Ask Nigel Roebuck: June 5

Dear David,

In Monaco Jenson was highly impressive in practice, really attacking the circuit, and if it were a surprise to see him third fastest, beaten only by the Ferraris, it was a not a shock: he had looked that quick, that committed, all day.

On Saturday morning there was more of the same - until the accident at the chicane. It was, to the best of my knowledge, a pure driving error, in the sense that he was really pushing, and simply left his braking too late for the chicane. The BAR then swapped ends, and clouted a barrier on the left, before skating towards the escape road, where there was a second impact with another guardrail. Both impacts were measured at around 30g, so he was a very lucky boy to get out of it essentially unhurt.

Karl Wendlinger had a very similar accident at the same place in 1994, but back then the cars did not have side impact cockpit restraints, and Wendlinger very nearly died of his injuries. People such as I criticise the FIA when we feel they have done something detrimental to the sport, but on occasions like this we should praise them to the hills for continuing to introduce new safety measures on the cars.

So what is Button's future? I was highly impressed with his debut year in F1, with Williams, then somewhat less so with his two seasons at Benetton/Renault. Now, with BAR, he appears really to be finding his feet, and there's no doubt that thus far he's had the better of Jacques Villeneuve, which has surprised a great many people, myself included.

If you'll forgive me, I think it's a touch simplistic to suggest that Williams/Renault/BAR made 'major steps forward in performance' because of Jenson's presence in the team. In 2000, let's remember, his Williams team mate Ralf Schumacher scored twice as many points, and at Benetton the following year he was frankly put in the shade by Giancarlo Fisichella. In 2002, on the other hand, Jenson frequently had the better of Jarno Trulli, and certainly there is a case to be made, as you say, for suggesting Flavio Briatore got rid of the wrong driver. Flavio does, of course, manage Trulli.

Button was twice unlucky in being dropped by a team so as to make way for a potential superstar: Juan Montoya at Williams, and Fernando Alonso at Renault. He has matured into an extremely fast Grand Prix driver, although I think questions still remain about his abilities as a 'racer'. Montoya, Raikkonen and Alonso look set to be mainstays of the next generation, so the question, really, is whether or not Jenson can match them. If he continues - last Saturday at Monaco notwithstanding - to impress as he has done so far this year, he will not want for offers from the top teams.



Dear Robin,

Sorry to be pedantic, but what I actually said that, 'Nothing - for sheer drama - has impressed me like last Friday evening in Joliet', and I meant every word of what I said: frankly, I was staggered by what I saw, heard - and felt! - at Route 66 that night.

To be honest, I don't think the mainstream press is reluctant to acknowledge the existence of drag racing as a legitimate sport - I think it's more that they have never been exposed to it. Right after I left school, in the summer of 1964, I attended two drag racing events, at Blackbushe and Woodvale, featuring many of the top American stars of the day, including Don Garlits. I very much enjoyed them, too, but when I got into journalism, six years later, it was to cover F1, which had always been my first love, and remains so.

Therefore, until I went to Joliet last June, I hadn't been to a drag race for nearly 40 years! It wasn't that I had no interest in it, but simply that my attention had been elsewhere. For that matter, I haven't been to many rallies, either...

Interestingly, when I wrote a Fifth Column about my first NHRA experience, and then a subsequent story about John Force, whom I interviewed, I was astonished by the number of people in the F1 paddock who wanted to know more about it, and it was the same in the press room. Why? Because it was a form of motorsport about which few F1 people knew anything at all.

Don't think for a second there's a prejudice against drag racing among the 'mainstream journalists', because that isn't the case. It's simply that we're talking about apples and pears here, and there isn't time or opportunity enough to write about these two very different forms of motorsport.

After all, the drag racing world, too, is pretty specialised, is it not? When NHRA people speak of 'Schumacher', they're referring to Tony, the Top Fuel driver, rather than Michael or Ralf...



Dear Alan,

Glad you liked the book, first of all. Seems like a very long time since I wrote it. My remark about Bandini, in the Rodriguez chapter, stemmed from a conversation with Chris Amon, who was both a close friend of Lorenzo and also his Ferrari team-mate at the time of his death.

Everything seemed in place for Bandini in 1967. At 30, he was Ferrari number one. Partnering Amon in the glorious 330P4, he won both the Daytona 24 Hours and the Monza 1000 Kms, and in the latest V12 F1 car finished a close second to Dan Gurney in the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. His wife Margherita, the daughter of his former mentor, awaited the birth of their first child.

So Lorenzo came to Monte Carlo, his favourite race, and one he felt this year was his. After qualifying second to Jack Brabham, he led the race initially, then followed Brabham's team-mate Hulme, whom he was trying to catch when the accident came.

In those days the chicane was fast, a left-right flick taken at more than 100mph, and Bandini clipped it, which nudged the Ferrari out towards the straw bales. Amon believes he was exhausted. "It was hard work, that car round there, and the race was much longer then. I was more tired than I've ever been at the end of a race. Lorenzo was very fit, but I was probably stronger, and he'd been going quicker than I had, so he'd taken more out of himself. And it wasn't a big mistake he made - he was a few inches out, that's all.

"I'm not a great one for believing in premonitions," Chris told me, "but the Wednesday before the race made me wonder. We went off for lunch in the mountains, Lorenzo and I, and on the drive back he seemed very reflective, very aware of the simple things in life - you know, flowers, the fact that it was spring, and so on.

"On the way down, he saw an old man fishing by the side of the road, and he stopped, just to watch him quietly for a while. It's difficult to convey what I'm trying to get across, but it was as if he was savouring life, as if he knew something was going to happen. All that came back to me after the accident. I'll never forget that day."



Dear Grayson,

Your letter revives a poignant time in my life. In 1974 and '75, I worked for Graham Hill's F1 team, and still recall so clearly that freezing November night when I heard on the TV news that 'a light aircraft had crashed in fog while en route from Marseille to Elstree'. To anyone in racing, those words meant, 'en route from Paul Ricard back home', and I knew that the Hill team had been due to finish Ricard testing that day.

A few minutes later the phone rang. It was Chris Amon. "Did you hear the news? I think it's Graham..."

The following week I went to Hill's funeral, and also to that of Tony Brise, his young star driver, whom I had come to know well. It was sad, but inevitable, that in all the huge coverage of the loss of Graham, that of Tony was somewhat overlooked. If Hill had been a World Champion, Brise undoubtedly was going to win the title one day.

I confess I didn't much like him at first; he seemed rather too pleased with himself. But through that season of 1975, secure in a Grand Prix team, he matured remarkably, never losing that innate confidence in his ability yet also developing the ability sometimes to laugh at himself. He had talent to throw away, and knew it, but quickly came to see that he was at base camp, and no more.

I have several tapes recorded with Brise, and you don't need to get far into them to realise again how much the nature of F1 has changed. On one, Tony was about to go off to the German Grand Prix at the 'old' Nurburgring: "I can't wait to get there," he said. "For me, the Nurburgring is God's gift to racing drivers..."

Although only 23, he had expected to make it to F1 much earlier, having shown himself more than ordinarily promising through several seasons in the lower formulae. And here, you appreciate, is an unchanging aspect of the business.

"There you are," Tony said, "plodding your way through Formula Ford and F3, with everyone saying you're doing it the right way. And someone comes along, turns in the right drive at the right time - and suddenly he's the man of the moment, getting offers from all over the place."

By his own admission, that was exactly how it panned out for Brise. "I came into Fl from Formula Atlantic, and I'm sure there are loads of people in F2 who feel resentful about that, who reckon they've made it higher up the ladder than I have, yet not been given an Fl opportunity.
And I can't really say I blame them."

Even then, you had to be fashionable. But there wasn't the need for quite such an ascetic way of life as most drivers follow now. "I decided," Brise said, "that 1975 was going to be my make-or-break year. You can't go motor racing for ever - if you're not successful, all you do is drag around the place, conning money from people here and there, and generally becoming a bum.

"I decided to change my approach. I resolved, for example, not to touch a drink for 24 hours before a race - or go out late the night before a race..."

From the beginning of his Grand Prix career, Tony showed himself to be a man of natural pace; his style had that ease apparent in all real talents, and there was no doubting, either, the presence of a real racer's mentality. In the early laps of the British Grand Prix, at Silverstone, he dealt with such as Reutemann and Andretti, then proceeded, until problems intervened, to take a second a lap from a bunch - including Emerson Fittipaldi, Jody Scheckter, James Hunt, and Niki Lauda - which was contesting second place.

At Zandvoort he was astonishing. Before the start of the race he had never once driven an F1 car in the wet, yet before long was urgently signalling team mate Alan Jones to get out of his way - so he could lap him...

Perhaps, though, the race in which Brise made the strongest impression was the inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix, for Formula 5000. It had a remarkable entry, but the likely winners were Mario Andretti and AI Unser Sr, in Viceroy Lola-Chevrolets, and Brian Redman in Carl Haas's similar car. They were not expecting to be led by Brise.

The race was run in two heats and a final, and Tony won the first, from Andretti, muscling by the great man at the end of Shoreline Drive. Mario was surprised, to say the least. Years later, he remembered that race vividly: "Jeez, that guy Brise...he was something special.

A week afterwards, back in England now, Tony was still high on the moment. "How," I asked him, "did you dare sit it out with Andretti at a place like that?" He giggled. "Well, you might not believe this, but I thought it was Unser! If I'd realised it was Mario, I might not have tried it... "

A World Champion in the making? No question about it.



Dear Tomi,

First of all, as far as I know, there is no family relationship between the late Elio de Angelis and the current bike racer.

How good was Elio? Not as good as he could have been, in my opinion, in the sense that, while I think he had natural talent to throw away, his ambition never matched his ability. He came from a very rich family, and so raced primarily for the pleasure of it. With Elio, you never felt that F1 was the centre of the universe; it came easily to him, and was one of many good things in life, there to be enjoyed.

Those of us who knew him remember a delightful man, with a lovely, ironic, sense of humour, and manners from another age. Jo Ramirez, who worked with him in his early days at Shadow, remained a close friend to the end of Elio's life, in a testing accident at Paul Ricard 1986. This is how he remembers him.

"Elio was like Francois Cevert in many ways, charming, completely genuine, a very good driver. I remember the day he signed the contract for his first F1 drive - we went out to celebrate, to a coffee shop in Northampton called Cagney's, where we had hamburgers and chips! For all his wealth, Elio was a very down-to-earth person. He used to come to my house, and play the piano - like Francois, he was classically trained.

"I remember going testing with him at Paul Ricard once. No one wanted to go out on the wet track, even though it had stopped raining, and then someone suggested that we all took our hire cars out, and dried the track! I went with Elio, and it was fantastic to watch him - he just floored it all the way round, slowing the car with the steering wheel. Superb! Things like that...well, nowadays no one would do it, would they? It was so much more fun back then.

"Elio was a wealthy man, but he wouldn't buy what he wanted just because he could. There was a particular Rolex watch he wanted, but it took him weeks of deliberating before he said, 'Yes, I'm going to buy it'. Then he took off the watch he had, and gave it to me. It was a gold Baume-Mercier, and although I wear it very rarely, I happened to be wearing it the day he died at Ricard."