Ask Nigel Roebuck: July 17

Dear Jason,

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'chassis rule changes' - the only significant changes to F1 chassis - monocoques - in recent years have been to do with cockpit dimensions and the like, in the interests of safety.

The crucial rules, to my mind, are those to do with aerodynamics, and although these have been fiddled with over time, they have not been changed to anything like the degree I, and many others, would like to see. As I've written 'til I'm blue in the face, what I would wish the FIA to do is hugely reduce the aerodynamic grip (generated by downforce) of the cars, and greatly increase the mechanical grip, by getting rid of these unsightly grooved tyres, and return to slicks.

I would also like to see the banning - again - of the electronic 'gizmos', such as traction control, launch control and fully-automatic gearboxes. Max Mosley used to be of the opinion - and I believe, fundamentally, he still is - that such things were 'driver aids' (ie. performing tasks traditionally the responsibility of the driver), and had no place in something calling itself a drivers' World Championship.

Mosley banned the gizmos at the end of 1993, but allowed their return in the middle of 2001, on the grounds that some teams suspected others of cheating, of running such systems illegally, and that was bad for the sport. In effect, the FIA said, electronic systems had now become so sophisticated that it was virtually impossible to police them - and if that were the case, it was better to legalise them.

A great shame, for the sport is further dehumanised by their adoption, the spectacle is lessened for the fans - and the drivers detest them! However...

All that said, merely changing the rules is not in itself going to bring about a shuffling of the pack. It was not the advent of grooved tyres (and narrow-track cars) in 1998 which brought about the end of a period of Williams domination. Rather, it was that McLaren, with Adrian Newey having joined them from Williams, built a car plainly better than anything else that year - and the fact that Williams, having run factory Renault engines for many years, now, following the withdrawal of Renault from F1, had to run 'Supertec' motors, these essentially 'customer' versions of the Renault V10, but without the constant R & D necessary to keep them competitive. For two seasons, until their contract with BMW began, in 2000, Williams were out of the horsepower race.



Dear David,

In my opinion, anyway, refuelling has not enhanced the actual racing in F1, as you put it, at all. What it has done, certainly, is permit order changes which would otherwise not have taken place, but racing is what happens out on the track, when one car passes another, and refuelling has actually had a detrimental effect on that, because drivers - even Michael Schumacher - routinely admit that, rather than chance trying to overtake, they 'preferred to wait for the stops'.

What refuelling has done, of course, is greatly amplify the importance of strategy in a race, the endless calculations of how many stops to make, when to make them, how much fuel to run in this particular segment of the race, and so on. Hence, Max Mosley's notorious suggestion that these days we should think of a grand prix 'in terms of a chess match'. Chess matches may be exciting for the participants, but they're not exactly rivetting for spectators...

I have always been opposed to refuelling, which I think a quite unnecessary danger in a sport otherwise obsessed with safety, and nothing more than an artifice to disguise the fact that there isn't a whole lot of racing - overtaking, in other words - taking place on the track.

The other thing, of course, is that it has made the format of a grand prix in many ways much more crude than it was: sprint-stop-sprint-stop... Before there was refuelling, a driver and his engineers had to arrive at a set-up which would work both with full tank and near-empty, and thus you had a scenario in which, at different points in the race, some cars were much faster than others. That created the uncertainty which is so desirable in a race - and which, to a great degree, has disappeared from the sport as it is today. I like to see races won and lost on the track, not in the pits.



Dear Asif,

I could be wrong, but I never had the impression that Benetton gave serious thought to offering Paul Tracy a drive. Certainly, it was worth giving him a test, and, as far as I remember, that test went pretty well, but I don't think many of expected it to lead to anything.

At around that time, several F1 teams took a look at CART drivers. Williams, for example, tested Al Unser Jr in the early '90s (a test, incidentally, which emphatically did not go well), and Michael Andretti was actually signed by McLaren, as Ayrton Senna's team-mate, for the '93 season. For many reasons, this also did not live up to expectations, and, as Michael had been rightly perceived to be the quickest man in CART at that time, his lack of results in F1 rather encouraged F1 team owners - rightly or wrongly - to the view that CART was not the place to look for possible F1 drivers.

Could Tracy have made a success of F1? Almost impossible to answer that question. Yes, Paul is indeed extremely quick, on all kinds of circuit, in a CART car - but then so was Alex Zanardi, another man who failed when he returned to F1 in 1999, with Williams...



Dear Lee,

Yes, it is that silly time of the year again, and, frankly, if any circuit other than Spa were involved, I'd be tempted to think, 'Oh, forget the bloody Belgian Grand Prix - let's go somewhere else...'

However, Spa is involved, and thus this becomes a crucial issue for all real racing enthusiasts, because at stake here is a grand prix on the greatest road circuit on earth, one which stands in stark contrast to the plethora of fiddly little 'autodromes' on which many world championship races are run these days.

I have no idea how the health fascists in Belgium are going to react, from one year to the next. All I can say is that if we lose Spa from the F1 schedule, we will lose part of the sport's soul. Not for nothing is it the favourite circuit of virtually every grand prix driver.



Dear Jason,

You're right, Gordon Murray's Brabham BT44 was one of the most elegant - and effective - F1 cars I can remember. And back then Bernie Ecclestone was indeed the owner of the Brabham team - indeed, he sold it only in 1987.

Was Bernie then the 'tough, cut-throat, businessman' he appears to be today. First of all, I would delete 'appears to be' and substitute 'is'! In one of the first interviews I ever did with him, in the early '70s, he made it clear that, for him, the deal had always been the thing. He made his original fortune from second-hand cars, his next from property.

"If you're a runner or a skier or a driver, you go for the last hundredth of a second, don't you? Well, I'm a business athlete, in the sense that it's the last penny that makes all the difference - not in terms of cash, but satisfaction."

I don't think that aspect of Ecclestone has ever changed. All right, back then he was merely rich, whereas now he is rich beyond imagining, but the deal remains the thing. Why else, closing in on his 72nd birthday, would he still be doing this?

Having said that, in all the years I have known Bernie, I have never once doubted that, fundamentally, he is 'a racer' - and I certainly wouldn't say that, for instance, about all the team owners in a contemporary F1 paddock. For all he has made from racing, he was around it 50 years ago, and does not forget.

"It seemed to me significant that he came to the Monaco historic race weekend in 1997," said Stirling Moss. "All right, it was just before the grand prix, and the track was in 'modern' specification, with all the bloody guardrails, and so on, but the atmosphere was fantastic - very relaxed and informal, everyone having fun.

"I was in the pits, chatting to Bernie, and he said, 'Isn't this great? Just like it used to be before I f***** it up!' I said, 'Well, you said it, Bernie, not me!' In fact, I'm a great fan of his, and I think what he's achieved is incredible. But there's no doubt that he's fundamentally changed racing, to the point that now it's a completely different activity from what it was. Which was a sport..."

That much is undeniable. Formula 1 has changed out of sight in the 30-plus years of Ecclestone's influence, its progression from a sport to a business almost absolute, and while few would dispute that he has brought to it an extraordinary amount that is good, so also - as he himself acknowledged to Moss - the transformation has exacted its dues.

On occasion Bernie admits to a certain yearning for a simpler time, when he owned a team, and just went racing.

"There's a different sort of satisfaction between running a team and what I do now. When I come away from a race, and it's been successful, you could say, yes, that's job satisfaction. But it's not the same sort of satisfaction as having a team, and your car winning the race.

"People might not believe it, but I'm still a racer, and if I had the time, I would still have a race team. But it's impossible to do both jobs properly, which was why I started to neglect Brabham. You're competing against people who think of nothing else for 24 hours a day, seven days a week; you can't pop in on a part-time basis against that."

By the early '80s, Bernie was already regretting that Formula 1 was not 'the big happy family it used to be'.

"It's much worse than that now. For one thing, it's probably difficult for team owners to get close to their drivers these days, because there's so much competition - they always think their drivers are trying to screw them, and leave them if there's more money somewhere else, and at the same time they don't want to get too friendly with him, in case they have to chuck him out. It's a lot more cut-throat these days."

Today's Formula 1 constructors, he insists, are not the same sort of people as were running teams when he first became involved, and a man he always singles out is Colin Chapman, with whom he spent time socially as well as professionally.

"'Chunky' 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 there's ever been, and he was as quick as half the guys who ever drove for him. He was different from the all the others, just a special guy."

So how different is Ecclestone now, as compared with the days with Reutemann and Pace? Richer by far, more powerful by far - but still a man you can chat to, still a man who can make you laugh like few I have met in my life. And still, I feel, at heart a racer.



Dear Gwyn,

Yes, I would certainly say Ayrton Senna and Ron Dennis were close - but not, it seemed to me, in quite the way that RD and Mika Hakkinen were close. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I always thought Ron was somewhat in awe of Ayrton in a way I have never detected in his relationships with his other drivers.

Before Senna went to McLaren, in 1988, Alain Prost had been the mainstay of the team for four years, and there's no doubt at all that, beyond their employer/employee relationship, Ron and Alain were great friends - and still are, I would say, in spite of differences along the way.

Senna, though, was different - truly a special force, out of a car as well as in it. When Prost, unwilling any longer to be a team-mate of Ayrton, left for Ferrari in 1990, Gerhard Berger moved in the opposite direction to become Senna's team-mate at McLaren for three years. He has very clear memories of his time with the team.

"Think about it: Prost was Senna's greatest rival, which was why there was always the big casino between them, and why Alain left. He had won World Championships with McLaren - it was his team when Ayrton arrived, but if he couldn't live with it, how was I going to do it? I never thought about it before I went there. I was stupid! I'm not often naive, but I was then.

"Let me say at once, McLaren were very nice to me, and I would say that Ron Dennis and I were friends, and still are. He didn't play too many games, and he was always straight with me - but he never realised that his team was built completely around Senna...

"That was the strange thing: Ron has quite a strong character, you know, but Ayrton always told him what to do. I remember occasions when he said things to him that I just couldn't believe, but Ron accepted anything from Ayrton. If you ask him, I'm sure he will say no, it's not true, and maybe he believes it. But, from the outside, there was no doubt about it.

"In 1992 I was asked to go back to Ferrari, and Ron wanted me to stay at McLaren. I told him I would stay only if Senna was leaving, that otherwise there was no way. While he was there, it would always be his team. This is not a criticism of Ayrton, OK? He and I became great friends, and undoubtedly he was the best driver, but still I wondered why Ron, as team chief, didn't lean on him sometimes. I wasn't upset about it, but it was a difficult situation, and it would have been the same for any driver there."

Senna was a hard taskmaster, of that there's no doubt. If he was prodigiously paid by McLaren, to some degree that cut across Dennis's philosophy, which has always been to concentrate the cash on the cars.

"These aren't the real numbers," Ron said a year or so ago, "but if Michael's on, say, twenty (million US dollars) and Mika's on ten, I'd rather spend the difference on something that's going to provide performance not only for the cars of today, but the cars of tomorrow, as well, as an investment.

"Ayrton, there's no doubt, directed money away from our cars, and then, as and when it made sense to him, he went and drove for Frank (Williams) - who had directed all his money into the car. I don't regret it at all - in '93 we won five races, we took a crack at the World Championship, thanks to our expertise, and to Ayrton's brilliance. I didn't regret spending the money for one minute - but then he goes to Williams, and you're left with a car that required greatness to make it work...

"There was one moment I remember, when we were standing on a gravel drive outside a French chateau, and Ayrton turned to me, and said, 'You know, Ron, we've really got to improve the technology on this car', and I turned to him, and said, 'Well, if you didn't take all the bloody money, I might be able to do it!' And he looked at me in absolute amazement - as if his financial demands didn't have any impact on us! In reality, of course, they had every impact on us..."

You ask: did Dennis ever warm to Senna, as he did to Hakkinen? Yes, absolutely, although not - it seemed from the outside - in quite the same way. Unquestionably, though, they were friends, and socialised a good deal. There was, remember, the time at dinner when Ayrton bet Ron 5000 US dollars that he couldn't eat a bowl of chillis in one hit: Ron, ever competitive, took a deep breath, and swallowed the lot...