Ask Nigel: May 8

Dear Keith,

I can't quite take in that it's 20 years since Gilles was killed, but there it is. I'm writing this on Wednesday, May 8, the anniversary of that horrible day at Zolder.

Genuine friendships between drivers and journalists are a rarity in the F1 of today, but at one time were not unusual. Age, of course, has something to do with it - you're almost bound to get on more easily with people who are your contemporaries, and Gilles and I were about the same age. I value very highly my friendships with such as Mario Andretti and Keke Rosberg, and once in a while it strikes me what fun it would be if we still had Gilles around today.

Quite often, when some change is introduced to the F1 rules, I smile at the thought of what his reaction to them would have been: "Now, Gilles, in future you don't have to change gear any more, and you don't have to worry about throttle control, and software will take care of getting off the grid - oh, and, by the way, if someone's trying to pass you, it's now quite OK to swerve at them. The only thing we actively discourage is speaking your mind..."

Not quite his cup of tea, I think. And as for Max Mosley's suggestion that we should think of a Grand Prix 'in terms of a chess match'...

If we rate drivers in terms of 'what they did with what they had', then Gilles was as good as anyone I have ever seen, and if anyone defined driving 'at the edge', it was he. Suffice it to say that I have never seen anyone more exciting at the wheel of a grand prix car.

If you ask me for one single memory of him, however, I would think not of anything on the track, but of a quiet, very sober, conversation we had at Rio in 1982, a couple of months before his death.

It was after qualifying, in which Villeneuve had qualified second, his team-mate Didier Pironi a full second and a half slower. Gilles asked if he could have a word. "It's about Didier," he said. "He's off the pace, and he's not driving well - but, please, I'm asking you, speak to your colleagues, and ask them to go easy on him."

Not long before, while testing at Paul Ricard, Pironi had had an enormous end-over-end accident, in which his car finished up in a spectator area, mercifully unoccupied at the time. "It was huge," said Gilles, "and he's still very shaken up. But he'll be fine by the next race. I just wanted to ask the press not to be hard on him this weekend..."

In F1, the normal way of it is for a driver to 'score' against his team-mate in any way he can, and in all my years of reporting on this business I have never known anyone else behave as Gilles did on this occasion. As great a driver as he was, I believe he was even more exceptional as a man.

A few weeks later, of course, Pironi paid back Villeneuve's generosity by 'stealing' victory from him on the last lap at Imola, after which Gilles, his trust shattered, declared his intention never to speak to him again. In a highly agitated frame of mind, he then went to Zolder, and crashed to his death in the closing minutes of qualifying.



Dear Tom,

I did not know him well, but I remember Francois Cevert as a man of immense charm. Upon those close to him, I have found, he made an indelible impression. "Ah, Francois..." Jackie Stewart will smile at the mention of him, and his face tells its own tale, the memory of one he came to regard as team-mate, brother, son. And for the Tyrrell family, too, he always had a special place.

Cevert was a good fellow, a gentleman in the truest sense. So often folk who seem to have everything are all too aware of it, to the detriment of their personality. Francois had the sort of gypsy good looks to make girls gnaw at the backs of their hands, yet none of the accompanying arrogance which invariably renders such people insufferable.

He took a simple delight in life, and his face reflected it.

"He was a classically-trained pianist," Stewart recalled, "and you never saw a man so serene as Francois when he was playing Beethoven or
Chopin or Mozart. He had a real passion for music, but an even stronger one for racing. What he wanted most from life was to be France's first
World Champion, and I've never doubted he would have done it."

At the time of his death, Cevert had been in Fl for three and a half seasons, all of them spent with Tyrrell, all of them as Stewart's team-mate. He won only one of his 47 Grands Prix - ironically at Watkins Glen, in 1971 - but finished second 10 times, half a dozen of those behind Stewart.

Jackie he regarded as very much his mentor, and over time he came to model his driving style on Stewart's as nearly as possible. In this era of over-the-kerbs and questionable ethics in Fl, fluency in a racing car - as a man like Alain Prost came to know - is regarded with some suspicion, and considered boring. Yet I recall footage, shot from a helicopter, of Stewart and Cevert at the Nurburgring in 1973, the two Tyrrells proceeding in effortless echelon, perfect of line, with no other car in sight. Pure artistry.

By the middle of that summer, there had been some shift in the driver balance, Cevert coming to believe that, at least on some occasions, he had his team leader's measure, and Stewart tacitly admitting to Tyrrell that, on a given day, "Francois was quicker". By now Jackie had resolved to retire at season's end, after which Cevert would take over as number one.

Given those circumstances, a lesser man than Francois might have moaned to the press about 'team orders', implied that, had he been allowed, he could have won this or that race. But Cevert had too much class for that, too much discretion, too much respect for the great driver in the other car. His own time, he felt, was coming. At Watkins Glen, from the beginning of practice to the moment of his accident, his was the fastest of the three Tyrrells.

That autumn weekend at the Glen was to have marked the 100th, and last, Grand Prix in JYS's magnificent career. As it was, by race day the
Tyrrell team was gone from the circuit, Ken withdrawing the cars of Stewart and Chris Amon, following Cevert's death in qualifying.

It had been an accident of extraordinary violence, at the top of the Glen's daunting uphill esses, taken nearly flat by the brave and the best. Cevert, just having lapped faster than Stewart, and looking to go quicker still, got into the first part of the corner slightly off line, which put him wrong for the rest of it. He did not lift, and nearly got away with it, but at the top of the hill his car brushed the guardrail, and all control was gone.

Like Jochen Rindt, Ronnie Peterson, Patrick Depailler, Gilles
Villeneuve, Francois Cevert left a mark on those with whom he worked, so that he is recalled not only with professional respect, but also with fondness and warmth. To Stewart he remains, "The most fascinating racing driver I've ever known".

Could he have been World Champion? Without any doubt at all.





Dear Joe,

In the old days of the Osterreichring, the Austrian Grand Prix used to be everyone's favourite race. Although the circuit was built only in the late '60s, it had the layout and feel of a track that had been there for ever. You could easily picture Bernd Rosemeyer's Auto Union thundering down to the Boschkurve.

Extremely fast - by the time of the last race, in 1987, the pole speed was over 159mph - it was not a track like Monza or Hockenheim, in that it lacked any straights worth the name; it was simply dauntingly quick corners all the way. A real driver's circuit.

On a hot day it was quite a step up the hillside to the Boschkurve, but the rewards were immense. In qualifying trim, during the turbo era, the cars approached at well the wrong side of 200mph, snicked down a gear,
then pointed into that downhill right-hander - devoid of run-off area - which went on and on. Any illusions that you could do thing yourself were dispelled in a moment at the Boschkurve. Or the Rindtkurve on to the main straight, for that matter; or any of half a dozen other spots around the circuit. A place for the Gods, in other words.

I saw many memorable races there, but none more so than the 1982 Grand Prix you mention, Joe. On paper, it was going to be a stroll for the
turbos, and Nelson Piquet's Brabham-BMW duly took pole position, with a lap at 151.705mph. Williams's Keke Rosberg, sixth, headed the non-turbo drivers, and if his speed - 147.189mph - looked paltry by comparison with Piquet's, still it was a sensational lap, 1.3 seconds faster than the next normally-aspirated car, this the Lotus of Elio de Angelis.

The Brabhams - Riccardo Patrese ahead of Piquet - ran away in the early laps, chased only by the Renaults, for Patrick Tambay's Ferrari picked up a puncture on the second lap, and had to crawl an entire lap before getting new tyres. Stone last, he drove a strong race back to fourth.

Back in 1982 refuelling was theoretically allowed, but no one ever bothered with it, until Gordon Murray of Brabham surmised that it might be worth trying - certainly for the turbo cars, which had prodigious thirst.

It was in Austria that Brabham first tried planned pit stops, and they worked well enough, although Piquet took his mechanics by surprise, stopping earlier than expected, having blistered a tyre. Patrese came in shortly before half-distance, and the crew changed wheels and put in 100 litres of fuel in under 14 seconds. Seemed pretty quick at the time.

Engine failure eventually accounted for both Brabhams, however, and with Rene Arnoux's Renault already gone (turbo), Prost looked on a canter for his first win since March. Five laps from the end, though, the Renault's injection system developed a mind of its own, and flames shot from the exhausts as the engine died. Alain's body language was untypically eloquent as he climbed out.

Now de Angelis led, chased by Rosberg, and as they emerged from the Rindtkurve for the last time, it looked as though Keke had timed his slipstreaming run to a nicety. Down to the flag he went right of the
Lotus, but de Angelis was confident enough to give a victory wave, and won by a couple of feet. Not for four years had Colin Chapman been able to pitch his cap into the air. As it turned out, it was the last time he was ever to do it.


In a recent article you touched on the fact that Alfonso de Portago was a terrific all-round sportsman who came to motorsport after excelling in various other pursuits. Are there any other drivers who were similarly multi-talented?
Regards,
Sam Smith,
Knutsford, Cheshire

Dear Sam,

Alfonso de Portago was an exceptional case, I think. They used to call
him, 'The Man Who Could Do Everything', and it appears to have been pretty well true. To be honest, I can't think of another driver so multi-talented when it came to other sports - in fact, most drivers tend to have little interest in sports other than racing.

That said, Alain Prost showed enough promise in his teens to consider a career in professional football, and Michael Schumacher, too, is apparently pretty gifted in that department. Nigel Mansell may have the ugliest golf swing since Lee Trevino, but used to play off two, and may well still do so today. Jackie Stewart, as you say, is a quite exceptional shot, and in clay shooting was European Champion before he ever so much as sat in a racing car. Jacques Villeneuve is an extremely fine skier, and Gerhard Berger, too, is a dab hand, I'm told.

Prost was - and still is - also remarkably good on a bike, but the sport closest to F1, of course, has to be motorcycle racing. Over time, many great riders successfully made the transformation from two wheel to four, including such as the legendary Tazio Nuvolari, Achille Varzi, Jean Behra, Mike Hailwood and Patrick Depailler. Best of all in this regard, though, was John Surtees, who won countless World Championships on two wheels, and then in 1964 won it on four, driving for Ferrari.



Dimitrios Papadopoulos,
Stockholm, Sweden

Dear Dimitrios,

No, you're not totally wrong - Giancarlo Fisichella is indeed a highly talented driver, and I don't doubt that the big three - Ferrari, Williams and McLaren - are all well aware of this.

It's not as simple as that, however. You're talking about six drives here, currently occupied by Michael Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello,
Ralf Schumacher, Juan Montoya, David Coulthard and Kimi Raikkonen. For a start, I think you can rule out Fisichella's going to Ferrari, certainly as long as Schuey is there, because Barrichello is his team-mate of choice, and that's that.

Williams? Well, in times past - notably in 2000, with Benetton - there were those who accused Giancarlo of being lazy, of not making the most of his talent. Towards the end of that year, I remember, Flavio
Briatore was extremely vocal on the subject. I'll grant you that
Fisichella certainly bucked his ideas up last year, when Jenson Button came to the team, but certainly that impression of him remains in some quarters - and at Williams what they like most is chargers.

McLaren? Not impossible, perhaps, if DC should decide to go elsewhere, or even perhaps retire. But there would be others on Ron Dennis's list - notably the underrated Olivier Panis, who is held in very high regard by the team after his testing year with them in 2000.

Fisichella and Trulli swapped places this year, Giancarlo moving back to Jordan, Jarno transferring to Renault (nee Benetton), and I have heard some muttering in the Renault camp, to the effect that they wish they could have Fisichella back. Undoubtedly, he is very quick, and very talented, but I have never really seen him as 'a racer', in the Montoya sense of the word. It could well be that, installed in a Ferrari or Williams or McLaren, he could well win a bunch of races, but he's been around a long time now, and I somewhat doubt that he'll ever get the opportunity.