Ask Nigel Roebuck: March 31

Dear David,

If I positively knew the answers to your last question, I'd be on to William Hill or Ladbrokes all day long, and not bothering to work! However...

The great majority of recent track designs haven't impressed me at all, I'm afraid, in particular the revised Hockenheim, which just seems to have a lot of fiddly little corners for the sake of having a lot of fiddly little corners. Yes, I know, it's all supposed to be TV-friendly stuff; a challenge to the drivers it is not.

Frankly, most of the new tracks strike me as bland and unimaginative, but an exception is Sepang, which is long enough, and with enough variety of corner (if not gradient), to be both interesting for spectators and quite a test for the drivers. There are two or three decent overtaking spots, too, and in this era you can't put a price on that.

As for Bahrain, well, who knows at this stage of the game. One or two of the drivers have been around it in road cars, and said it looks fantastic - but then they would, wouldn't they? For what it's worth, though, Marc Gene, as yet the only man to drive an F1 car around the track, also spoke very highly of it, and reckons the ingredients are there to allow some racing to take place. Let's hope. One problem - as with wonderful Zandvoort, in the old days - could well be sand, a good deal of which is near at hand.

Seriously, though, who knows what is going to happen this weekend? The track is new, and we don't know which cars or tyres will be best suited to it, but - in light of what we saw in Melbourne and Sepang - it's a fair bet that Ferrari will be...competitive, let's say, and my hope is that Williams, Renault and McLaren will be somewhere close at hand. If it turns out to be a 'Bridgestone' track, we could be in for a very long afternoon, so let's hope that tyres don't play too crucial a role - or that if they do, Michael S. for once chooses the wrong compound!

In other words, if it turns out to be another Ferrari-fest, my hope is that for once Rubens Barrichello has the luck. If Schuey were to begin the European season with three wins already on the board, it would already look like a long haul to the likes of Kimi Raikkonen, who goes to Bahrain with not a point against his name.



Dear Michael,

Good question - and I'm sure Peter Sauber wishes he knew the answer. Whether you regard the new Sauber as the old Ferrari or not, I'll admit I've been surprised by the team's lacklustre start to the year. If we take the cynical view - that the car owes at least a little something to the Ferrari F2003-GA - then perhaps the question is answered by Barrichello, who recently said that the F2004 is hugely better than its predecessor. Maybe, in other words, if Ferrari had begun the year with their old car - as they have done in recent seasons past - Rubens and Michael might have been a bit up against it. Or certainly more so than was evident in Australia and Malaysia.

Certainly, whatever else, there's no doubt that Sauber have a great engine. For the first time, thanks to the new 'one engine per weekend' rule, apparently they have exactly the same motors as Schumacher and Barrichello, so the problem can't be there. As well as that, they have Bridgestone tyres, but of course one must bear in mind that Bridgestone's invariable custom has been to build the tyres Ferrari want, and perhaps the demands of the latest car are a little different from before.

Although I haven't been to the factory for a few years, it's true that Sauber has an impressive facility - but, that said, it can't be the equal of, say, Ferrari or McLaren, where the budgetary constraints are somewhat less. Sauber has a reasonably decent budget, true, but not one anywhere near those of the top teams.

Money has to be one factor, therefore, and so also do drivers. Giancarlo Fisichella is a fine, established, member of the F1 fraternity, but - and I know there are plenty who disagree with me - I've never felt he was at the very top level. Or not to this point, anyway. As for Felipe Massa, yes, he's very quick, but then we knew that in his first season, in 2002. He drove an excellent race in Sepang, outpacing his considerably more experienced team mate, but in Melbourne left one open to doubts that the erstwhile wildness has been calmed down.

It's too early, though, to be denigrating Sauber too much, isn't it? After all, we're only two races into an 18-race championship - and they're only three points behind McLaren, after all...



Dear Luis,

I'm normally the last person on earth to take a forgiving attitude to bad manners of any kind, and I'll agree that it's never a pleasant thing to see a sportsman give vent to his temper.

That said, I think there's a case to be made for at least understanding why racing drivers sometimes behave in the way Kimi Raikkonen did in Malaysia. First, let's remember that this is the guy tipped by a great many (including Bernie Ecclestone) to topple Michael Schumacher from his throne his year. Rightly expecting an ultra-competitive package from McLaren and Mercedes, he has been so far been disappointed by not enough grip, not enough horsepower, and not enough reliability. Melbourne was a complete embarrassment for the team, but at least in Sepang Kimi was in vague touch with the leaders, and running fourth when his car expired with 16 laps to go. Two races, two non-finishes - and Michael already 20 points up the road.

Therefore, it was hardly surprising he wasn't in a great frame of mind when he climbed from the car the other weekend. I think, though, there's a little more to it than that, and it goes some way towards explaining why there is occasionally a little dust-up with a marshal or whomever. I'm not excusing it, you understand, but merely trying to explain it.

Let's remember, first, that the cockpit of an F1 car is a pretty hostile environment. By the time Raikkonen retired, he had been working extremely hard for an hour, and in very hot temperatures; when he climbed out, yes, he was angry, but he was also fresh from operating in a totally different environment, and it can take time to 'come down' from that. I've seen it countless times over the years.

Furious at what had happened, and not yet adjusted to life at walking pace, he was not in a mood to be trifled with, and therefore likely to respond vigorously to being told - or even asked - to do anything. As I say, I am not given to looking sympathetically at apparantly boorish behaviour, but I think that on occasions like this you can cut a driver a bit of slack, quite honestly.



Dear Victor,

Niki is always around. Since his unexpected parting from Jaguar in December 2002, he hasn't had any direct involvement with F1, but he still shows up at the races occasionally, and probably he always will.

When you talk to a man like Lauda, you are reminded - sadly - of how politically correct this sport has become. Any journalist of my generation will tell you that in the days when he was racing, drivers were much more inclined to speak their minds. If there was a problem somewhere, they would describe it as such: in today's curiously anaemic world, of course, everything is an 'issue'.

Drivers like Lauda, or Mario Andretti or Alan Jones or Gilles Villeneuve or James Hunt were manna for a journalist, because they had a sense of humour, and said what they thought: every word they uttered was an instant 'quote'. At the beginning of 1977, I asked Niki if he regarded his new Ferrari team-mate Carlos Reutemann as a colleague or a rival. His reply was crisp and to the point: "Neither..."

Recently, after at a test day at Barcelona, Kimi Raikkonen was asked how his day had been. "Good," he said. "Yesterday was not good, because the car was bad." See what I mean?

Lauda has a salty turn of phrase, and a great many of the best 'Niki stories' unfortunately I cannot relate here. He is a man I have always much admired. I was at the Nurburgring in 1976 when he had his accident, and remember driving back to the ferry that evening, hearing on the radio that he'd been given the Last Rites, and frankly expecting next morning to hear that he had died during the night.

That was August 1. Six weeks later, I was at Monza, where Lauda returned to racing, qualifying fifth and finishing fourth. In all the years I have watched motor racing, that was the bravest thing I have ever seen. At the end of the Italian Grand Prix, I happened to be in the Ferrari pit, and with my own eyes watched Niki gingerly peel off his blood-stained balaclava. I'll never know how he drove that weekend.

The following year, of course, he won the second of his three World Championships, and then promptly left Ferrari for Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham team. There were two years of retirement, in 1980 and '81, and then he returned, with McLaren, in '82, winning at Long Beach, only the third race of his comeback. In '84 came the third World Championship, and at the end 'of 85 he retired for good.

Certainly his driving changed after his accident, and who could be surprised? Thereafter, he relied more on intelligence and racecraft than on the blistering speed we had known before - and proved, very conclusively, that there is more than one way to win races and championships.

When it came to it, though, the raw competitiveness was always there, if less overtly than before. In his final year, 1985, his car suffered from appalling reliability problems, and, prior to the Dutch Grand Prix, he had hardly finished a race. At Zandvoort he was outpaced, as usual, by his team mate Prost, but when Alain had an unscheduled pit stop, and then had to put in a spectacular comeback drive, there was no way Niki, now in the lead, was going to be beaten. The last few laps were pretty desperate stuff, from both of them, but Lauda held on to take what would be his final victory.

Thereafter, he devoted himself to his airline, but reappeared in the F1 paddocks after his old pal Luca di Montezemolo (team manager in 1974/75) took over as the boss of Ferrari. Luca invited Niki to work for the team as a consultant, and this he did for several years. Ultimately, of course, he was invited to work for Jaguar, and I remember a lunch early in 2001, when he had just come aboard. We asked him what he thought about the state of F1, and, typically, he had some trenchant observations to make.

"People say that this electronic rubbish brings racing technology closer to the road car, and that's correct, but in the end what do we want: developments for road cars, or entertainment, with proper racing, and more spectators?

"The key thing to me, in the next five years, is to produce circuits and cars where you can see racing - overtaking on the track, rather than just in the pits. At the moment more and more people are watching, but in the end, if the races are boring, these audiences will leave again.

"What's happened to F1 is for me the worst, in two ways. We have been hit with the problem in the world economy, and at the same time we destroyed our racing show. Ferrari dominated this year (2000), and this happens sometimes - it's the best team, and (Michael) Schumacher is the best driver. When the same guy wins all the time, it's boring in any sport - but when, on top of that, his team plays around with stupid team order games, it's worse.

"If the sport was strong, the racing good, nobody would have any doubts about F1. But now all the excuses people needed not to put money in...we delivered them! They say, 'Why should we invest in this boring s***? Nobody's interested, nobody's watching, TV figures are down - why should we be in it?'"

Lauda felt strongly that electronic technology has gone way too far, in a time of economic stringency costing an absurd amount of money, and at the same time detracting from racing itself.

"They opened up electronics again, bringing back traction control, and so on, because people had been cheating, and the FIA couldn't control it. But that was not the end of it - people will continue to develop stupid things like this, and everyone else has to follow. And it will cost a fortune!

"So I say - and nobody likes it when I do - let's get rid of all this rubbish. OK, you need electronics to control your engine - if you don't, you'll blow engines all the time. And the same is true of the gearbox, because if you change gears manually - with the paddle, which I think should come back - and you don't coordinate the revs, you'll blow an engine. For the engines you need a standard ECU, which is easy to fix, but less so with the gearbox, because everybody has a different one, so you cannot use one piece to control all of them. So it's not easy, but it should be done.

"So, control the engine and the gearbox, yes - but no traction control...all this s*** has to come off, yeah? It will save money, and make it more interesting for everybody to watch - because then drivers will make mistakes. Everyone complains there's no overtaking, and they're right. Fine, reduce the downforce, and put big slicks back on the cars.

"Problem is, there are so many different interests. At the last team principals' meeting, I said, 'Why can't you guys stop thinking in the short term? Why not, instead, be like a helicopter, and look down at the general picture of F1 - and take a decision to help it, even if it's against your own electronics or tyres or car or whatever. Just forget all this for a while, and take a principled decision, which directs the sport in the right direction."

I agreed with every word then, and I agree with every word now. Pity there aren't more people like Lauda in the paddock.



Dear Daniel,

Actually, I agree with the drivers on this. I think that when lap times start coming down at the rate of three or four seconds a year, that is way too much. I think the cars are getting too quick - but, more to the point, I think they're getting too quick in the wrong way.

The thing is, you can fiddle with regulations endlessly to reduce cornering speeds - remember, for example, that 'grooved tyres' were going to be the answer to the problem? Ha!

I've written about this so much I bore myself with it, let alone everyone else, but I'll say it again: until the question of aerodynamic grip - downforce - is seriously addressed, the problem will remain. Yes, I know that most of the recent increase in speeds has come from tyres, that it's the consequence of the tyre war between Bridgestone and Michelin, but sometimes that's inevitable, because more often than not there is more than one tyre company involved in F1.

People talk about the need to reduce horsepower - but horsepower is still nowhere near what it was 20 years ago, in the turbo era, when drivers were qualifying with close to 1500bhp, and racing with well over 1000. Problems - save at the start - very rarely occur when the cars are travelling in a straight line.

Cornering speeds are getting out of hand again, and of course they are further increased by traction control. When I talked to Rubens Barrichello about it, this what he said.

"I think F1 would be much better without traction control. It would certainly be more fun, for the drivers and the spectators, especially in the rain. There are the two situations: one where you control it yourself, which is more fun, and the other where, for the ultimate time, you can get more perfect with traction control, get closer to the limit of the car.

"Sometimes, you feel that to go flat through a corner...with no traction control you might lift a little bit, whereas with traction control, OK, you're going to have a little bit of oversteer, but you know the traction control will catch it. But...give me a choice, and I'd still rather have no traction control, and back off a little bit.

"With traction control, it's like in the days of the ground effect cars, when you had to believe the car would go through the corner flat. You come into high-speed corners, with the car oversteering, and you just say to yourself, 'I'll carry the speed into the corner - and hope that the traction control will hold everything.

"The other thing is, driving in the wet is not such a big deal any more. For example, coming out of Club at Silverstone in the wet used to be the most difficult thing, getting the line right, and everything. Now you just nail the throttle...

"Part of the problem is that, with traction control, on TV the cars look slow, because you don't see any oversteer any more, don't see cars getting sideways. But unfortunately, even without traction control, the cars wouldn't get sideways like they used to at one time - that's mainly because of the aerodynamics, and also the grooved tyres don't help, because they don't tolerate much of a slip angle.

"We all dislike traction control, and we'd all prefer slicks, too. There's absolutely no reason why we have to run these grooved tyres - slicks scrub off speed much better, and you have less chance of having an accident."

Hack into the downforce, therefore, rather than tinker with it, get rid of traction control, and go back to slicks. Go back, in other words, to mechanical, rather than aerodynamic, grip. It'll probably never happen, of course, but for sure something needs to be done about cornering speeds.



Dear Anandha,

Pierre would say that, wouldn't he? However, I understand his fundamental point: at the moment I don't think there's any doubt that the Ferrari is the best car.

Why, you ask, do Ferrari 'stick with Bridgestone after last year's performance'? I think it's important to bear in mind that, while they did indeed drop the ball to quite some degree in 2003, prior to that Bridgestone had done an amazingly good job for Ferrari - there's no doubt, for example, that the year before were consummately superior to Michelin's in the actual races. Remember Juan Montoya's seven pole positions - none of which was converted into a race win?

Apart from the commercial considerations involved, as long as Ferrari stick with Bridgestone, they are getting what is effectively a 'bespoke' tyre supplier. Long ago, the team was the focus of Bridgestone's attention - indeed, more than one team switched to Michelin because they fed up, they said, with getting 'Ferrari tyres'.

It's a gamble, of course. If Bridgestone have the edge, Ferrari - the only major team contracted to them - have something its chief rivals do not, but if, on the other hand, they fall behind Michelin, Ferrari are at a disadvantage to Williams, McLaren and Renault.

Until these three raise their game, it's not easy to gauge how much, if any, of Ferrari's current advantage is coming from their tyres, but certainly all the signs are there that Bridgestone has progressed considerably from last season, particularly with their tyres' performance in hot temperatures. Dupasquier may be right in what he says, of course, but the fact remains that Michael and Rubens have been delighted with Bridgestone thus far this season.