece of paper - fluttered over my head, and landed behind me. It probably wasn't that close, but it felt it!




Dear Fernando,
It's early days, of course, but, yes, I have no doubts that Juan Pablo Montoya is what Americans call 'the real deal'. As far as I'm concerned, he's the best thing to have happened to F1 for a very long time, and there's no doubt that 'the press room' has a new favourite Grand Prix driver. Frankly, F1 has long needed a shake-up, in the shape of a new superstar, and in Montoya I feel sure we have it.

What first drew him to my attention was the F3000 race at Monaco in 1998, in which, if memory serves, he overtook six cars in the course of a comeback drive through the field: anyone who overtakes at all in Monte Carlo is worthy of special attention...

After working as Williams test driver that year, Juan was disappointed not to move into the team for '99, but in fact I think his two years in CART with Ganassi Racing served him very well. He won a championship and a bunch of races, and established himself as consummately the best driver in the series. Thus, when he came into F1 this year, he arrived not just as another kid from F3000, but as an established star.

His insouciance is really quite astonishing, as we have recently seen in his dealings, on and off the track, with Michael Schumacher. Nothing appears to faze him, and he is overawed by no one - Schuey included.

Bobby Rahal, who saw a great deal of his driving in the CART years, thinks Montoya the best driver he has ever seen: "I'd say he's the kind of driver who comes along once every two generations," Rahal says. "Look into his eyes when he's in the car, ready to go out, and there's no expression in them: they're fixed, staring straight ahead. He's like a racing machine - he was born for it. There's nothing he likes as much as a wheel-to-wheel fight."

All I can say is that, to me, Juan has that indefinable quality possessed by all the great ones from the outset. Prost had it, Senna had it, and so did Schumacher. I don't know precisely what it is, but I do know it exists.




Dear 'American Fan',
No, I don't think you're prejudiced. Without a doubt, the early sixties - and I presume you're talking about the era of the 1.5-litre Formula 1 - produced some wonderful racing. The cars of the day may have had very little horsepower, but they also had skinny tyres and zero downforce. Thus, they slid around in the corners, which was great to watch, and they also had no problem in overtaking one another.

I think, too, the overall standard of drivers at that time was astonishingly high, with people like Stirling Moss, Jim Clark and John Surtees at the height of their powers, to say nothing of an extremely fine American contingent, including Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Richie Ginther and Masten Gregory.

It wasn't my favourite era, by any means, because I like racing cars to have a lot of power, and I understood well why a man like Tony Brooks referred to them as 'go karts', and had no time for them. That said, there was indeed some wonderful racing, and Moss, whom I regard as the greatest driver of all time, achieved his two greatest victories in 1961, in Rob Walker's privately-entered Lotus holding off the much more powerful Ferraris at Monaco and the Nurburgring, both of them ultimate 'drivers' circuits'.