Ask Nigel: May 22

Dear Toomas,

For a long time I thought Rubens wasn't a tough enough character really to get to the very top level, but in the last year or so I've had cause to think differently - and this season he looks more and more convincing with every passing race. At the A1-Ring he flat out-drove Schumacher in both qualifying and race, and when did Michael ever have a team-mate who did that to him before?

It's perhaps an indictment of the world in which we live today that my earlier doubts about Barrichello - that he wasn't tough enough - stemmed in large part from the fact that he is such a good bloke. There's always been an adage that 'so-and-so is too nice a guy to make it', and it is a fact that - as Frank Williams has mentioned a time or two - 'The great drivers tend to be hard, selfish, bastards'. There have been exceptions - Jimmy Clark springs to mind - but undoubtedly FW has a point.

I think there's no doubt, too, that Rubens has changed in the last year or so. It's not that he's suddenly become a brat - far from it - but that his confidence has blossomed. In part, this is probably because he has got closer to Michael on sheer speed, which must do wonders for any driver's confidence, and I think he's also a fundamentally happier man. He says that becoming a father for the first time, late last year, has changed him for the better, and I'm quite willing to believe that - very much a Latin in many respects, he is an emotional man, and one to whom 'family' has always been of overwhelming importance.

Whatever, although his luck has been generally lousy this year - it always seems to be his car that breaks, rather than Michael's - his disposition hasn't changed a whit. At one time, these failures would have weighed on his mind, but not any more. I think, too, that he has shaken off a tendency to 'over-drive', which manifested itself particularly in the years soon after the death of Ayrton Senna. Brazil looked to Rubens as 'the next Senna', a role for which he was completely unprepared - he was, after all, only 21 at the time of Ayrton's death.

So can he be World Champion? Much obviously depends on what Schumacher does. If, as some whispers go, Michael decides to retire at the end of this season, then Rubens, with two more years to run on his Ferrari contract, could have a clear field at Maranello, and unless there is a mass defection from Ferrari of such as Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne and Jean Todt, yes, I could see him well able to take a run at the World Championship. There has to be some reason why he was able to accept the events at the A1-Ring with such equanimity. Hasn't there?



Dear Richard,

There wasn't all this 'team orders furore' when Andretti and Peterson were together at Lotus in 1978, because the circumstances were rather different from those which appertain at Ferrari just now.

First, Andretti was very much the man who had dragged Lotus back from the depths, and Colin Chapman knew he was very much in Mario's debt. He had won more Grands Prix than anyone else in 1977, but poor reliability had cost him the World Championship. The entire team felt that 1978 should be 'Andretti's year', and that was made very clear to Peterson before he signed his Lotus contract.

(As a matter of interest, the very same situation existed at Williams when Carlos Reutemann signed to partner Alan Jones for 1980; Carlos knew, going in, that this was to be 'Alan's year', and accepted that Jones had done all the hard work for the team, and that the title was his due.)

Second, Ronnie had left Lotus at the end of 1975, first to go to March, then to Tyrrell, where his career went very much into the doldrums. He desperately wanted a competitive drive again, and Chapman (not unattracted by a considerable donation from Peterson's personal sponsor!) agreed. It was, however, stressed that Andretti was to have precedence in the team, that he had earned it, and Ronnie was only too happy to agree.

In the new, dominant, Lotus 79s, Mario was invariably quicker than Ronnie in the first half of the '78 season, not least because he was a brilliant 'sorter' of a car, where his team mate emphatically was not. Thereafter, however, there were occasions when Peterson clearly had an edge.

"In the second half of '78," said Chapman, "there were those who said that Andretti was winning races because Peterson was allowing him to do so, which did a disservice to both men. Ronnie was a very great racing driver, but he owed a lot to Mario, and he knew it. Mario's efforts made the Lotus 79 the car it was, and Ronnie benefitted from that. They were both very honourable men, and the atmosphere within the team that year was the happiest I can remember. They were firm friends."

So they were. Nothing was officially said about 'the agreement' until Brands Hatch, where Andretti chose to make it public.

"The news got out because I chose to let it out. Colin was furious with me for doing that, but I did it in fairness to Ronnie. I didn't want anything to be artificial, like people thinking I was passing him because he couldn't keep me back. If there was going to be a time when he moved over, and said, 'OK, Mario, up to you', then it was going to be in the open. We'd made this arrangement, and it wasn't something Ronnie or I felt bad about. I know how we talked about it, and that's all that matters to me."

By Zandvoort, in late August, Peterson had signed with McLaren for 1979, and there were those who thought he should now ignore his promise to Andretti and Lotus. "What's he got to lose?" said one driver, I remember. "He's not staying at Lotus next year - he should just go for it." But Ronnie was not that kind of man. "There's nothing in the contract," he said, "but I gave my word - and I'm sticking to it." In the race they finished 1-2, Mario ahead.

At Monza, the very next race, of course, Andretti clinched the championship, but in the unhappiest of circumstances, for Peterson died from injuries received in a multiple accident at the start.



Dear Luciano,

To have a lot of one-car teams would indeed be a novel way of eliminating the need for team orders!

First of all, I think it's unrealistic - and probably undesirable - to 'ban' team orders from Formula 1. In one way or another, there have always been team orders, and on occasion that is only right and proper. Although Ron Dennis, for example, is fundamentally in favour of letting his drivers race against each other, he instructed David Coulthard to do all he could to help Mika Hakkinen in the very late, crucial, stages of the 1998 and '99 World Championships. This is not quite the same as ordering a driver who had dominated a race - Barrichello at the A1-Ring - to give up victory, in only the sixth Grand Prix of a season, to another driver who already held a huge points advantage.

You talk about 'increasing the number of teams', but how do you propose this should be achieved? Where are all these new teams coming from? We have only 11 at the moment, and several of those are moaning that they don't have enough cash to do the job properly. Of course running only one car and driver would reduce costs to some degree - but it certainly wouldn't halve them, or anything like it. As the rules stand, remember, each team must design and construct its own car, so those costs would be unaffected by running only one.

Sorry, Luciano, it may sound like a simple solution, but it simply isn't feasible. If you want to eliminate 'team orders', such as we saw in Austria, you have to convince people like Jean Todt that Grand Prix racing is still - at least in part - a sport, rather than purely a business...



Dear Ady,

I absolutely agree with you. I thought JJ Lehto's natural ability was very high, and it's a great shame that he never had the opportunity to show it in Formula 1.

One problem was, as soon as he finally made it into a top team - Benetton - in 1994, he found himself team mate to Michael Schumacher. Worse, he broke his neck in a pre-season testing accident, and really wasn't in great shape when he came back to racing. Over the bumps of Monaco, in particular, I remember, he was in tremendous pain, and really not able to do justice to himself.

The other thing that sticks in my mind from that period was a remark from Ayrton Senna. At Aida, the second round of the championship, Ayrton was on a miraculous pole with the Williams, but got shoved out of the race by Mika Hakkinen and Nicola Larini at the very first corner. He did not immediately return to the pits, but stayed out on the circuit for some time, watching. When he got back finally, he murmured that he had been particularly studying the Benettons, of Schumacher and Jos Verstappen, who was subbing for Lehto.

JJ made his race debut for Benetton at Imola in 1994, and qualified a most impressive fifth, but he stalled immediately before the green light, which left no time for the start to be aborted. Raising both arms to warn those behind, Lehto could only sit there, and hope. When Pedro Lamy's Lotus hit the Benetton, it was as if a bomb had gone off. Happily, both drivers were unhurt.

As JJ went off to the motorhome to change, he felt some relief that at least his neck had suffered no further injury, but for him this was already a nightmare of a weekend, for he had driven to Imola from Monte Carlo with Roland Ratzenberger, and had been shattered by the death of his close friend in qualifying. Now, returning to the pit to watch the race on the TV monitor, he arrived just as Senna hit the wall at Tamburello.

Two weeks later came Monaco, where the bumpy street circuit was exactly what his recovering neck didn't need. In Barcelona he looked on it once more, qualifying fourth, but at Montreal he was nearly three seconds from Schumacher's pace in practice, and plainly bemused. "I just don't believe," he said, "that I'm three seconds a lap slower than anyone..."

Neither did anyone else. Indeed, it was a mystery of that season that each of Michael Schumacher's team-mates was so far from his pace, and prompted folk inevitably to recall Senna's observation at Aida that the two Benettons behaved 'like different cars.'

No one could ever accuse Flavio Briatore of being sentimental when it came to racing drivers, and after the Canadian race Lehto was unceremoniously dropped. Later in the year, during Schumacher's two-race suspension, he was briefly brought back, and was then reunited with Sauber for the last couple of Grands Prix.

After that - nothing, at least in F1 terms. Lehto, the paddock had decided, was not psychologically strong enough to be a Grand Prix driver, and offers came there none. In 1995 his manager Keke Rosberg put him in one of his ITC Opels; it wasn't what either man thought appropriate for one of JJ's talent, but what else was he to do?

At the Magny-Cours ITC race that year, I spent a lot of time with him, and although he was as charming as ever, his sense of humour plainly intact, so also he was depleted in some way, knowing that this was a poor substitute for the top level, which was where he belonged.

Earlier that season he had won at Le Mans with a McLaren-BMW, and was regarded as far and away the best driver in the FIA GT Championship, but the thought of one day returning to single-seaters was never far from his mind. Remember how he was in F3, how highly he was valued by Ferrari during his spell as test driver, how impressive in the fledgling Onyx team in the late eighties, then later at Dallara?

Senna was a man who always rated Lehto. Liked him, too. At Imola in 1991 he and Gerhard Berger finished 1-2 in their McLaren-Hondas, and next up, admittedly with a slice of luck, was JJ's Dallara. "I'm really pleased for this guy," Ayrton said at the press conference. "It's his first podium, and it'll be the first of many..."

That was not to be, sadly. These days JJ is still active as a driver, and also works at the Grands Prix, albeit in the capacity of TV commentator. He remains a most engaging character, surprisingly free of bitterness, given the hand he was dealt. I will always think that the F1 team owners dispensed with him too lightly.



Dear Leo,

You have a gift for understatement, my friend! Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet disliked each other intensely, almost from the beginning of their working relationship at Williams. Nigel always took himself extremely seriously, and Nelson delighted in poking fun at him whenever possible - which was often. Mansell, for his part, constantly accused Piquet of being 'political', a charge he was also to level at Alain Prost, when the pair of them were at Ferrari together.

As for Piquet's other team-mates, I never got the impression he and Michael Schumacher were close, by any means, but I think they got on well enough. It was difficult for Nelson at the time, for he was very much getting towards the end of his F1 career, and the ferociously quick and ambitious Michael was just starting, and quickly became the Benetton team's favourite son.

It was just the other way round, of course, in the case of Piquet and Niki Lauda, when they drove together at Brabham. At this Nelson was very much the young lion, Niki the more cautious veteran, they got along famously, and became very good friends.