Ask Nigel: October 25

Dear Nigel,
10 years ago John Barnard was the man with the Midas touch after building state-of-the-art cars for McLaren, Ferrari and Benetton. He pioneered the carbon-fibre chassis and semi-auto gearboxes which define modern F1, yet he was sacked from Ferrari after a series of average designs and now makes "bits" on a car which cannot even score a point in the hands of Jean Alesi. What has gone wrong?
Nigel Kirkpatrick, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Dear Nigel,
I've always been a Barnard fan, not least because his cars are invariably things of beauty, and you don't get many of those in this wind-tunnel-dictated era. One of John's last designs for Ferrari, the 412T2 of 1995, was certainly the nicest-looking car of recent years - and the last to eschew the unsightly high nose which has become the norm.

New York is my favourite city, and I go there as often as I can; no visit is complete without a trip to the Museum of Modern Art, where Alain Prost's 1990 Ferrari 641 - another of Barnard's designs - resides in perpetuity, by reason of its supreme functional elegance. Alex Zanardi also saw the car there, and remarked to me one day how it had struck him that F1 cars used to be so much more beautiful than now.

All that said, beauty alone is not enough: the car must also get the job done. As you correctly point out, JB pioneered carbon monocoques and semi-automatic gearboxes, both of which have long been regarded as standard-issue in F1 cars. And some of his designs, notably the McLaren MP4-2 and the aforementioned Ferrari 641, were the best cars of their time - if Prost had had Honda power in 1990, I don't doubt that he would have won the World Championship.

Over time, Barnard has moved around a lot, as you say, working for McLaren, doing two spells at Ferrari, and also designing for Benetton, Arrows and Prost. Of all the drivers John worked with during his career, Alain was the one he most admired, and the one with whom he had the best professional relationship. I was delighted when the pair of them announced their agreement to work together in the Prost F1 team.

By his own admission, John is not the easiest man to work with, and he also categorically refuses to live outside England. That's his right, of course, but inevitably during the Ferrari years there was an 'us and them' thing at Maranello, with many of the factory-based people unhappy that the car was conceived and designed in England, at GTO - Guildford Technical Office - rather than in Italy.

Now, with Prost, Barnard is not the designer, but rather a consultant to the team; as such, his influence is limited. Earlier this year, Jean Alesi - a huge admirer of John's work - bemoaned the fact that the car had not been designed by him.

I don't think it's a matter of 'What's gone wrong?' with JB as much as the fact that he is these days working for one of the smaller teams, rather than a Ferrari or McLaren, and that his input is somewhat less than it used to be. When the fundamental design of a car is as poor as this year's Prost AP03, there's not much even a Barnard can do.




Dear Max,
No, I haven't forgotten Jochen Rindt either - and nor, I'm sure, has anyone else who ever saw him drive. Frank Williams, I know, thinks Rindt is the greatest of all time, and even now, 30 years on, I still reckon that the most inspired piece of driving I ever saw was Jochen in the old Lotus 49, at Monte Carlo in 1970. As he chased Jack Brabham at the end, his last couple of laps were more than two seconds faster than his qualifying time - and a full second faster than Jackie Stewart's pole time! Think of that...

How would Rindt's driving style suit today's cars? Difficult to say - I mean, what was Rindt's driving style? According to the car and the conditions, it could be anything you wanted. That day at Monaco, he flung the 49 around at impossible angles, rather like a big Formula Ford car, but in the 72, at a place like Clermont-Ferrand, he was silky smooth.

What I'm trying to say is that I think Jochen was so good, his car control so freakish, that he would have excelled in any era, adapted to any car, be it in an Auto Union, Maserati 250F, Lotus 79, Williams FW14B or McLaren MP4-15.

That said, I think he would have loathed today's cars, for they cannot truly be over-driven - not in the way that a 49, for example, could. Thanks to the over-dominance of aerodynamic grip, a car slightly out of line is a car losing time. Rindt, as he demonstrated that day at Monaco, was one of very few drivers who could take a car literally beyond its capabilities, and yet keep control of it. He was a genius, and he would have been super-quick today - but I don't think he would have much enjoyed it.




Dear Richard,
In a word, no! Even 20 years ago, some drivers' contracts - notably those at Ferrari - precluded their taking part in the BMW Pro-Car races, and I'm quite sure that none of today's team owners would countenance their drivers taking part in such events.

Apart from the risk of a driver breaking a wrist or something the day before a Grand Prix, there would be all manner of clashes, involving manufacturers, fuel contracts, tyre contracts, sponsorship and so on. And even if all these considerations could be got around, can you imagine how much you'd have to pay today's drivers to do it?

It's out of the question, I'm afraid. Apart from anything else, in these days of telemetry, we're into the era of endless debriefs. Can't really envisage a situation in which Schumacher or Hakkinen would say to their engineers, "Sorry, got to leave this now - got to go and race a Pro-Car. I'll leave the set-up to you..."

Sorry, Richard. I'd love to see something like it - I can still remember the sight of Didier Pironi hustling that BMW M1 through the swimming pool turns at Monaco in 1980 - but it ain't going to happen.




Dear Jill,
What's my opinion of the blue flag rule for backmarkers? That it isn't used - or observed - nearly enough!

Forgive me, but I must entirely disagree with you on this. Like you, I was hoping on Sunday that something would enable DC to take a run at Schuey - but I was hoping that it would come from within him and the McLaren, not because some clown either didn't see the Ferrari coming, or simply wouldn't get out of its way.

You're quite right that one of Senna's skills was indeed scything through tail-enders; Schumacher is much the same. Since the beginning of time, some drivers have always been much better at this than others, and those who excel at it tend to be either ruthless or fearless, or both. In this situation, you are, after all, depending constantly on the fact that the guy in front has seen you - which is not always the case.

I'm a little baffled by your statement that, "Now a bloke with a blue flag makes the difference". The blue flag is not a recent innovation; it's been with us for ever, including during Ayrton's time - and he benefitted from it as much as anyone.

Nothing in racing maddens me more than when some backmarker doesn't use his mirrors, or doesn't get out of the way, thus wiping out the leader's hard-earned advantage. When it's done deliberately, it amounts to nothing more than a 'professional foul' - but then, God help us, we seem to find such things acceptable, even laudable, in contemporary sport.

Standards of marshalling vary considerably from country to country, but by and large they're very much better now than they used to be. Even so, too often the guy with the blue flag is too slow to take action, and near-misses are frequent. Take my word for it, if you'd ever seen an F1 car somersaulting after running over the back wheel of another, you'd be very much in favour of "a bloke with a blue flag". Even in these 'safe' days.

Let me finish with a question for you, Jill. Would you have hoped for a "belligerent 'de Cesaris-style' blocking move from someone" if the roles had been reversed on Sunday - if it had been Michael chasing David?




Dear Tom,
Your friend is winding you up, Tom. Either that, or he's got mixed up, or he gets through too many non-standard cigarettes.

Fangio won five titles in all, in 1951-54-55-56-57. Presumably, when you talk of "a third consecutive title", you are therefore referring to 1956, his only year with Ferrari. The deciding race that season was at Monza, and the three possible World Champions were Fangio, his team mate Peter Collins and Maserati's Stirling Moss.

Shortly before half-distance, while running second to Moss, Fangio retired his car with a broken steering-arm. In those days, the rules allowed a driver to take over the car of one of his team mates, and when Collins came in for a routine pit stop, and saw Fangio apparently out of the race, he offered his Ferrari to the great man - in so doing throwing away his own chance of winning the World Championship. Hard to believe in this day and age, isn't it? But it happened.

When I talked to Peter's widow, Louise, about this, she explained it thus: "Well, let's face it, in those days there wasn't the money, so maybe it was easier to be a sportsman... But, in any case, Peter revered Fangio, and he never felt there was much urgency about winning the World Championship. He cared more about winning races. Team spirit was very important to him - if he hadn't enjoyed racing, it wouldn't have been worth a damn to him. It was important, above all, that someone in a Ferrari won the championship."

Sorry, I digress, as usual, but it's a nice story. Back to Monza '56: nobody threw an apple, and nobody swerved for it, crashing out, and gifting Fangio victory. Moss won the race, and Fangio finished second, clinching the World Championship at the same time. Bit dull, compared with your mate's version, but the truth, nonetheless.

By the way, just in case you were wondering, there was no apple-throwing involved in any of Fangio's other championship years, either. In '51, he clinched the title with a conclusive victory for Alfa Romeo at Pedralbes (Barcelona), in '54 and '55 he did it by winning for Mercedes at Monza, and in '57 by winning for Maserati at the Nurburgring. All straightforward stuff, I'm afraid.




Dear Raymond,
Good question. First of all, I'm a touch surprised that you'd heard that the McLaren M26 was a forgiving car - in fact, it was a car that James Hunt disliked, because he found it so much more difficult to drive than the M23. Are you sure it's not the M23 you're thinking of?

In today's F1, there are no cars I can think of which truly merit the description, "forgiving and tolerant of mistakes". Indeed, the drivers constantly complain that today's cars - too much aerodynamic grip, and not enough mechanical grip, thanks to the 'narrow track and grooved tyre' regulations - are too much on a knife-edge, and that's a shame, I think.

The last car I remember anyone raving about, from the point of view of 'being forgiving', was the 1995 Ferrari 412T2 referred to in an earlier question about its designer, John Barnard. Both Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi loved that about the car, although Gerhard added that he never thought it had quite enough grip, and quite often this is the way of it: a car may have fabulous handling, but less impressive road-holding, as 'grip' used to known.

This was particularly the case in days gone by. I once talked to Stirling Moss about it, and this is what he had to say...

"To me, building up a relationship with a car was very much like an affair with a woman. You know, you didn't go in and say, 'Let's****' - or, in my day, you didn't, anyway! In my day, you whispered quietly in her ear or something, and you'd see how she responded - you'd put one brick on another, and hope you'd build up to it. Sometimes it did, and sometimes it didn't. To me, driving a car - on certain circuits - was just like that.

"Some cars were more receptive than others. A Lotus was very much more difficult to enjoy than a Cooper, for example. A Cooper was so easy-going - you knew you'd be all right with her. But a Lotus, by Christ, you needed to be a lot more careful - a Lotus could be a really snappy sod! On the other hand, if you got it really right, My God, it paid you back.

"Some cars become very much more meaningful to you, because they do what you want. I mean, the Mercedes W196 was never as nice a car to drive as the Maserati 250F, and the Vanwall wasn't nice at all - lousy gearbox, and so on. The Merc didn't have anything really wrong with it, other than the back-to-front gearbox, but you couldn't have the love affair with it you could with the Maserati, because you couldn't play with it in the same way - it never flowed quite as easily. On the other hand, because it would never break, it was a great car.

"It was just the same with the Cooper and the Lotus. The Cooper... I won't say it made for bad driving, but it was so forgiving that you could get the tail way out, and so on, and it wasn't difficult at all. More fun for a driver, but ultimately less efficient than the Lotus."

Last year I remember Mika Hakkinen saying his McLaren was much harder to drive than the '98 car had been. "On the other hand," he added, "it's definitely quicker, and that's what counts, isn't it?"




Dear Des,
Yes, the atmosphere at Sepang was definitely different from that at a normal Grand Prix - and particularly at the last one of the year, where these days the World Championship is almost always decided.

It was a combination of things, I think. First, and most important, the championship was already settled, even if the constructors' title had still to be resolved. Second, it was hot and humid as hell; third, it was the end of a very long haul, and there was less at stake than usual. Frankly, the impression was of a lot of weary people looking forward to a bit of a break.

I can't say it bothered me too much, because I get a bit fed up with this endless emphasis on the World Championship. As far as I was concerned, there was still a Grand Prix to be won, and that was quite enough. Others, though, indeed looked upon it as a 'Race of Champions', as you say.

As to your second question, yes, it's a dream - or, to put it another way, a nightmare! The whole point of having a testing ban is to allow team personnel - in particular, the mechanics - a chance to come off the road for a while, and I really don't think they'd relish the idea of an extra non-championship race so that teams could try out new drivers.

Come to think of it, I rather doubt, too, that Ron Dennis or Frank Williams or Jean Todt would relish the idea of 'testing' new drivers in a race - the repair bill, I fancy, would be high...