Ask Nigel Roebuck: April 7

Dear Katey,

As you say, I do have strong feelings about driving standards and etiquette in F1, and I'm interested that you should ask what I consider to be acceptable behaviour 'in the modern era'. As far as I'm concerned, 'the modern era' makes no difference - and that goes for manners of every kind, and not just on the race track. Alan Jones used to say, "Good manners are not optional", and I agreed with him then, and agree with him now. When it comes to bad manners, I have zero tolerance, and I wish more people felt the same way.

As for questionable etiquette on the race track, the same applies. By that, I'm not suggesting I expect F1 drivers to behave like choirboys - this is the top of the tree, after all, and aggressive driving is to be expected, and, so far as I'm concerned, encouraged. 'After you, Claude,' is not going to get you very far in motor racing, let's face it.

That said, there is a line over which I don't believe racing drivers should go - and really what it amounts to, as Martin Brundle has said, is respect for those against whom you're competing. Back to Jones again. He and Gilles Villeneuve had some of the toughest fights I've ever seen, but they had consummate respect for each other, and drove accordingly.

This was how Alan remembered those battles: "Gilles would never deliberately block you. If he thought you'd won the corner, he'd give you room - maybe only a foot more than you needed, but never a foot less - and consequently I'd do the same for him. A totally honourable racing driver".

Keke Rosberg, another with whom Villeneuve had many an encounter, concurred: "In a race car, he was the hardest bastard I ever knew, but absolutely fair. Racing was a very pure thing for Gilles. He never put a dirty move on anyone in his life".

There's no doubt in my mind that the driving etiquette in F1 is not what it was, and I think there are three reasons for this. First, the etiquette in sport generally is not what it was, so that these days 'sportsmanship' is regarded by many as wimpy - indeed, almost contemptible. Sad, but a fact of life. Folk go to a football match, watch a scrappy game, with 22 blokes kicking the hell out of each other, and so long as their team wins 1-0 they seem to come away quite happy.

Second, don't underestimate the significance of money. For a very long time F1 - like most sports - has been awash with it, and when the financial rewards are colossal people can sometimes behave in a manner they would otherwise never consider.

Third, with regard to standards of behaviour in F1, I'm quite sure that the decline has much to do with the fact that racing is so comparatively safe nowadays - not absolutely safe, of course, for it never can be - but hugely more so than it was.

When I asked former World Champion Phil Hill what had accounted for the change in driving manners, he said this: "Well, they feel they can get away with it, I guess. That's the only possible explanation. If guys drove like that in my time, they usually sorted themselves out pretty quickly with a big accident - or else somebody else did it for them.

"Some of the stuff that goes on today...I just don't know what to think. Doing that in my day...so many of them would have ended up in fatal accidents. It was just unthinkable, really, to touch another car, because of the potential consequences. I know it sounds corny, but those were the facts. Over the long term, you just couldn't do it, and get away with it. Now they know they can get away with it, so they do it."

From what I saw, it looked very much as Webber did indeed 'brake test' Alonso in Bahrain last weekend - just as it seemed that Alonso did it to Coulthard at the Nurburgring last year. As for Ralf...well, Patrick Head described his race as, "A bloody mess", and that about summed up the situation. I thought he drove like an idiot on Sunday. In the incident with Sato, he turned into the corner as if the BAR were not there - where the hell was Takuma supposed to go? The fact was, Ralf - on the outside - had not 'won the corner', yet he behaved as if he had. I was astonished that he received only a reprimand afterwards.



Dear Richard,

As things stand, I guess you have to say yes, it is conceivable that Ferrari might win every race this season. I can't believe it will happen - even the supreme Senna/Prost pairing at McLaren in 1988 contrived to lose one of the 16 races, after all - but you can never say never.

I don't quite understand what you mean by 'mistakes within Williams, McLaren and Renault' - unless you're simply talking about their failure to build a car as fast as the Ferrari. The situations of the three are rather different, in fact. Williams are not on par with Ferrari, but assuredly they're leading the chase; Renault have a supremely good chassis, but not enough horsepower (and too many qualifying mistakes by Alonso); as for McLaren, well, it's difficult to know what to say at the moment. Given that the Mercedes engine is not only highly unreliable, but also well down on horsepower, the team is obliged to run its car with too little downforce (in the search for straightline speed), so we don't really know how good, or otherwise, the MP4-19 is yet. Messrs Raikkonen and Coulthard must be about ready to turn to drink.

In point of fact, I think you're being a little unfair on BAR and Jenson Button. It's fact that one wouldn't ordinarily have expected to find them in front of the three teams we discussed, but I think there's no doubt they genuinely have upped their game this year, and very considerably so. Let's face it, Takuma Sato was able to hold off Alonso in the closing stages at Bahrain, and that must mean something. Even assuming that Williams, McLaren and Renault substantially progress, I wouldn't expect to see Jenson and BAR fade back into midfield.



Dear Ian,

You and me both!

Actually, my information some time ago was that Ralf had already signed for Toyota (before the start of the season), and fans of his must hope that's the case, because assuredly his value now must be somewhat less than it was before Melbourne. The fact that he has suddenly become much more outspoken - about Frank, about his team mate Montoya, etc - suggests to me that he is a man with not a lot to lose when it comes to Williams matters. However, I could be wrong.

Ralf's a mystery to me, and to pretty well everyone else in the paddock, I believe. On his day, as Patrick Head has said, he can be 'absolutely supreme', and the fact that he like this only a handful of times a year suggests to me that he has the talent, but not the application - and nor, for that matter, the commitment. JPM, we know, can be temperamental, but there's little doubt that every time he gets in the car he gives it all he has. You don't get that impression with Ralf. He can indeed be quite brilliant when all is right with himself and his car, but overall he's a very pale shadow of his brother.

Not the least of Michael's strengths is that he has never been known to whinge about his team. Ralf is not like that, and a lot of people believe he owes much of his position in motor racing to the fact that his name is Schumacher. Certainly it was no hindrance to him when he was coming through the ranks. He has been wildly overpaid by Williams for a long time.

Toyota want him not least because their competition base has always been in Germany, and, given that Michael is not available and never will be, Ralf is considered the next best thing. My feeling is that, given the current state of play at Toyota, they would be better off, overall, to take David Coulthard.