Ask Nigel Roebuck: March 17

Dear Fiona,

Well, for a start I can't think of a single footballer for whose autograph I'd queue for five seconds! The modern game - and most of those within it - just make me want to throw up, quite honestly.

I hadn't realised that Peter queued for an hour to get Steve Waugh's autograph, but he did spend his childhood in Australia, so I guess he can't be blamed. I've always liked cricket, without being fanatical about it, and remember a very enjoyable weekend in the early '90s, spent at Le Mans. The purpose of the occasion was to 'twin' the museums of Brooklands and Le Mans, and, for reasons I can't remember, one of the guests was David Gower - who arrived white-faced, I recall, in the passenger seat of someone's Ferrari F40!

That weekend I spent quite a bit of time with him, at dinner and so on, and it was highly enjoyable, for Gower - who, in my book, was among the most glorious batsmen ever to walk the earth - is a delightful bloke, and a witty one, with a genius for telling jokes against himself. Never got him to sign anything, though...

As a rule of thumb, I've always preferred individual sports to team sports. Hence, I love to watch the top downhill skiers, and cycling - in particular the Tour de France - has a particular fascination for me. A few years ago 'Le Tour' came through the village near my house in Normandy, and I was there hours before they came through, making sure of a decent vantage point.

I loved everything about that day, the build-up - with all the support vehicles, and so on - and then, finally, the sudden whoosh as they came through. I had my camera ready, and fired off a few shots, but I'd been totally unprepared for the speed at which they were travelling - you literally can hear the air being displaced, as great bunches of them approach.

When I had the film developed, I was delighted to find that right at the front of one picture - quite by chance - was Miguel Indurain, en route to what was to be the last of his five victories.

So is there any current sportsman for whom I would queue to get an autographed book? Probably only one, I think, and that would be Lance Armstrong, the current king of the Tour. Not only is he magnificent at what he does, he has also done it after fighting with truly life-threatening cancer, and his autobiography, It's Not About The Bike, is one of the most inspiring books I've ever read.

Outside the world of sport, I'll admit I have queued a couple of times to buy a signed book. First time, 25 years ago, was at Hatchard's in London, for Lauren Bacall, with whom I have been in love since adolescence. "What's your name, honey?" she purred as she prepared to inscribe my book, and momentarily I wasn't sure of the answer. Second time was 18 months ago, at Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue in New York City, for Rudy Giuliani, the legendary mayor of the city, and one of my heroes.



Dear Al,

Although there were days when Hill and Villeneuve beat him fair and square, and although Montoya, Raikkonen and Alonso have all won races in which he was competing, I don't doubt that the driver Schumacher feared most through his career (after the loss of Ayrton Senna, anyway, at which time Michael had not reached his peak) was Hakkinen.

And with good reason. Towards the end of his career, Mika lost some motivation, particularly after his accident at Melbourne in 2001, when he was chasing - and catching - Michael. It occurred because of a suspension failure (most unusual for McLaren), and a time when Hakkinen's first child had recently been born. I believe that made him think long and hard about what he was doing, and no one was too surprised when he announced his retirement at the end of that year.

Prior to 2001, though, Mika was an incredibly formidable force. Martin Brundle, formerly the team mate of both Schumacher and Hakkinen, says that if he had to pick one of them to drive for his (Martin's) life, he would go for Michael over a race distance, but Mika over one, single, banzai lap.

That makes a lot of sense. As far as I'm concerned, Hakkinen was always a better qualifier than Schumacher, somehow always capable of finding that infinitesimal something within himself when it came to making the last run. I also think he was better under pressure than Michael - indeed, Mika's mistakes tended to come when he was cruising, under no pressure whatever.

I think what he lacked, compared with Schumacher, was consistency through a race, the ability to run lap after lap after lap at near-qualifying pace. That said, when the chase was on, Hakkinen was something to behold, as anyone knows who remembers that spectacular pass of Schumacher for the lead at Spa in 2000. He was not intimidated by Michael's questionable attempts to block him (at close on 200mph), and pulled off the move to perfection.

A two-time World Champion, and a truly great driver, in my book. Schumacher never made any bones about his admiration for Hakkinen - and that's a rare thing for Michael.

As for the current generation, we know that Montoya is capable of beating Schumacher in a straight fight, because he's already done it, and I don't doubt that Raikkonen and Alonso are capable of it, too. Of the three, potentially the most complete, I would say, is Alonso, but these are still early days. And as soon as Michael knows - really knows - he's not the best any more, I think he'll be gone in a second.



Dear Stephen,

Yes, I'm sure it would be possible for a rider - particularly one of Rossi's ability - ultimately to make a successful switch to F1. You talk about the complexities of the contemporary F1 car, and you're right: there is a huge amount for a novice driver to learn these days if he is to have a full understanding of what he's driving, and is to communicate usefully with the engineers in his team.

On the other hand, I think there's little doubt that that actual driving of an F1 car is somewhat easier than it used to be not so long ago. Beyond flicking a steering-wheel paddle occasionally, after all, there is no actual gear shifting involved any more, so you can't break a clutch or over-rev an engine. And you have traction control, of course, which has a great say in how much power goes to the rear wheels at any given time, regardless of what the driver's right foot is doing.

What I'm trying to say is that, while there is a far greater need for a driver these days to be technologically savvy, there are all kinds of systems on the car to help him in the actual driving. Of course I'm not suggesting that it's easy to drive one of these things, but the fact remains that nowadays a talented young driver from a very junior formula appears able to step into one, and very quickly produce impressive results. I don't think it used to be quite like that - particularly in the turbo era, when a kid had to acclimatise instantly to 1000+bhp, and had to control that power himself.



Dear Trevor,

You are, of course, perfectly right. Through the history of grand prix racing, there have always been cars superior to their opposition - and drivers, too, for that matter. Always going to be the case, isn't it? The one, in my opinion, most clearly superior to the rest was the 'active ride' Williams-Renault FW14B, with which Mansell cruised to the World Championship in 1992.

Whether or not fans have ever found this situation 'acceptable' is a different thing. It is, of course, the job of every F1 designer to come up with a car better than any other, and sometimes this is achieved by a considerable margin. Yes, Ferrari won all but two of the races in 2002, for example, but in 1988 McLaren-Honda went one better, losing only at Monza. It didn't hurt, of course, that in Senna and Prost, they had the best drivers in the world.

I'm not panicking about what happened in Australia - or not yet, anyway. Mind you, I might revise my opinion if Schumacher and Barrichello stroll away in the heat of Sepang on Sunday, as they did in the cool of Melbourne the other weekend.

'Offensive' is not, I think, the right word for what people felt about the procession in the Australian Grand Prix. It didn't help, of course, that the season began with such a dreary race, but I think the main problem was that it was Ferrari who dominated - again. Not since 1998 has another team won the constructors' championship, and not since '99 has other than a Ferrari driver - one M. Schumacher - taken the World Championship.

In the minds of fans, in other words, this red domination has just gone on for too long. It used to be said that if Manchester United were doing well, it was good for the whole of football, because they were a glamorous club with a great name, etc., and that was probably true when they started winning again after a long period in the wilderness. Trouble was, they won too much for too long, and people began to get bored with it.

I think exactly the same thing has happened in motor racing. You would think, would you not, that in this period of utter Ferrari domination, the TV figures and magazine circulations in Italy would be off the clock. They are not - in fact, they are anything but. Time was when a test session at Monza pulled in a huge crowd; these days getting in and out of the track even on race day isn't too much of a problem.

This is hardly Ferrari's fault, I hasten to say. I intensely dislike some of the things they have done - notably ordering Barrichello to let Schumacher through in Austria in 2001 and '02 - but for a number of years now, they have simply done a far better job than any of their rivals, and, as Ross Brawn has said repeatedly, 'It's up to the others to beat us, isn't it?'

He's absolutely right, and at the start of each season hope springs eternal that maybe Williams or McLaren or whomever has come up with the formula to do that. On the strength of the evidence from Melbourne, that is again not the case - or not yet the case - in 2004. I think folk were depressed by what happened in Melbourne, because it reminded them of 2002, the most boring F1 season on record. Simple as that.



Dear David,

I do believe that Ralf Schumacher is Toyota-bound for 2005, which means that FW will indeed need to find two new drivers for next year. Not an ideal situation for any team, let alone a top one, but Frank has faced it before. He was essentially in that position for 1982, for example, and very late on, with all the established drivers already spoken for. So what did he do? He signed a bloke who was down on his luck, looking for work - and went on to become World Champion that year! I speak, of course, of Keke Rosberg.

The instant answer to your question is to say Mark Webber and Jenson Button, but I'm not sure it's going to be very easy to sign either of them. Webber may, in my opinion, be a born Williams driver, put on earth to get on well with Patrick Head, but his manager is Flavio Briatore, who isn't going to let him go easily - or cheaply. And what I hear is that Flav wants Mark in one of his Renaults next year, in place of Jarno Trulli.

Similarly, David Richards is not going to let Button out of his clutches without a fight - indeed, I understand there are clauses in the contract which decree that if a certain level of success is achieved at BAR this season, Jenson cannot go elsewhere for '05. That said, we've had similar thoughts before about other drivers, and a chequebook has miraculously made the problem go away.

It won't be easy, though, in the case of either Webber or Button. I'm interested to learn that Williams are to test Scott Dixon in the near future, I must say. Dixon has looked extremely good in both CART and the IRL, and has never made any secret of his desire to be an F1 driver. So that's worth keeping an eye on.

What would I really like to see happen? Well, let's wander into the realms of fantasy here. Last June, at Indianapolis, I saw Jeff Gordon drive Juan Montoya's Williams-BMW for a few laps, and was hugely impressed. This was a guy who made his name in midgets and sprint cars, looked set to move into CART - and then headed south to NASCAR. At once he became a superstar, and he remains so.

Until that day at Indy, Gordon had never driven a rear-engined racing car in his life, let alone one with all the gizmos and systems of a current F1 car. In his NASCAR Chevy he needed to brake at 250 yards for the first corner; in the Williams - travelling a far higher speed - that came down to 50. When Montoya told him this was the case, Gordon had a problem believing it, but after a dozen laps was braking when Juan Pablo had been braking.

I was no less impressed by Jeff than was Dickie Stanford, the Williams team manager - or, for that matter, JPM. Gordon is in his early 30s now, and has way too good a thing going in NASCAR, but people tell him he has never stopped raving about his brief drive in an F1 car, and what a tragedy it is that someone didn't pick him up 10 years ago - he even looks like an F1 driver!

For me, he is the most naturally talented American driver of the last 10 or 15 years, a man who could have succeeded anywhere. And if he were in F1, just think of the difference it might have made to the enthusiasm for the series of American race fans. There's probably no way it could ever happen now, but I'd love to see it.



Dear Gareth,

On balance, I'd have to go for the 1986 Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide, a World Championship decider - between three drivers - which actually produced even more than it promised, and ended with the result for which I had hoped...

Of the three drivers involved, Alain Prost was the man with probably the least chance of winning the title, and what small chance he did have was primarily the consequence of a quite brilliant race in Mexico two weeks earlier. Through the year his McLaren-TAG Porsche had been considerably outpowered by the Williams-Hondas of Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell, and although there had been convincing demonstrations of his driving superiority, in the normal course of events he was hard pressed to stay with Piquet and Mansell. If he were in contention for the title, it was because he got the absolute maximum from his car every time out, because his racecraft and guile were without equal, and because he made fewer mistakes than anyone else. By far.

Prost's other surpassing skill, in that era of turbocharged engines, was juggling speed and fuel consumption. In 1986, each car was restricted to 195 litres of fuel for a race, so that if a driver got his balancing act absolutely right, he ran out of gas immediately after taking the flag.

It took a lot of will to keep your boost down, hold yourself in check, in the early part of a race, while some of your less disciplined rivals charged away into the distance.

Not for nothing was Prost known as 'The Professor'. He may have hated the 'restricted fuel' rule as much as anyone, but he accepted it. Whatever it took to win, Alain would adapt.

Going into the final race, though, his title hopes looked flimsy. At the time, a driver's World Championship score was calculated on his best 11 results from the 16 races, and both Prost and Mansell had already needed to drop points, having scored in more than 11 events. The net situation was that Nigel had 70 points, Alain 64, and Nelson Piquet 63 - but if either Mansell or Prost should take further points in Adelaide, they would have to shed their lowest score once more, whereas Piquet, having scored in only ten races, would not. Any of the three could become World Champion in Australia, but Nigel was the heavy favourite; third place would do it for him, whatever happened to his rivals.

It was not often (in those days when Grand Prix racing was first a sport, second a TV show) that the World Championship went down to the wire, to the final race of the season, and it was rarer still for more than two drivers to be in contention.

The fight for the pole was exclusively between the two Williams-Hondas, with Ayrton Senna's Lotus-Renault predictably lurking close by. Ultimately, Mansell sealed the issue with a lap three-tenths faster than Piquet, with Senna third, and Prost fourth, albeit more than a second from Mansell.

"Hmmm," Alain grinned when he saw the times. "Three people ahead of me - Mansell, Piquet, Senna - and they all hate each other!"

For Nigel, the first hurdle was cleared, but the tension surrounding him was palpable, for he, more nearly than anyone, was touching the hem of the World Championship. "To be honest," his wife Rosanne murmured, "I don't really care what happens. I just want it to be over."

In the McLaren pit, meanwhile, Rosberg was insisting that Prost was going to win the race, if not the championship. This was to be Keke's last Grand Prix, and although his final season, with McLaren, had not lived up to expectations, he was resolved to go out on a high note.

"What I've come to realise - to know - this season," he said, "is that Alain is the greatest driver I've ever seen. For me, it would be a joke for anyone else to be World Champion, and I'm going to do everything possible to help him."

No one doubted Rosberg's sincerity, but few believed he would be able materially to aid Prost's quest. They were wrong. The man who would lead the bulk of the Australian Grand Prix was Keke, who had won the year before.

The first lap was as intense as anyone could remember, with Mansell leading away from pole position, then - keen not to get involved in any early wheel-banging battle - moving over to let Senna and Piquet by. At the end of the long Dequetteville straight, Nelson outbraked Ayrton, and thus the race already had its third leader in the space of two miles!

The man really on the move in the early stages, though, was Rosberg. On lap two, Keke passed Ayrton, and moved up to menace Nelson. By lap seven, he was through into the lead, and going away.

At the same time Prost began to move. Typically, he had begun quietly, sitting in fifth place, waiting for the initial dust to settle. Now he moved past Senna for fourth, and on lap 11 went ahead of Mansell, too.

By lap 23, with Rosberg gone into the middle distance, Prost passed Piquet for second place, after which Nelson immediately spun. He got on his way again, but was now back in fourth place. For McLaren, now running 1-2, everything was looking good, for if it came to it, Keke, despite an understandable desire to win his last race, would undoubtedly let Alain through in the late stages.

Mansell, though, continued to run a solid third, right where he needed to be. If he could simply hold station until the end, he would be World Champion, and on lap 32 his prospects vaulted, for Prost was slowing, his right front tyre punctured.

Tyre changes were far from an automatic feature of Grand Prix races in the mid-'eighties, and none of the front runners had been planning to stop. Therefore, as Prost slowly made his way to the pit lane, he seemed to be eliminating himself from the championship battle. After a 17-second stop, he rejoined, now fourth, a long way back. Immediately a whole series of record laps began.

"All I could do," Alain said, "was push as hard as possible. There was nothing to lose. Even second place was no use to me."

In the pits, Goodyear technicians examined the tyres discarded by Prost, and commented that the wear rate was less than they had expected. All being well, they concluded, no one would need to make a stop.

At this stage of the race, Williams had no cause for worry. For close to 30 laps there was virtual stalemate at the front of the field, Rosberg still leading convincingly from Piquet, a serene Mansell, and a charging Prost.

Then, on lap 63, with 19 to the flag, the full drama of the day began to unravel. Rosberg, having led for well over an hour, suddenly pulled off, his right rear Goodyear in tatters.

As Rosberg retired, so Prost, running at the limit, passed Mansell for second place, but still Nigel had a lock on the four points he needed.

Only a lap later the outcome of the World Championship was settled. Mansell, flat out down Dequetteville, and in the process of lapping Philippe Alliot's Ligier, suddenly had his left rear tyre disintegrate. From something approaching 19Omph, he somehow fought the bucking, wayward, Williams to a halt, parking in the escape road, then stumbling back to the pits. It was beyond cruel.

Now it was simply Piquet against Prost, and each needed the nine points for victory to take them past Mansell's total - to become World Champion. It was absolutely a matter of winner take all, and Prost, still with the hammer down, was only two seconds behind.

The duel never materialised. "After Nigel's tyre had failed, we were between a rock and a hard place with regard to Nelson," said Patrick Head. "If we'd left him out there, and he'd made it, we'd have looked like heroes, but if he'd had an accident, and hurt himself, we'd have looked idiots. There was no choice to be made, in fact: we called him in, and changed his tyres."

Piquet stopped at the end of lap 65, and was still in second place when he went back out. "It was the right decision, to stop," he said afterwards. "I knew I might be losing the championship, but I didn't care. I was alive."

Now it was Nelson's turn to apply the pressure, to set the new fastest laps, but he made little impression on Prost until the last four laps, when Alain dramatically cut his pace. "From the halfway point, my fuel computer read-out had been telling me I was five litres the wrong side - that I wouldn't make the finish unless I backed off. But of course I couldn't do that, because I was so far behind, after my puncture, so I just had to hope that, for once, the computer was wrong..."

For once, it was. Although Piquet set yet another record on the final lap, Prost's engine continued to run, and he crossed the line four seconds to the good.

For once, a championship decider had not only lived up to everyone's expectations, but actually exceeded them. Jackie Stewart best summed up the day: "These days, you don't often see a guy win a Grand Prix in a slower car, do you? But this guy's won the World Championship in one! People are going to say Nigel lost it because of his tyre failure, and of course that's true - but you could also say he lost it in Mexico, where he started in third gear, dropped to the back, then began blistering tyres, and finished fifth. He could have clinched the championship that day, but instead he dropped four points to Prost. And he lost the title by two... To my mind, there's no one near Alain."

So there you have it. The 1986 Australian Grand Prix remains the most dramatic Formula 1 race I have ever seen.