Ask Nigel: November 29

Dear Nigel,
In a recent Autosport article, Mika Hakkinen suggested that his form this year improved when the rear-end of the McLaren was changed to suit his driving style. David Coulthard suffered a downturn in performance at the same time, indicating that the previous configuration was better suited to him.
Do you think that if McLaren had supported DC fully and kept his preferred balance we could now be celebrating another British World Champion?
Regards,
Rob Cliff, London

Dear Rob,
No, I don't think it's as simple as that, quite honestly.

These days teams are fantastically secretive about any technical matters - I can't remember, for example, when I was allowed to see an F1 car with its rear bodywork removed. Although for quite a time Mika mumbled about the McLaren 'not suiting his driving style', some team folk to whom I spoke thought there was bit more to it than that.

At the A1-Ring, where he was suddenly right back on form, he was somewhat enigmatic in his explanation. "It's a complicated story," he said, which rather baffled some members of his team. "We've got the set-up different here, and...I needed to get my act together."

This last, according to some insiders, was the point at issue. "Mika is a simple, straightforward, man," one said, "but quite a complex racing driver. When it comes to setting up the car, recently he's been a bit...indecisive."

More than anything, I think, Hakkinen had become battle-weary, worn down a bit by the stresses of winning two championships on the trot, and then demotivated by such an unlucky start to the season - he was leading in both Melbourne and Interlagos, remember, when he had engine failure. And each time Schumacher went on to win.

In short, I think the fire went out for a bit, and during that period Coulthard was very much McLaren's main player; he had some brilliant drives around that time, notably at Many-Cours, where he plain beat Schumacher.

Hakkinen had a break from the onerous PR requirements of McLaren's sponsors after Magny-Cours, and came back his old self in Austria. Clearly, the short 'holiday' had done him good - and I've heard it said that Ron Dennis, along with giving him time off, also suggested it was about time he started driving like a World Champion again...

Whatever, it worked, and Mika was very strong for the balance of the season. You ask if I think 'if McLaren had fully supported DC, and kept his preferred balance, we might now be celebrating another British World Champion'; in all truth, no, I don't. For one thing, David is better at setting up a car than Mika, and was nearly always able to get his McLaren to his liking; I don't believe that anything was fundamentally changed in the car which suited Hakkinen, and not Coulthard.

I like both these guys very much, and, believe me, I would love to see DC as World Champion. McLaren is more even-handed, in the way it treats its drivers, than any other team, but the fact remains that, day in, day out, Mika is better than David, and that's the end of it. On a given day, DC can paralyse everyone, but he simply isn't as quick as Mika on a regular basis. Schumacher, of course, was playing his usual mind games at mid-season, saying that he didn't quite know what was going on with Mika at the moment, but that he remained his main rival. His aim was to put David down, of course, but what he said was undeniably true.

All that said, DC was definitely closer to Mika this year than at any time in the past. Over their five years as team mates, Hakkinen leads him 57-24 in qualifying, and 18-8 on victories, but in 2000 the figures were 10-7, and 4-3...




Dear Rik,
From what I hear, I wouldn't assume that Verstappen is going to be an Arrows driver again in 2001. I hope it happens, because I like Jos, and undoubtedly he's quick, if a bit inconsistent, but we've been told by the team that Pedro de la Rosa's team mate may not be announced for some little time yet - and we know, for example, that Gaston Mazzacane is drifting about, with a very sizeable budget...

You're quite right, Verstappen has had some outstanding drives over time - I thought, for example, he did a terrific job in his rookie season, '94, when he was very short of experience, and also had the daunting task of driving alongside Schumacher at Benetton.

Over time, he has often impressed us - but is he a potential winner? These days, 'potential winners' need to be driving for one of two, or perhaps, three teams - sad, but that's the way it is. And I somewhat doubt, at this stage of his career, that Jos is likely to be invited to join a top team.




Dear Tony,
My thoughts on Jackie Stewart... Essentially, like the great majority of my press colleagues, I won't have a word said against him.

This has less to do with his being one of the greatest drivers of all time - I've met plenty of great drivers I didn't like - than the fact that he is a good man. I've always found him honest, direct, polite and helpful, and you don't many of those to the pound in an F1 paddock, believe me. He also has a fine sense of humour, which he is quite capable of aiming at himself - another rare quality today.

No, I don't think JYS is losing touch with the current realities of F1, although I'll agree that he is out of step with many of them. At the end of the day, when it comes to motor racing, he is a purist, and his values, regarding ethics on the race track, and so on, tend to be 'old-fashioned'. I feel exactly the same way, so perhaps that's one of the reasons I've always got on so well with him.

Taking your points in order: I don't think, in all honesty, that Stewart was sceptical about Jenson Button's abilities. I think rather that he was concerned for the boy, that he wondered if a little more experience might have been a good thing before he actually went into F1 - particularly with a leading team, like Williams. It was not a matter of doubting his fundamental ability. I've talked to Jackie about Jenson since, and his opinion hasn't changed: "I think he's done an incredibly good job," he said, "but I think he'd have done better still if he'd left it another year, spent one more season in a lower formula."

As far as Irvine is concerned, we need to remember that Stewart had sold the team to Ford (to be 're-badged' as Jaguar), and that the new outfit needed a high-profile name, which at that time Eddie had, being in contention for the World Championship, following Schumacher's Silverstone accident. To be honest, I've never really understood why Ford found it necessary to pay Irvine that much: he was out at Ferrari come the end of the season, and there wasn't exactly a glut of good drives available - where else was he going to go?

Jackie didn't criticise Rubens Barrichello's decision to go to Ferrari, as such. All he said was that he didn't envy any driver who was going to be Schumacher's number two, and he wished that the offer to Rubens had come from McLaren, rather than Ferrari.

It's not, in itself, sacrilegious to speak in negative terms of Stewart or anyone else in racing, but I think your use of the word 'dismissal' is quite wrong in this case. The very weekend that Ford's buy-out of the team was announced, in Montreal in 1999, one or two of us had dinner with the Stewart family - Jackie, Helen, Paul, Mark - and there was no doubt that JYS was already looking forward to taking it a bit easier, spending more time at home, and so on.

"I'm 60 years old," he beamed that evening. "I've earned a break!" It didn't surprise me in the slightest when he decided to step down from running the team. I think, as much as anything, he had grown tired of trailing to a Grand Prix every fortnight. In 2000, of course, his main preoccupation lay with Paul's health problems, but he continued to come to races occasionally, and when he did, he accomplished more for the team's PR image than all his colleagues put together...




Dear Mel,
No question about it, AJ Foyt is one of the all-time greats. The first time I saw him was at the Guards Trophy, a major sports car race always run at Brands hatch on August Bank Holiday Monday, in 1964. Foyt was driving John Mecom's Scarab-Chevrolet, a brutish, metallic-blue, creation, which unfortunately didn't last long in the race. While it did, however, I don't believe I ever saw a car more sideways through Paddock Bend!

If AJ's race was brief, I remember seeing him in the paddock - yes, the public could buy passes in those days - and being struck by the extraordinary aura around the man. It was hot as hell, but he was wearing a black leather jacket, complete with 'Indianapolis 500 Winner' badge on it. I got him to sign my programme.

At that point in his career, the end of the 'roadster era' in Indianapolis-style racing, Foyt was almost unbeatable. There were 13 rounds in the USAC Championship in '64, and AJ had 10 wins (including his second at Indy) and three retirements. He was also winning in sprint cars, sports cars and NASCAR stock cars. Couldn't do a thing wrong.

Throughout his career, though, Foyt stuck resolutely to American racing, and it wasn't until 1967 that he came to Europe again, this time to share a factory 7-litre Ford with Dan Gurney at Le Mans. I'm ashamed to admit it, but that particular Le Mans - I still think it the greatest ever, from the quality of the entry - was the last I ever attended. Virtually every top driver in the world, from F1, Indy cars and NASCAR, took part - and Gurney and Foyt won, having dominated the race. Mighty impressive, I thought - particularly for a guy who had never previously driven a race car at night.

AJ never raced there again, so his Le Mans record remains a perfect one. Only a few days before that race, he had won Indy for the third time, and a fourth was added in 1977.

The following year, '78, there were a couple of USAC rounds in England, and I covered them for Autosport. The first, at Silverstone, AJ ultimately won, but the weather was lousy that weekend, and there were frequent lengthy periods of inactivity during the practice days - back then Indy cars did not run in the rain, on any type of circuit.

During one of these lulls, I interviewed Foyt at some length, and much enjoyed it. I knew all about his unpredictable reputation, and approched him in some trepidation, but in fact he was charming, and the interview went well. Later I told an American colleague about it, and he said, 'Oh, yeah, AJ can be like that - some of the time..."

Elsewhere, in the '70s, '80s and '90s, I saw him race at places like Indianapolis, Pocono and Milwaukee, and he remained very much the crowd's hero to the end - even if he probably should have retired earlier than he did.

One thing I remember about Milwuakee in 1990. During practice, Foyt and Andretti came by me slowly, running side by side, with Mario waving - not aggressively - at AJ. Afterwards, I asked him what he'd been doing. "I was saluting him," Andretti said. "At the corner before, he'd got way out of shape, and he got it back - effortlessly. He may be 55 years old, but I guarantee you there's not six guys in the world who could have saved it the way he did - he corrected the slide just enough. Beautiful.

"AJ and I have had our run-ins over the years," Mario went on, "but I got nothing but respect for the guy as a driver. He just loves to drive race cars, like I do, and for all he can be an aggressive so-and-so in the paddock, on the track he's as fair as anyone I've ever known."

Since he retired finally, after the 1992 Indy 500, Foyt has run cars for other drivers, in 1996 choosing to go with Tony George's Indy Racing League rather remain with CART. A pity I always felt, but perhaps, given his long association with the family and their fabled race track, inevitable.

Veteran American journalist Chris Economaki, who has known him well from his rookie days, says this about AJ: "People don't understand what made Foyt great. He wasn't necessarily faster than all the other guys: his secret was his precision. I don't believe there was ever a race driver who made fewer mistakes than AJ Foyt..."




Dear Joakim,
People are invariably surprised at my response when they ask me which was the greatest race I ever saw: the Monaco F3 race in 1969.

It was strictly a two-hander, between a pair of Swedes, Ronnie Peterson (in a Tecno) and Reine Wisell (in a Chevron). This was the wonderful era of the 1-litre 'screamers' in F3, and Peterson and Wisell simply left the rest behind, passing and re-passing endlessly until Reine finally left his braking too late at the chicane, and went down the escape road. In the course of that race, the pair of them lapped faster than they had done in qualifying, and lopped four from the existing
F3 lap record. It was simply fantastic.

To some degree, I think Reine always suffered from being in the shadow of Ronnie, but I always thought him an extremely good driver, with a high degree of natural ability. He was, and is, a very pleasant man, as you say, shy and self-effacing, and perhaps lacked the self-confidence required of a top Grand Prix driver. Several times, during his year with Lotus, as Emerson Fittipaldi's team mate, he was very impressive, but his move to a multi-car BRM team in 1972 effectively put an end to his F1 career.




Dear Joe
Yes, I do plan one day to stop writing about motor racing - although whether or not I'll ever be able to afford to do that is another matter!

In fact, I doubt that I'll ever stop writing about it, in the absolute sense, but for sure I will one day give up life 'on the road'. I've now covered nearly 400 Grands Prix, and that's eight years' worth of weekends! I started writing about F1 in 1971, when I was 25, and have now decided I've had enough of 'long haul' races - with the exception of North America, that is - but I'm happy to continue with the rest.

If I retire from writing about it, will I still watch the races? I wonder if you mean 'watch them on TV' or actually go? Undoubtedly, I'd watch them on TV as long as I drew breath, and I doubt that I could ever give up going to races, at least occasionally. One proviso, though: after all these years as a journalist, I could never go back to buying a ticket, and sitting in a grandstand, so I guess the answer is that as long as Bernie would give me a pass, yes, I'd always go once in a while. I can't, for example, imagine ever missing Monza, my favourite race.

For that matter, I think I'd always want - again occasionally - to attend a CART or NASCAR race, maybe take myself to Elkhart Lake or wherever. And the same goes for my passion for sprint cars - I've always wanted to go to Eldora, for example.

Some journalists I've known have gone on into their 70s, and some have left racing absolutely, never to come near it again. I can't imagine doing either.