Ask Nigel Roebuck: May 26

Dear Timothy,

I must say that I always thought Eddie Irvine over-rated. An excellent driver, without a doubt, but it seemed to me that at one stage, when circumstance gave him a shot at the World Championship in 1999, the hype got more than a little out of control. Still, hats off to him, in the sense that he must have made more money out of F1 than any other number two in history.

There have been a great many over-rated F1 drivers over time, of course, but if I had to pick one, probably it would be Stefano Modena, who was originally greeted like the Second Messiah. 'The new Nuvolari' was how one Italian paper extravagently described him.

Undoubtedly, Modena had a lot of natural talent and flair, but his
quirks and superstitions drove his engineers and mechanics round the bend - talk about 'everything had to be right' for him to go quickly...

His very first Grand Prix was in Adelaide in 1987. Nigel Mansell had hurt himself in Suzuka, and was replaced in the Williams team by
Riccardo Patrese - which in turn created a vacancy at Brabham, which was taken by Modena. After about 20 laps, he came into the pits, and climbed out, exhausted. "Well," said a watching Keke Rosberg, "you can forget him! I don't care how much talent he's got; he doesn't have the heart for F1. In your first Grand Prix, you carry the bloody car over the finishing line if you have to..."

Once in a while, Modena put in an impressive performance, but you never looked upon him a serious contender. A lot of promise, never realised.




Dear Sonja,

The rivalry which developed between Jones and Reutemann in 1981 was pretty intriguing, I'd have to say, not least because, as characters, Alan and Carlos were about as disparate as you will find.

The Williams motorhome was not a place of calm that summer. It was rare to find Jones and Reutemann in there together, and if you did, chances were they were sitting as far apart as possible. Certainly, they were not communicating, and this had its roots in a rainy day in Rio at the beginning of the season.

When Carlos had joined Williams the year before, it was as firm number two, for the team's priority had been that Alan should win the World
Championship. That done, Frank should then have thrown the whole thing open for 1981, but inexplicably he kept the 'Jones priority' clause in Reutemann's contract.

In Brazil Carlos led all the way, Alan awaiting an invitation to pass which never came. Afterwards he was livid, and inescapably, given the terms of Reutemann's contract, he had good cause. "Jones had reason to be upset," Carlos agreed. "I saw the pit signal three laps from the end, and I knew the terms of the contract. But still I was in a dilemma. I always started every race with the intention of winning it - and now I was being asked to give it away. 'If I do that,' I thought to myself, 'I stop the car here and now, and leave immediately for my farm in Argentina. Finish.'"

You could see his point, but you could see Alan's, too. "In terms of equipment," Frank Williams says now, "we gave Carlos exactly the same as Alan, but there was more to it than that. Carlos needed more psychological support than most drivers - he needed to feel that everyone in the team was wearing a Reutemann lapel badge and an Argentine scarf, and I'll admit that we didn't appreciate that sufficiently at the time."

True enough. And it didn't help, either, that Reutemann and Jones were diametrically opposed in so many ways, sharing nothing beyond the ability to drive a racing car very, very, fast. Carlos was all moody introspection, where Alan, at times, could make John Prescott seem shy and retiring. Through their second season together, they were not team-mates in any accepted sense, but rather two individuals who happened to operate out of the same pit. Towards the end of the year, Reutemann suggested they bury the hatchet. "Yeah, mate!" roared Jones, doing his Les Patterson thing. "Right in your bloody back!"

It was an awkward time, I remember, for folk visiting the Williams motorhome - and particularly so for those, like myself, who liked both these men. This was a far-off time when racing drivers were well paid, but not obscenely so, when they didn't have tacky little agents fluttering around them, and could speak for themselves. Formula 1 was much less 'global' in those days; much more fun, too.

Invariably, I found myself feeling sympathy for Reutemann through that summer of 1981, for in the psychological game he was utterly at the mercy of Jones, who could be intimidated by no one, on the track or off. In Alan's mind, though, he had cause enough to ostracise Carlos.

In the rains of Rio, Carlos, despite his distaste for the conditions, led throughout, and afterwards Alan was fit to be tied.

At the time, Williams was as incensed as Jones, and fined Reutemann for disobeying team orders, but later, perhaps jaundiced by Jones's late-in-the-day decision to retire from racing, he thawed. "All I care about is the team, and the points we earn - why the hell should I care about who scores them? Drivers are only employees, after all."

That season finished at Las Vegas, where Reutemann was up against Nelson Piquet for the World Championship. Quite brilliant in qualifying, he started from pole, but immediately faded to nothing in the race. It remains the most inexplicable thing I believe I have seen in a Grand Prix.

At the same time, Jones dominated - which made it all the worse for
Reutemann. Alan was already due to retire after that race, and Carlos announced that he, too, was going to stop. It was one of those turbulent periods at Williams, I suppose you could say.



Dear Ben,

Yes, I think it could - but it would need to be very carefully controlled and vetted. It's a fact that we could do with a few more cars than the 20 we currently have, but what we absolutely do not want is second-rate teams, cars and drivers in F1. When he says that quality matters more than quantity, Bernie Ecclestone is entirely right. We can all remember a great many 'F1 teams' from the past that had no business anywhere near a Grand Prix.