Ask Nigel Roebuck: February 25

Dear Chris,

It's difficult to know what I - or anyone else - will make of the revised qualifying rules until we see them in action on Saturday week, but quite obviously one negative effect of them will be to take Friday back to being the 'dead day' it was prior to 2003. Then again, the 'one engine per weekend' rule was always going to restrict Friday running to quite some degree.

Running the two qualifying sessions on the same day - the second starts a couple of minutes after the first one finishes - may seem like only a minor alteration, but it could be fascinating if there is uncertain weather around during late morning and early afternoon on Saturday. One of the aims, presumably, was to get at least some of the world's TV companies to show two hours of F1 on a Saturday, rather than only one.

Would I like to see a return to the old qualifying format? I'll admit I'm equivocal about this - and I'm sure that anyone who ever saw, say, Ayrton Senna on a minimal-fuel banzai qualifying lap feels the same. Of course the closing seconds of a session in those circumstances were enthralling, not least because there was invariably uncertainty about who would get a clear lap at the crucial moment, who would take the pole. There was a purity about qualifying as it used to be - you knew you were seeing cars and drivers at the absolute limit of their capabilities.

On the other hand, as much of a purist as I consider myself to be, I'm prepared to sacrifice purity in qualifying for more uncertainty in the race. In other words, Sunday is the day that matters. And there's no doubt at all in my mind that the qualifying revisions introduced last year - when a driver had but one shot at a lap to set his grid position, and had to do it with fuel enough for the first stint of his race - contributed a great deal to the drama of the Grand Prix.

All right, it wasn't long before a pattern emerged, as teams grew more accustomed to the new rules, and more experienced as to how to get the best out of them, but only rarely were the first three or four rows exactly as you might have predicted them - and as you almost had been able to predict them in the old days.

What I - and, I assume, everyone else - like to see more than anything is a situation where drivers have to get on with the job and pass rivals, rather than simply 'wait for the stops'. After the man in the kilt had done his lunatic thing at Silverstone last year, we had that scenario in extremis, and the result was far and away the most exciting race of the season.

For those like myself, who consider the race to be of infinitely greater importance than any other part of a Grand Prix weekend, I think the sacrifice of 'pure qualifying' is a price worth paying - but I know there are those who disagree.



Dear Jaime,

Let's deal with the last first. At a recent press lunch at McLaren, Ron Dennis was at some pains to stress that Juan Montoya had not signed for the team for financial reasons.

"The opportunity to sign Juan Pablo came up," he said, "and we took it. At no stage in the early talks - nor in 90 percent of the negotiations, in fact - was money discussed. It came into it in the last 15 minutes, and was very quickly concluded. This was not a monetary-driven decision by either party.

"Then...one particular party who was aware this was a done deal started to put into people's minds that Juan was going to cost someone a fortune, and so on. For a long period there was an impression of 'This guy is only driven by money - and that's the only reason he's come to McLaren'. That incensed me. It didn't, incidentally, originate from Williams.

"Martin [Whitmarsh] and I are both constantly accused," said Ron, "of having this piranha-like behaviour, taking people from other organisations. Well, it might sound childish to say this, but they conveniently forget that Frank spent a year and a half seducing Senna out of our team. Ayrton chose to leave, and go to Williams. We were disappointed, but people move around - if they're contractually able, they can do that. It's just a little unusual for someone far away from the end of their contract to say, 'I'd like to join your team'. I don't believe the beginning and end of this matter was purely the fiscal differential between Juan and his team-mate."

To put that into more everyday English, what Ron was saying was that JPM did not move from Williams to McLaren simply because he was fed up with being paid less than Ralf Schumacher - indeed, did not move for monetary reasons at all. In my experience, RD is not a man who tells lies - and, believe me, you can spot these people very easily in an F1 paddock - so I will take him at his word. That said, I don't doubt that Juan will be paid considerably more by McLaren than by Williams, because that's the way, historically, things have always been. McLaren have anyway a bigger budget than Williams - and have invariably shown a greater willingness to pay very substantial driver retainers, at least when it comes to real topliners.

Therefore, I don't doubt that Montoya - even if money were not his primary reason for moving - will be soothed by the thought of bigger cheques from 2005 on.

That said, it seems pretty clear that the initial approach came from the driver - or his manager - rather from the team, that Dennis and Whitmarsh were, if anything, caught slightly on the hop. Once JPM had made his wishes known, though, they wasted little time in snapping him up. Given that the whole thing was concluded around the time of the British Grand Prix (just a fortnight after the French), it seems not unreasonable to assume that Montoya was fired into action as a consequence of the happenings at, and soon after, Magny-Cours, where a misunderstanding between Juan and his pit led to a radio screaming match. Afterwards, the matter was apparently resolved, but Montoya later received a letter warning of the consequences of similar behaviour. I know for a fact that the letter infuriated him.

Dennis feels that Montoya will thrive in his team. "We do believe that McLaren will be a good environment for Juan Pablo," he said. "He's got that South American approach to his motor racing, which is reminiscent of Ayrton, and we know - or we think we know - how to get the best out of that sort of temperament. Time will tell."

It will indeed - but there's no doubt at all that many at Williams are very sad at the thought of Juan's leaving at the end of this season. They have become very fond of him, and in so many ways, after all, he had come to be regarded as a classic 'Williams driver'.



Dear Martin,

Bernie was extremely fond of Carlos Pace - pronounced 'Parch-ay', by the way - which perhaps explains in part his remark that, had Pace lived, he wouldn't have needed Niki Lauda. Frankly, I think that's a touch fanciful: for all Carlos's many attributes, I would never have said he was the equal of Niki.

Pace was a delightful fellow, and a racing driver of considerable natural talent and courage - as evidenced by his performance in qualifying at the 'Ring in 1975, when he qualified his Brabham on the front row, less than a second and a half from Lauda's Ferrari. He won at Interlagos that same year, by six seconds, from Fittipaldi's Lotus.

Like Emerson, he was from Sao Paulo, and the celebrations were frantic. Sadly, Carlos was never to win another race, but it always pleased me that he had his day of days in front of his home crowd. Today, of course, the track at Interlagos is called the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace.

While Carlos was an extremely good F1 driver, with loads of flair, I think it fair to suggest he was less dedicated to racing than many of his contemporaries - his physical fitness, for example, frequently left something to be desired, and Grand Prix cars were much more 'physical' to drive in those days: there was no power steering, for example, and changing gear was still achieved by means of a clutch and a gear lever.

Partnered with Carlos Reutemann at Brabham in 1975 and '76, Pace was very often the quicker of the two, particularly during qualifying in the Alfa-powered cars in '76, but in part that stemmed from his willingness to drive the team's 'lightweight' qualifying car, which Reutemann wouldn't touch. Fundamentally, though, you'd have to say Reutemann was the better driver - indeed, when 'Lole' was really on it, he was as quick as anyone I have ever seen.

For 1977, Pace was joined in the Brabham-Alfa team (following Reutemann's departure to Ferrari) by Watson, but the partnership was still very much in its infancy when Carlos lost his life in a light aircraft accident in March. Although John didn't win a race that year, thanks primarily to the Brabham-Alfa's lousy reliability, he led a great many laps, and I'm sure the Pace-Watson partnership would have been a very strong one.



Dear Mike,

I think it's going to be extremely tough for them is all I can say - and I can't say I'm impressed to learn that about the first thing they've done is get rid of Doctors Steve Olvey and Terry Trammell, two figures worthy of the very highest respect in motor racing circles worldwide. Without them, for example, Alex Zanardi would undoubtedly not have survived that horrific accident at the Lausitzring in September 2001. So I think that is a very weird way to start, and I can't imagine the drivers in the series are going to be too thrilled about it, either.

It's obviously going to be tough for OWRS, not least because they've got the whole 'Indy machine' working against them. Most of the significant teams which were once intrinsic to CART have left for the IRL, and I must say it disgusts me to hear one-time CART stalwarts now rubbishing what used to be the greatest out-and-out racing series on earth. Of late there will, I imagine, have been some interesting conversations between the Andrettis, pere et fils...

I was always a huge fan of CART, who put on some of the greatest races I've seen anywhere, but...money talks, doesn't it? In part, it fell apart because of the advent of the IRL, but in part, too, it was because of the greed of certain team owners. It's poignant now to think that, a decade ago, the series was at its peak, truly thriving.

Can OWRS revive its fortunes? I truly hope so, because fundamentally a 'CART car' is so much more inspiring, both to watch and to listen to, than an IRL car, and I always loved the fact that the series was so varied, with a blend of ovals, street and road courses. If it is ever to prosper again, I think it should leave the ovals to the IRL, and concentrate on places like Long Beach and Elkhart Lake. More urgently, though, it needs to find some well-funded teams from somewhere, together with more 'star' drivers. I truly wish the OWRS well.



Dear Richard,

I rated him extremely highly - as I think everyone did. A Lotus-Lamborghini was not the greatest car for your first year in F1, but Martin drove the wheels off it, and much impressed everyone, including his team mate Derek Warwick. Jean Alesi, who had driven against Donnelly in F3000, really reckoned him, and thought he was potentially a world-class driver.

That accident at Jerez was one of the most sobering and shocking things I have ever seen at a race track. One second the TV pictures in the press room were of someone on a qualifying lap, the next they were all of this yellow-clad, apparently lifeless, body in the middle of the track.

It was almost too much to take in - not least because at first we couldn't imagine the circumstances which had created such a scene. How, apart from anything else, in these days of seat belts, had a driver been ejected from his car? As we later discovered, of course, the Lotus had hit the guardrail with such force that it had literally disintegrated - suddenly the belts were attached to nothing.

It looked about as bad as anything you could imagine, but somehow Donnelly survived. He was not, though, ever to race an F1 car again, and I'll always believe this was a case of a great lost career at the top level.



Dear Paul,

I suppose there's a chance that there might be 'mobile chicanes' out on the track on Fridays this season - but then there's nothing very new about that, is there? At Monza last year, after all, Baumgartner did a very good job of killing the duel between Schumacher and Montoya by disastrously holding up Juan Pablo all the way through the Ascari chicane. I don't suggest for a second it was in any way deliberate: merely a combination of inexperience and incompetence.

When things like this happen, it's maddening enough for the spectators, let alone the guy being held up, but they're a part of motor racing, and they always have been. You're always going to have rookies in F1, after all, and chances are that, in addition to their own limited experience, they'll be driving cars way slower than the front runners. Nothing more to be said, really.

That said, I think it's important that they don't allow just anyone into the Friday sessions, simply because he's got a competitions licence and a few quid. I think this is something the FIA has got to monitor quite carefully, and I trust they will. The sort of drivers you mention - Davidson, Wirdheim, etc - have proven experience and expertise at a pretty high level, so people like them should be no problem at all.

You have to remember, too, that the teams - now confined to one engine per driver per weekend - are not going to have their star drivers flogging round and round endlessly on Fridays. Indeed, it's for this reason that everyone anticipates Friday is going to be something of a 'dead day'. I think it's no bad thing for a young guy to be able demonstrate his talent - or lack of it - in front of the team owners, I must say.