Ask Nigel: November 7

Dear Paul,
Actually, I don't think it will make a lot of difference, one way or the other. The only thing I would say is that tyre companies inevitably learn something every time they go testing, and the information surely benefits every team using their tyres. Without wishing to sound patronising towards the smaller teams, I'd venture to suggest that a test involving a McLaren-Mercedes, driven by David Coulthard, is more likely to be useful than one involving a lesser car and driver. In that sense, therefore, Ferrari is rather more 'on its own' than it was.

At the races, the rules say, a company may take only two types of tyre, from which each team, after evaluating them, is then obliged to select one for qualifying and the race. 'Special' tyres for a chosen team are forbidden, and there is no doubt that every team, be it with Bridgestone or Michelin, has exactly the same rubber available to it.

That said, there have been occasions this season when certain of the Bridgestone teams have murmured that perhaps the company was 'tailoring' its tyres to suit Ferrari, and it's possible that this - admitted or not - played a part in McLaren's decision to switch to Michelin.

At the end of last week, at a Mercedes function in Stuttgart, I asked Ron Dennis if this were the case, and he said something about things that are said in the heat of the moment look a bit different sitting in the cool atmosphere of a board room. For all that, his was not the only team to suggest, at different points in the season, that the Bridgestones on offer seemed to suit the Ferraris rather better than their cars.

In explaining McLaren's decision, Dennis said this: "We have not switched to Michelin because we felt we couldn't win races on Bridgestones. The switch was made because we wished strongly to take to a new level our technical understanding of the performance of the car and its suspension, in respect of the role played by the tyre. And that required a level of technical transparency that we could not achieve with Bridgestone, and we could achieve with Michelin. Linked to transparency is trust, and we couldn't achieve that with Bridgestone.

"Was preference shown to Ferrari by Bridgestone? Well, we always raced on the same tyres. All F1 teams have levels of paranoia, and I don't think we're the exception. Sometimes you scratch your head, and you wonder, but I have to say that we never came across any piece of factual evidence that would support the view that any team had any advantage over us. The decision to switch to Michelin was about the future, not the past."

I understand that some of the 2001 Michelin teams are not exactly thrilled about the news that McLaren is to join them next year, feeling that they committed to Michelin from the outset, knowing there would inevitably be teething problems in the company's first year back in F1, and to some degree bore the brunt of those problems. Having gone through a certain amount of pain in that regard, they are now not too thrilled that McLaren will benefit from their hard work, but down the road I would have thought that logically the arrival of another major team can only benefit all of them.




Dear Andy,
No, I'm not disillusioned with F1 as a spectacle. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: culturally, I'm a European, and F1 will always be my first love. I saw my first F1 race in 1954, when I was eight years old, and I've been hooked ever since. If that were not the case, I would not have been to well over 400 Grands Prix, believe me! In an idle moment recently, I worked out that I've spent nearly five months of my life in the Monza paddock alone...

I have two problems with modern F1, however. First, I like Grand Prix cars to be things of beauty, and - as Patrick Head has said - today's car, with its narrow track, high nose, barge boards, and so on, is hardly that. "Pretty hideous, really," is how Patrick puts it. Second, I like to see overtaking. I don't say that order changes brought about by pit stops are a bad thing in themselves, but I don't think they should constitute 95 percent of them. I take Max Mosley's point that too much overtaking - as in Sunday's CART race at Fontana - would be meaningless, but I do believe that overtaking in F1 is too difficult, and I think that the rules which make it so should be changed. That's all.

I don't think 'driver aids', such as traction control, contribute anything to the spectacle, either, and I'm not alone. Let me give you the words of Martin Brundle, as we discussed the return of the 'gizmos' in May.

"I think it's changing the sport fundamentally, and I'm sure, to some degree, it's why these young kids can just turn up, and deliver. You don't need experience any more. The car is partly set up - on the simulator - before it even arrives at the circuit, and there's data acquisition, and telemetry, to tell you what's going on through the weekend. So then it just needs some brave, skilled, kid to drive the thing. You barely spin off any more, because the software nursemaids the amount of power going in...

"The team owners say these things don't make any real difference, but they're just towing the corporate line. The people who make these decisions have never raced an F1 car - with or without traction control. But you find me one driver who's in favour of it; I know some have had their asses kicked for speaking out against it."

We are told constantly, I said, that the overriding need was for a level playing field, so as to dispel suggestions that some cars were...more equal than others.

"Yeah, I know about all that," Brundle responded, "and I think it's a cop-out. All the technology there is today... don't tell me we can't control cheating in F1. I think you should dish out 'standard' ECUs, like you dish out tyres - in fact, I'd dish out brakes, as well, and make the bloody things less efficient.

"I know F1 is supposed to showcase technology, but... Montoya at Interlagos, power-sliding that car when he was in the lead, that's what people want to see! What's special is to see a driver on the limit, with the engine wailing away, but now, when the traction control cuts in, it's a crime to make an F1 engine sound like that."

What we have now is very much a format for the TV viewer, rather than the spectator on the spot. No surprise there - in the end it's the TV audience that pays for F1 - but I feel sad when I hear certain powerful voices suggest that true racing enthusiasts are of no real account anymore, because there simply aren't enough of them.

The emphasis on 'strategy', on planned pit stops, and so on, is all very well, but how, unless he or she has sight of the pits, a spectator - who has forked out hundreds of pounds, after all - can follow a contemporary Grand Prix is frankly beyond me. So-and-so has dropped back from second to 11th - has he been in the pits, or simply spun? If you're out in the boonies, how are you to know?

Thanks primarily to its rules concerning aerodynamics and brakes, CART provides considerably better actual racing - overtaking on the track - than F1, even on road circuits, although I admit that these days it can be too much of a good thing at superspeedways like Fontana.




Dear Marcus,
Michael plays these things very close to his chest, and is expert at psychological games, so I somewhat doubt that we'll ever hear him say he recognises Juan Montoya as 'the man who will eventually knock him off his perch'...

In fact, it's still early days to be thinking that way. Personally, I have no doubts that JPM is the next great driver, and unquestionably I see him as Schuey's major opposition, but that is not to say that he will knock him off his perch. For what it's worth, I think Michael is better now than he has ever been, that his driving in 2001 - perhaps because undoubtedly he had the best car, and was under little pressure for too much of the time - was of an even higher standard than we had seen before. I don't get the impression he's likely to give up his perch any time soon.

To date, Schumacher has driven in 161 Grands Prix, winning 53 of them. There is no doubt that he loves racing - loves driving - for its own sake, and that feeling is as strong as ever, as evidenced by his taking part in the karting World Championship round the other weekend.

That said, Schumacher will be 33 in January, as he begins his 11th full season in F1, and has made more money along the way than any other driver in history. He is married, with two kids, and is the original devoted family man. History shows that eventually - eventually - a driver's edge begins to blunt. It may be imperceptible to the outside world for quite a long time, but he knows when he is no longer quite what he was, when gaps seem to be narrower than once they were. It's an unusual mature man who has the fearlessness of youth.

I rather doubt that we'll ever see Michael decline, because the second he realises he isn't quite what he was, he'll have no wish to compete any more, and he'll retire.

For now, though, whether or not he admits it publicly, I cannot believe that Schuey doesn't see his biggest imminent opposition as JPM, just as Ayrton Senna swiftly identified Michael as someone who was going to give him trouble in the future.

Jo Ramirez, who knew Ayrton better than most, put it this way.

"Once Alain Prost had retired, Senna knew that Schumacher was going to be the next problem, which was why he liked to play mind games with him. I remember that at Magny-Cours in '92 Michael pushed him out of the race on the opening lap; later the race was stopped because of rain, and as the drivers waited for the restart, Ayrton went to speak to him. He waited until just before Michael was going to get in the car, and then he read him the riot act.

"I could see them in the distance, could see Michael nodding his head, saying, 'Yes sir, no sir...' Ayrton came back all satisfied with himself, saying, 'Great! Got him just before he got in the car again!' And, sure enough, Michael went off!

"It's all part of the game - it's all part of what we miss now, that we haven't got any more. Personalities in the sport, I suppose..."




Dear Chris,
Who knows what will happen? It's true that Jac Nasser was a great supporter of Ford's involvement in motor sport, and particularly in F1, and it's impossible to know how the new regime views it: I could be wrong, but I suspect it could be rather less favourably than the previous one.

The story may be apocryphal, but in the summer someone told me that a senior Ford man (one of the new hierarchy) had demanded to know, 'Who the f***'s Ed Irvine? Any why is he the second highest paid employee of Ford Motor Company?' The fact that he pronounced it 'Irvinn' - and that he had never heard of him - suggests that F1 may not be of consuming interest to the gentlemen of Dearborn. If the story is true, of course.

Certainly, I know from insiders that within Ford USA there is, let's say, minimal enthusiasm for the Jaguar F1 programme. That might - as some of us pointed out at the time of its inception - have been rather different if it had been 'the Ford F1 programme', but someone knew better.

Thus far, the great bulk of the funding has come from Ford USA - but I'm led to believe that the cheques are not what they were.

The fact is that Ford wins a lot of NASCAR races and a lot of CART races, and has so far achieved precious little success from an F1 programme that costs a huge amount more than the two domestic series put together. Should that situation not turn around significantly - and there are few obvious reasons to suppose it will - I would not bet a significant amount on Jaguar's being involved in, say, three years' time. I'll always believe they should have gone Grand Prix racing as 'Ford'.




Dear Martin,
A few years ago I remember chatting to Bernie Ecclestone about Flavio Briatore. I made the point that Flav actually makes a point of stressing that he doesn't like racing - that it doesn't do anything for him. It's not that he dislikes it, just that he sees it purely as a marketing exercise, a business opportunity - which I could accept, because he's honest about it, unlike some, who pretend to be racers. At the same time, though, it made him rather different from someone like Colin Chapman.

"Yes," said Bernie. "It's different now, isn't it? I mean, Chunky was...he 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, and he was as quick as half the guys who ever drove for him. OK, Mr Ferrari was Mr Ferrari, and the name's a legend, but in the end Colin was a little bit different from all the others. As I say, he could get in the car, and drive as quick as half the guys who were doing it for a living - and he'd designed the bloody thing, as well! So he was a special guy, and you've got to miss him.

"Flavio...well, he knew nothing about racing before he came into the business. Luciano Benetton asked me to look after him, and I said I'd do what I could. I got some sponsorship for Benetton, from Autopolis, and then I had a fight to get them to take Schumacher! At the time Tom (Walkinshaw) was running the racing team, and he said no, he wanted Brundle or Blundell or somebody... So, from that point of view, Flavio was very new on the block, but I think he's always enjoyed the fact that there are TV cameras about - which he couldn't get if he was working in an office at Benetton. So I suppose from that point of view he's happy...

"Flavio calls all the rest of the guys 'mechanics', because they've all basically come up through the ranks in the world of racing. He's something different. He never served an apprenticeship, that's the point, and I'm not saying that's good or bad; I'm saying it's different."

I don't think Briatore has ever fundamentally changed, in the sense that he still looks upon F1 as purely a business, nothing more, nothing less. If a major recession ever hit, to the point that suddenly there was little money to be made from F1, I think he'd be gone tomorrow, seeking out business elsewhere - and I don't think he'd deny that. I've always found Flav quite honest and straightforward about his motives.

He still knows absolutely nothing about racing cars, and couldn't care less. The 'technical' side of racing interests him not at all, and he doesn't involve himself in it. What he is, though, is a remarkably astute businessman, an ace deal-maker, and every team has need of one of those.

You ask, is Briatore the right man to 'lead' Renault in their latest quest for F1 success, but that is not really the situation. Flavio is there to coordinate the effort, not to organise test sessions or talk about barge boards or whatever - he hires people to do that. Be in no doubt, he is a very bright man - and one with pedigree chums among the powers-that-be.




Dear Iain,
Let's start with the least deserved. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that Stirling Moss is the greatest racing driver there has ever been, and my opinion of 'the World Championship' has always been somewhat coloured by the fact that he never won it. To my mind, that diminishes the worth of the title, rather than the man.

Several times Moss was runner-up in the championship, and the one he should have won, above all, was in 1958. There were only 10 Grands Prix that year, of which Moss won four, his Vanwall team mate Tony Brooks three, and Ferrari's Mike Hawthorn one - yet it was Hawthorn who won the World Championship. I couldn't understand it at the time, and I still don't! On his day, Hawthorn was a great driver, but I hate to see championships won on consistency. In my ideal world, the World Champion would always be the man who won most races that year.

As for the most deserved, I'll go for Alain Prost in 1986, when he won the second of his four titles. Why? Because I believe that was the last time, and probably the most overwhelming time, when a driver won the World Championship in a car which absolutely should not have won it.

The turbocharged McLaren-TAG MP4/2 was a good-handling car, but by then was getting rather long in the tooth, into its third season. More significantly, the TAG-Porsche engine was about 150 horsepower down on the Honda motors then used by Williams, and Prost fought a lone battle against Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell all season long, ultimately winning it by virtue of intelligence, lack of mistakes, and sheer driving ability. As his McLaren team mate Keke Rosberg put it, "It would have been a joke if anyone but Alain had won that championship..."