Cooper Straight

So what was the cause of all this mayhem? Well, each of these drivers did the Monaco GP without the benefit of power steering, the F1 novelty that has become a necessity. And after the schedule's only street event, this weekend's Hungarian GP is the race where it will be of the greatest value.

It's 13 years since power steering was first tried on a Grand Prix car. The pioneers were not McLaren, Ferrari or Williams, but Prost's ancestor Ligier, who introduced it on the awful JS31 of 1988. It caught on slowly, and only became standard equipment amongst the top teams in the mid-90s. And yet still some teams haven't quite got it right.

Benetton, Sauber and Arrows have all been very slow to perfect and introduce their systems, and have only been using them for the past few races. Meanwhile, Prost and Minardi aren't in a position to run power steering at all.

It will be interesting to see what happens this weekend. Alesi and Heinz-Harald Frentzen both face steep learning curves with their respective new teams, and power steering will be a significant part of the equation for both men. HHF will no doubt find life difficult without it at Prost, while Alesi, whose Luddite tendencies are well known, will find something else on the Jordan that he will probably want to switch off.

"Jean was driving for us when we first introduced it," says Benetton engineering director Pat Symonds. "He was very 'anti' it, he thought it was a stupid idea and he didn't really need power steering. But once he'd driven with it, he actually liked it a lot. He used it in every race after that, to my knowledge."



That was until the end of 1997, but since then Alesi hasn't had the benefit power steering at either Sauber or Prost. And his arms have enjoyed a good workout...

Alesi may disagree, but every time the lights go out at the start of a race, drivers without power steering are at a huge disadvantage.

"If you've used it, you can't drive without it," says Eddie Irvine. "It's quite simple. If you're going to do a running race, you don't put the heaviest shoes on. And that's what happens if you don't have power steering - you're working twice or three or four times as hard as the guy in the next car."

"You ask yourself why do you need this hindrance," says Ross Brawn. "Power steering systems are there, so why hinder the driver or make the job tougher than it needs to be?

"Power steering for sure is a big advantage. Even though a driver can drive a car without power steering, the strain that he feels and the fatigue that he feels means that part way through a race he's not driving as well as he could. On one lap, you can do the same time, but in a race it makes a big difference. I think our two drivers are as fit as anyone in F1, but neither of them would want to do a race tomorrow without power steering. The muscles just aren't there anymore."

Michael Schumacher without the right muscles? If Ross Brawn says so, you can believe it...

Brawn might be clued-in, but there's been a tendency amongst some F1 engineers to regard power steering as a bit of a luxury, and it's almost as if there's a little contempt for drivers who insist on having it. But it's not a question of making life easy for guys who aren't fit. Schumacher has used it for most of his Ferrari career, and as Ross suggests, it simply helps him to do what he does best anyway - drive flat out for the duration of a race.

Irvine's experience is typical. He used power steering at Ferrari, and when he first went to Jaguar, he found that he could barely drive the car, so he forced Jaguar to push ahead with a system. Similarly when Luciano Burti left Jag for Prost, he faced the rude awakening that awaits Frentzen.

"When you're used to having power steering, and then you don't have it, it's quite hard," says Luciano. "Especially now with the tyre war, because the tyres are softer you have more grip. I did 35 laps at Monaco, and it was already hard enough, so I guess a full race would be very difficult. Sometimes you need so much strength you're even using your abdominals, your stomach, so it's very, very hard. You have to really feel it to know how bad it is."



As Luciano suggests, the situation has been exacerbated this year by the tyre war. Softer tyres mean more grip, and as the rubber went down in Monaco during the race, lap times improved and it became even tougher. Button was visibly struggling around slow corners like Rascasse in the closing stages.

"It's a big help if you have power steering," Jenson confirms. "It's one less thing you've got to think about, and it's a lot easier to be more consistent. I was going really slow in the last 10 laps. I just lifted off and took it so easy. It was very tough towards the end of the race, very tough. I had a few blisters, but it felt like it was going to be even worse, that my whole hand was going to be one blister..."

Only at Silverstone was Button finally able to race with power steering, and ironically the system failed. A software glitch meant that it didn't like a particular set of parameters created by contact with a kerb, and the system switched off, something that had also happened in practice. It's now been solved.

So why has a team of Benetton's resources had so many problems? Quite simply it's not been a priority in a year when there have been all sorts of issues to deal with.

"In retrospect, we should have had it in Monaco," says Symonds. "We've been running power steering for many, many years, both a mechanical system and last year an electronic system. We had a new system for this year, had a few development issues with it. It's a bit late, and last year it was available a bit late as well."

Arrows has also struggled to get it right, and earlier this season Verstappen often preferred to race without it. Like Alesi he's a tough cookie, but even he had problems in Monaco.

"About three quarters of the way through the race it really started to get tough, and my arms really hurt after the race. Rascasse was very tough, the chicane after the tunnel was very hard, and the next one because it was so bumpy there. On the places where there was a lot of rubber down, it felt really hard, especially in the last 15 or 20 laps. It's a lot lighter with the system, it makes a lot of difference, especially now with the soft tyres. You need it, you can't drive without it."

Like Benetton, Arrows preferred to wait until it was right, and reliability is an issue for obvious reasons. In Spain Pedro de la Rosa turned sharp right into the wall as he left the pits when a gremlin attacked the steering, and in Monaco both Jaguar drivers felt that the system was not working properly towards the end of the race. And a failure forced Olivier Panis to retire.

"It was so heavy on the low-speed corners, and so light on the high-speed," says the Frenchman. "It was not linear, so I felt something was broken. If we have a very linear power steering, or no power steering, you know where you are. It's heavy, but it's heavy everywhere. In Monaco it was so heavy in the low-speed, it's not normal, and so light in the high-speed. It was not a good feeling. We never had any problems, and I hope it's the last one..."



But it's not just a question of fitness and fatigue. Without it, teams have to make compromises on set-up to ease the steering load.

"Technically you've got a few more options as you've really got freedom of geometry," says Brawn. "You're not constrained by keeping the driver's workload as low as possible, so it's quite an attractive technical proposition if for no other reason."

Power steering is at the heart of the driver's relationship with the car he's driving, and its absence certainly hasn't helped Button come to terms with the Benetton.

"It's a question of getting the right system together that doesn't weigh a ton, really. I tested in Magny-Cours with power steering, and I don't know why it said in the press that it didn't make much difference, because it did! It was good. We tested with softer and stiffer power steering, and I liked it."

The interesting thing is that it is useful not just at the slowest circuits, but also those with the fastest corners.

"There are a number of things," says Symonds. "One is the actual steering load. At a circuit like Spa you get some pretty high steering loads, and therefore it will help on that. And the other is the amount of time you are steering, for example Monaco and Hungary. It's the integral of load over time, so if you've got a little load for a lot of time, or a lot of load for a little time, that's when you need it. At Monaco especially you have no time to relax..."

As of next year, systems will became less sophisticated, because any electronic inputs into steering will be banned. So it's back to basics with simple mechanical arrangements.

"At the moment all the engine and gearbox stuff is free," says Brawn, "but they still have to check the steering software. We want to reach a situation where the FIA don't have to do any software checks, so that's the only reason for changing it. It's the same for everyone, and I think it's the right way. It means we can't tune the systems so easily, so in some ways it's a more complex solution having a mechanical system."

Symonds agrees that it won't be a big problem: "Up until last year our system, which we had essentially run unchanged since about '97, was a completely mechanical system. In actual fact it was very good. What it means is that the characteristics of the assistance is more difficult to change, whereas with an electronic system you can essentially dial up or type in the assistance curve you want for a particular track or a particular driver.

"With a mechanical system you have to reconfigure it physically to have a different characteristic. So it takes a little bit longer. We ran the mechanical system for about four years, the same basic design. We were always totally happy with it, but we just felt that maybe with an electronic system we'll just find out a little bit more about the desirable characteristics. I'm not convinced we did! So I'm very, very happy that we're going back to mechanical systems."

That's all the future, but meanwhile for Button the arrival of the Benetton system has been good news. It's not the answer to all his problems, but it will certainly contribute to making him feel more comfortable, and therefore lead to an improved performance.

"It would have been easier with power steering," says Button, "but then again it hasn't been possible this year because there's been so much going on. There have been a lot of other things we've had to sort out and deal with. The biggest difference will be over a race distance, on a tough circuit, in hot conditions. Hungary is going to be one of them..."