Cooper Straight

History tends to show that for one reason or another the guy who wraps up the title early fails to achieve very much in the closing races. Somehow I can't see that happening to Michael Schumacher. He won three of the upcoming races last year, and while he lost out to Mika Hakkinen at Spa, I wouldn't bet against him this weekend. A record 52nd win on the 10th anniversary of his debut would be just perfect. He might then think about helping Rubens Barrichello's challenge for second place...

Every race at Spa somehow turns into a classic, come rain or shine, and even an event that looks like a procession on the lap chart usually has an epic feel to it. It's no co-incidence that every race bar one since the revised track opened in 1983 has been won by a past or future World Champion. The only exception was in 1999, when David Coulthard beat his team mate. And who's to say that DC won't one day join that elite list?

As ever I'm looking forward to seeing the drivers tackling the sport's most challenging corner. Eau Rouge might be one of the great constants in F1, but this year it has a new look to it. The ocean of gravel on the left has been replaced by tarmac, and on the right an exit road from the old pitlane, used this weekend for F3000, now snakes up the grass on the inside of the corner.

The removal of the gravel is part of a trend instigated by the FIA as a result of ongoing accident research. Just like Armco and catchfencing in previous decades, gravel traps became the thing, and spread round circuits like a plague. But they have proved to be a far from perfect method of stopping out of control racing cars. All too often single-seaters bounce right over them on the way to the barrier, so the consensus now is that in certain situations it's better to take them away.

Data from Michael Schumacher's 1999 Silverstone crash showed that he decelerated twice as much while still on the grey stuff than he did when he hit the gravel, and effectively skated over it. Therefore why not put tarmac down, giving drivers something on which to brake? It's hard to disagree with the logic, and it's something that the drivers have been pushing for, through the GPDA.

That's exactly what has happened at Stowe, and Eau Rouge, probably the most difficult corner that the FIA has to deal with, was an obvious candidate for the tarmac treatment. Ironically most of the big F1 crashes have happened on the exit at the top of the hill, where gravel remains for the time being, but there have been incidents lower down.

Some 16 years ago I saw Stefan Bellof lose his life when his Porsche 956 struck a barely protected barrier that backed onto the concrete grandstand. There was no gravel in those days, and in fact he spun on tarmac - and barely slowed down. The difference is that now you have to go a lot further before you hit anything, because the barrier has been pushed ever further back.



It all sounds fine in theory, but there appears to be a catch, at least according to Thierry Tassin, who competed in the recent Spa 24 Hours. Now a Grand Prix commentator for Belgian TV (and regular Autosport.com reader!), the former F2 racer has been competing at Spa for over two decades. What he saw during the round-the-clock event worried him.

"If it rains all the water comes down to the bottom of Eau Rouge, and we get acquaplaning," says Tassin. "Also the tarmac may slow the cars down in case they spin, but it will not stop a car if it has a mechanical problem, like the gravel used to stop them."

Of course there will always be certain types of shunt where gravel might have been more use than tarmac, but obviously the FIA has factored that into its thinking. But what matters here are Tassin's comments what happens when it's wet.

Water has always rolled down the track into the dip at the bottom of the hill, but the huge tarmac run-off exacerbates the problem. It acts like a giant roof channelling rain into a gutter. The water that previously seeped into the gravel now has nowhere to go except down the slope towards the compression. There it collects in the form of a stream that proved a hazard even to heavy GT machinery. Quite what the effect will be on an F1 or F3000 car remains to be seen.

Tarmac has also replaced gravel at Blanchimont, the flat out lefthander before the Bus Stop. Water is not a problem there, although Tassin says the new kerb could cause some difficulties.

The Spa guys aren't stupid, and they do know a thing or two about drainage. They made allowances for it when the modifications were designed, at the FIA's request. But they might not have done enough. Of course if it doesn't rain this weekend then there won't be an issue, but you might as well bet on a dry Wimbledon fortnight...

I mentioned the potential hazard to some senior FIA folk in Hungary, and they acknowledged that it was something that would have to be watched. Ironically that very day the Elkhart Lake Champ Car race was stopped after a river across the track led to two huge accidents. Let's hope we don't get a repeat.



The last time the Belgian GP was stopped was in 1998, when half the field didn't even make it as far as Eau Rouge. Since then red flags have been extremely rare at any circuit.

We got one after the aforementioned Schumacher crash at Silverstone in 1999, another by mistake after a system problem at Monaco last year, and then another at Hockenheim last month. One a season is well below the average of the good old days; there were as many as five in 1987 (and two in the same race in Austria!).

Stoppages have become rarer because of the safety car system. Red flags always cause a major disruption, not just to TV schedules, so if an interruption can be in any way avoided, then race director Charlie Whiting will use the safety car. And a bit like jump starters in Olympic sprints, there's a sort of natural justice in that drivers who behave like hooligans on the first lap don't get a second chance. Along with the odd innocent victim, of course.

But Whiting has made a rod for his own back. When he does stop a race now, there are inevitable accusations of inconsistency, or that there must be some kind of ulterior motive, because after all he didn't do sop it when so-and-so was stuck in the gravel last year. And that's exactly what happened in Hockenheim. Michael Schumacher was out of action, a red flag came out, and a lot of people put two and two together and made five.

But it was the correct decision. The Burti/Schumacher crash left an unusual amount of debris on the track, because the Prost tumbled along it for so long rather than disappearing quickly onto the grass or gravel, as is the norm in first corner accidents.

The second problem was that the local marshals did a pretty poor job of trying to clean up the mess, even though the safety car had been dispatched and they knew that the field would not be bearing down on them at racing speed. They did at least get the wrecked cars moving quite early. Michael had parked on the track, and a cynic might suggest that he was hoping to force a red flag, but that just made the Ferrari easier to shift...

The officials in the control tower could see the debris in the distance, but they did not get a real idea of what it was like until they saw the head-on TV picture as the cars picked their way through. You got a glimpse of that on terrestrial at home, but it looked a lot worse on the digital pictures we saw at the track.

It was instantly obvious that there was an unacceptable risk of someone picking up a puncture, and Hockenheim above all other races is a place where you don't want that to happen. A radio report from safety car driver Bernd Maylander was the clincher. As a result, Schumacher had a second chance. And of course it just happened to be his home race...



It was a fine conspiracy theory, but let's put it to the test. Firstly, German TV viewers were hardly likely to switch off with brother Ralf right at the sharp end. Secondly, why on earth would anyone in F1's hierarchy want to give Michael the opportunity to wrap up his title even earlier? And finally, why were the Austrian and German GPs not stopped last year, when the points battle was tighter and Michael really could have done with a hand?

In retrospect it obviously would have been better to stop the race before the field went through the debris, which would have prevented any possible tyre damage rather than giving teams a chance to check for it. But the late decision just underlined that there was a genuine desire to keep the action running.

David Coulthard was one who expressed doubts, but then he had most to lose through Michael earning another go. To be fair DC said that he didn't have all the information to hand, but there was one small thing he admitted to me which didn't quite back up his apparent indignation. When he got back to the grid and the team checked his tyres, one of them was found to be cut...

Some time after Ayrton Senna's fatal crash a photograph emerged which showed him about to run over what appeared to be a tiny piece of debris, possibly left over from the Lamy/Lehto crash on the grid. Rightly or wrongly, the puncture theory subsequently gained a lot of credence.

Had the Hockenheim race not been stopped, and DC or anybody else had an accident due to a tyre failure, there would have been hell to pay. And I wouldn't want to be the bloke who chose not to put the red flag out...