Ask Nigel Roebuck: November 19

I wrote about the Citroen/Loeb situation in Fifth Column last week, so, in case you didn't see it, here's a précis.

Citroen's novel approach to winning - or, should I say, not losing - in last weekend's Rally Great Britain may have appealed to accountants and bean-counters, but will hardly have stirred anyone with a passion for sport. Talk about "I have seen the future, and it's spelled m-a-n-u-f-a-c-t-u-r-e-r-s".

Seriously, though, it's a worry, isn't it? Already it's the manufacturers who effectively dictate what the Formula 1 rules shall be, and if ever we should reach a point where they dominate completely, perhaps with wholly owned teams, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that one day a driver might be required to sacrifice his own ambitions to those of The Company. Would you want to be the one broaching that subject with JPM or Kimi or Fernando? No, thought not.

For me, what happened last weekend was terrible, not least because it did the sport of rallying no service at all, robbing the championship-decider of much of its tension: with Sebastien Loeb unable to push, Petter Solberg had only to fret about not picking up a puncture, not having his car go sour on him.

I must say I felt extremely sorry for Loeb last weekend, being ordered to go fast - but not too fast. His state of mind, once his employers had spoken, can hardly have been relaxed, and it would not have been a complete surprise if, in the circumstances, he had got sloppy, and made a mistake somewhere. Had that happened, there would have been rather more sympathy for him than for Citroen, I fancy. In fact, now I think about it, anyone for whom sport comes ahead of success advertising might have been hard put to suppress a giggle or two.

Remember the widespread disillusionment among F1 fans, the very considerable damage done to the sport, when Jean Todt ordered Rubens Barrichello to give way to Schumacher at the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix? Dies the sport, dies the business, after all. Citroen - and any other major manufacturer - would do well to keep that in mind.

Those were my immediate feelings on the matter, and they won't change. However, I hope Max Mosley was right when he suggested there were differences - in terms of manufacturers' involvement, team tactics and so on - between rallying and racing.

For now, at least, I wouldn't worry too much - in terms of racing, anyway. It's a fact that some team owners - notably Frank Williams - consider the constructors' championship of greater significance than the drivers', and I don't see anything wrong with that: after all, can you think of a driver who doesn't see the drivers' championship as the more important of the two? No, nor I.

Frank feels the way he does because, as he says, the constructors' title reflects on every single person who works for the company, and quite understandably he thinks that very important.

In F1, though, not one team principal - not Frank, not Ron Dennis, not anybody - feels that the constructors championship is more important than the drivers' to the world at large. Perhaps it's the fact that the drivers' championship is so much longer established in F1 than in rallying, but I don't think, say, BMW believe they would get more publicity out of a constructors' championship than they would out of Juan Montoya's winning the World Championship.

Years ago, Norbert Haug told me he was equivocal about the idea of Michael Schumacher driving for McLaren-Mercedes. "In one way, it would be fantastic for Mercedes, because he is such a huge name in Germany," Haug said. "But in another way...if he won races and championships, everyone would say it was Schumacher. And if he lost, everyone would say it was Mercedes..."

What I'm trying to get across is that I don't have any doubts that the F1 paddock is fundamentally of the belief that the Drivers' World Championship is more important than the constructors' title. That may change in time, but I somewhat doubt it.

As a matter of fact, I personally think that too much emphasis is placed on the Drivers' World Championship - let's face it, it has very often been won by a guy who was not the best driver of the season, who did not win more races than anyone else. Stirling Moss never won it, after all, and in my opinion he was the best there's ever been. That he didn't win it is to me more a reflection on the importance - or otherwise - of the championship than it is on Stirling. Obviously, there has never been a World Champion who was other than a superb driver, but I'd take issue with anyone who suggested that every one could be called 'great'...




I think 'attack' is a bit of a strong word to use about Prost's observations about Ferrari. No matter what anyone says to the contrary, the fact is that Ferrari is 'Schumacher's team', and that he has far more influence over it even than Ayrton Senna did at McLaren. Basically, nothing happens at Maranello unless Michael says it's OK.

Of course it's not impossible that Alain's remarks were influenced by his own experience at Ferrari - after all, he was treated appallingly by them. But he has always been a friend of Jean Todt's, and the last time I saw him at a Grand Prix - at Barcelona in 2002 - he was there as a guest of Ferrari.

If he doesn't like the way Schumacher dominates everything at Ferrari, Prost is honest enough to admit that, if he had his time as a driver over again, he would do exactly the same! When I spoke to him about Michael a couple of years ago, this is what he said: "What I admire most about him is the way he turned Ferrari around.

"Obviously, he took on a big challenge when he went there: the greatest challenge is to bring a small team to the top, and OK, Ferrari was not a small team, but it was not winning much. He never criticised them, even when the team was not very good, and the car was not very good; he always helped the team, and he was always smiling when he was third or fourth. And I really like that about him.

"It's true I don't like the way Michael insists all the time on having his team mate working for him - but if I had to start my career gain, maybe that's what I would do! If you really want to win and win and win, maybe it's the best thing to do - that's obvious. After all, if I'd had a team mate just there to help me, I could have been World Champion at least two times more..."

You have to remember that when Alain was at Ferrari, in 1990 and '91, it was a very different team from now. For one thing, Luca di Montezemolo was not at the helm; for another, there was no Ross Brawn, no Rory Byrne, no Jean Todt... At that time Ferrari was run by a bunch of faceless figures from Fiat, and it was a shambles. Prost, coming from many years with smooth-running McLaren, got a bit of a shock.

When he arrived at Maranello, he thought he knew pretty well how F1 worked, but he later admitted that nothing could have prepared him for the daily pressures from the Italian press. "A few of those guys I considered friends, people I could trust, and I still do," he said, years later, "but some of them... Before I went there, I knew that Enzo's belief had been that if a Ferrari won, it was the car, and that if it lost, it was the driver. Even though the Old Man was gone, I soon found that nothing had changed.

"It can get to you, believe me. I'll give you an example. In '91 we were nowhere for most of the season, compared with McLaren and Williams, but at Barcelona I thought we had a chance. There was light rain before the start, and everyone started on wets. I didn't think the rain would last, and I wanted to start on slicks, thinking we had nothing to lose, and maybe a lot to gain. But the team said no, we had to do what the other front runners were doing, because if it continued to rain, and we were on slicks, we would look stupid, and there would be criticism in the papers.

"I said, 'Why worry about that? If we do the same as McLaren and Williams, we can't win. If we start on slicks, we just might'. But they wouldn't have it. The race started - and I changed to slicks after only three laps, long before Senna and Mansell did. I finished second, but if we hadn't had to stop, we could have won. And then, of course, we would have been heroes..."

Prost was extremely angry after that race, I remember. At the next one, in Suzuka, he was moved to compare his car unfavourably with a truck, and that rattled a cage in Maranello sufficiently for Alain to be fired, after which, with inspired judgement, Ivan Capelli was hired to partner Jean Alesi for 1992.

Ultimately, following legal action from Prost, his contract was settled in full. "Brilliant, isn't it?" a team insider murmured to me. "Alain's the one bloke who could have got them out of the mess they're in - and they're paying him not to drive for them..."



I have mixed feelings on this, and I'll admit they can be swayed either way, depending on who I happen to be speaking to! At the end of 1978, for example, I did a book with Mario Andretti about his World Championship season. At one point, when we were taping for the book, I told him a little anecdote about my great childhood hero, Jean Behra. Whenever Behra was really down, I said, he would look at his passport. Profession: pilote de course (racing driver). Unfailingly, it cheered him up.

"That's really great," enthused Mario. "I know absolutely how he felt. We all have our ups and downs in this business - that's inevitable. Nothing goes on forever. Look at a guy like Richard Petty: he dominated NASCAR for years, but it finally caught up with him - in '78 he didn't win a race, which is unknown. All of a sudden, he just lost the combination.

"Of course, guys like Jackie Stewart and Parnelli Jones weren't in it long enough for that to happen - which in some ways is smart. But to me the Stewarts of this world don't really love the sport, they just love themselves. Jackie got what he wanted out of it, like Parnelli, and then quit. Both those guys were really great race drivers, but if they'd had a pure love of the sport, they wouldn't have been able to give it up that easily - they would still be in it for fun. I guess a lot of people think that's stupid, but that's the way I feel about it - I don't have to answer to them."

One important difference between then and now, of course, was that racing was incomparably more dangerous, and there was a much greater sense of 'get out while you can' than there is there days.

Andretti was, of course, the absolute personification of 'racing driver', a man who never wanted to do anything else with his life. It broke his heart to retire from single-seaters, at the age of 54, but he kept on racing afterwards, trying to win Le Mans (and very nearly doing it), and even this year, at 63, he was running laps at over 220mph in testing at Indy, 'helping out the team', which happened to belong to his son Michael.

That test, though, ended in about as big an accident as has ever been seen at the Speedway. It was not Mario's fault, but he was miraculously lucky to step out of it unhurt, and I don't doubt that the recent tragedy of Tony Renna resonated with him.

Fundamentally, I agree with his opinion - and yours. But I'm bound to say I got no pleasure at all, at Monaco in 1975, from watching Graham Hill fail to qualify for a race he had won five times. If they've still got it, fine, let them continue if they wish. But if they reach a point where they're embarrassing themselves, I prefer to see them call it a day.



Having always been a keen fan of CART, I'm sorry to see another young driver leave it for the IRL, but I shouldn't really be surprised - CART's situation remains shaky, and the Toyota and Honda money is in the IRL these days, so there one is...

The IRL formula - ovals only, rev-restricted horsepower, very high downforce - of course makes for close competition, but I confess that I never watch the races in a relaxed frame of mind. Thanks to the rules, they tend to run round in great bunches, as at 'carburettor plate' NASCAR races - but at a far greater speed, and without enclosed wheels. Kenny Brack's accident at Texas horrified me - but, quite honestly, it didn't much surprise me. When you've got swarms of cars, running close together at around 220mph, inevitably wheels are going to touch wheels sooner or later - and when they do, you've got something close to a 'plane crash.

NASCAR star Rusty Wallace attended that Texas race, and was asked how he'd like to take part. His response was to the point: "I wouldn't get out of the electric chair to get in one of those things..."

Somehow Brack survived his accident, of course, but the following week, in a testing accident at Indianapolis, Tony Renna did not - and it is Renna, of course, whom Darren Manning now replaces at Ganassi Racing. I'm sure Manning will do a good job, because he's an excellent driver, who has shown well on his oval outings in CART - but I'd be surprised if he didn't, by midseason, find himself yearning for a road or street circuit.

You're right that he did a very good job when testing in F1, but I have no memory of his being in the reckoning for the Williams drive in 2000. As I recall, it was a straight fight between Jenson Button and Bruno Junqueira.



No, I don't think your fears are unreasonable. As we know, the world is an ever more volatile place, and the Mid East more volatile than most. I'm going to Bahrain next year for the inaugural Grand Prix there, and I'm bound to admit it's crossed my mind.

On the other hand, where is safe now? For more than 30 years, after all, anyone who had cause ever to venture into London wondered periodically if this would be the day of the next IRA bomb, but you couldn't allow yourself to get preoccupied about it. And we all remember those movie stars, well accustomed to playing heroes, who didn't dare go near an aeroplane after the events of September 11, don't we?

Of late, there have been murmurings about a possible terrorist attack on Bahrain, and people have pointed out that, at the time of the Grand Prix, there will indeed be an unusually high number of westerners there. As well as that, of course, a Formula 1 Grand Prix is a high-profile event.

Last week, the FIA issued a statement, saying, 'For the moment it's business as usual, but we are monitoring events'.

I don't know much at all about security measures, I'm afraid, but I'm sure that everything possible will be done for the F1 personnel next spring. Bahrain, after all, must wish its race to be a success and as free of controversy as possible.

I haven't spoken to any F1 people about this particular issue, but I assume they feel the same as I do - they trust that all will be well. F1 is now apparently set on a course of abandoning traditional venues in favour of new, more lucrative, ones, and that's all there is to it. It's a fact, though, that we never had these concerns about the A1-Ring - not even when Jean Todt ordered Rubens Barrichello to let Michael Schumacher win!



I don't quite agree with you - for me, the 'long nose' 1957 Maserati 250F and the 1967 Eagle-Weslake will always be unsurpassed, in terms of beauty - but I will happily admit that the Lotus 79 runs them close. I can still remember the sharp intakes of breath at the car's unveiling: without any doubt, it was the most elegant, most perfectly proportioned, of all Colin Chapman's cars, and simply made for that black John Player livery.

As for its performance, well, it set new standards, didn't it? As the first 'ground effect' car, it had levels of grip which its rivals couldn't approach. As was invariably the case with Lotus, reliability didn't match pace, but still the car was in a class of its own in 1978, to the point that, by Monza, only Ronnie Peterson had a mathematical chance of beating his team mate Mario Andretti to the World Championship.

That weekend ended in tragedy, of course, Peterson dying of injuries received in a multiple accident immediately after the start. Following an accident in the warm-up earlier in the day, he had been forced to take the start in the earlier Lotus 78.

It was a terrible end to a momentous season, one utterly dominated by the Lotus 79. How good was its handling? Mario said it best: "Man, like it was painted to the road..."