F1 moves into the '90s

"Prost?" we ventured, "Alain Prost?"

"That's him," the driver said. "That's the guy..." A pause. "They running the time trials today?"

"Yes," we said.

"How'd Paul do?" Paul? "Yeah, Paul Newman. He's in the race, I read that. How'd he get on?"

"Well, er, he's in the TransAm race, not the Grand Prix," we said.

"Oh, really," said the man.

Over time I have found taxi drivers a fine barometer, especially in America, where city races are becoming the norm. In the last 10 years or so we have been to Grands Prix through the streets of Long Beach, Detroit, Las Vegas, Dallas and, more recently, Phoenix, and the response to Formula 1 has varied considerably from city to city.

Las Vegas was a disaster from the start. I think back now to our two trips there, and remember only neon lights and ladies of the night, crimplene and blackjack, bottoms of heroic proportions perched over slot machine stools. What does death mean? Heaven or Las Vegas?

Dallas, on the other hand, I enjoyed, despite the draining humidity of Texas in July. It's a snobbish town, which perhaps explains in part why Formula 1, with all its exotic foreign names, had so much appeal there. Whatever the explanation, on race day the place was packed. The track surface broke up disastrously, but the layout of the circuit was more interesting by far than the standard fare of 90-degree turns. Unfortunately, though, someone went AWOL with the mess funds, and we never went back.

Detroit some people liked, but I never did. I thought the track absurdly tight, the place generally tacky. Over the years, though, money was pumped into the race, enabling it to survive, and it began to take on some facade of tradition - until it was abruptly chopped.

Long Beach was different. Everybody liked Long Beach. Oh, you get irritated by Californian languor once in a while, but the track was wonderful, with an identity of its own. For a brief while, America provided the bookends of the Formula 1 season, and that was good: Long Beach in March, Watkins Glen in October.

Both are now lost to Formula 1. Chris Pook continues to run a Long Beach Grand Prix, for Indycars, and it thrives. And Bill France takes NASCAR to the Glen, where it pulls a bigger crowd than the Grand Prix ever did. "If France put on a Formula 1 race at the Glen," said a senior respected member of the American racing fraternity, "he'd get 100,000 people there the first year. After that, it would be a matter of ticket allocation only. But he won't deal with Bernie, so it'll never happen."

Formula 1 split with Long Beach because, in Pook's estimation, it was overpriced. And it left the Glen, we were told, because that area of upstate New York lacked local accommodation suitable for 'corporate guests'. "Has Bernie," my American friend mused, "ever tried staying close to Silverstone or Brands Hatch?"

The tragedy is that Americans never have the opportunity to see what a Grand Prix car can do. Who can be surprised they don't get too excited by endless second-gear turns and brief stabs of acceleration? This is largely the fault of NASCAR, which has led them to believe that overtaking is a natural ingredient of the sport.

By and large, therefore, this policy of selecting an American city and plonking Formula 1 into it, while presumably lucrative for some, does our sport no long term good. Quite the reverse, in fact. If you staged a US college basketball game in Wolverhampton, I venture to suggest it wouldn't pull much of crowd. Especially if Wolverhampton chose to give it no advance publicity whatsoever.

This is how it is with the Grand Prix in Phoenix. Forty minutes out of town is a mile track where, each autumn, Bill France stages a round of the NASCAR championship. Formula 1 powers-that-be refer to it as "A shitty little oval." Well, it may not be terribly 'corporate', but that shitty little oval pulls in 80-90,000 people when Earnhardt, Elliot and Wallace are in town.

"That Frenchman," the cabbie said, "Lewis sump'n..." Ah yes, the World Champion. The most successful Grand Prix driver of all time. Who? For those who regard Formula 1 as the earth's core, the meaning of life, a visit to Phoenix - to America, in general - is a salutary experience.

Still, at least there is an attempt to be 'corporate'. Within a few minutes of the start of the season's first practice session I heard a new phrase, a phrase for the nineties.

"Laminates only!"

I thought I was hearing things. There were security people all over the place at Phoenix - indeed, they seemed to outnumber the spectators, and perhaps they did.

At the last corner there was a very special example of the species, one who wore those dreadful wrap-around sunglasses, with a built-in strap at the back to allow that shades-around-the-neck look so favoured these days by those who would consider themselves degage.

He was ideal for the job, this person, possessed of a permanent scowl and single-digit IQ. "You can't stand here," he told my friend Gordon Kirby, who, having a legitimate track pass, sought to reason with him. He might as profitably have addressed the wall. "Let's go!" the strange creature yelled. "You're not laminated!"

What he meant, this molester of the English language, was that Kirby didn't have a permanent FISA 'credit card' pass. They argued some more, the thug encouraged by SCCA marshals on the other side of the track. When it comes to credential spotting, these people are red hot.

Unfortunately, they are apparently less so when it comes to accident spotting. Twice in a day Johansson invited their attention by parking his Onyx in the tyre barrier at their feet, and each time their response was... less than immediate. When Donnelly stalled in the middle of the track, they looked on with interest, and when Grouillard spun in the tyre wall, then restarted, sizeable bits of Osella front and rear wings were left in the road, where they remained, fortunately off the line. I saw examples of marshalling which were lamentable.

Elsewhere, however, the compensations were considerable. It was a delight, after several years, to see Mario Andretti again. He was standing - where else? - in the Ferrari pit, positively drooling over the 641. "Are you here the whole weekend?" I asked on Friday morning. "Nah, just today," he said, a wistful grin on his face. "It's not good for me to be around these things too long. The old withdrawal symptoms start naggin' at me." He was silent a moment, gazing at Prost's car. "God," he murmured, "is that thing not beautiful! You're away from 'em a while," he went on, "and you forget. Then it hits you all over again..."

Mario was 50 a couple of weeks ago. I was about to offer birthday greetings, then remembered how he coped with being 40, and thought better of it.

Beautiful, as he said, the Ferrari may have looked, but in qualifying at Phoenix fast it wasn't. Friday, indeed, was one of the strangest days I have spent at a Grand Prix meeting for years. I watched at the last turn, next to the Life crew, whose professional activities for the weekend were already finished. They had a TV monitor with them, listing the times, and most of the right names seemed to be in the wrong places. Senna would blast by on a quick lap, and you would expect the screen to blip his name to the top. But no. Pole position was fought over by Martini, by Alesi and de Cesaris, all using Cosworths - and all running Pirellis.

Ayrton, it transpired, was hampered throughout by a misfiring Honda V10, so it was as well for McLaren that Berger finally set a time which pipped Martini & Co.

Twenty-four hours earlier, at a press conference, Gerhard had been far from galvanised, mumbling in a dull and uncharacteristic monotone. What was the matter with him? "He's a McLaren-Honda driver now," whispered a laconic team insider. "We've changed his chip..."

There was an element of truth in this, as it turned out. A little while earlier Berger, thinking to take a tablet to ease a sinus pain, had inadvertently popped a sleeping pill...

Gerhard is unfortunate in not coping as well as many drivers with the effects of jet lag. The time difference between Austria and Arizona is eight hours, arid as the weekend approached he was still finding sleep difficult. Watching him through the fastest corner on the circuit, however, there was little sign of any bluntness in his reactions.

It was a shame that Saturday's rain washed away any prospect of a fight for the pole between Senna and himself. Perhaps Ayrton would have beaten him - there is no one better over a single frantic lap - but certainly there are signs that Berger, unlike the Prost of the last two years, will not allow Senna the luxury of assuming pole position is his by right. "By the time he came up against Ayrton," Gerhard said, "Alain had already been racing nearly 10 years, and had done it all. I haven't..."

As it was, he was going into his first Grand Prix with McLaren-Honda in a dream situation, which Prost never once enjoyed: starting from pole position, with a cushion of three interlopers between himself and Senna. The start, he well knew, would be crucial: "There's so often an accident on the first lap of the opening Grand Prix of the year," he said, doubtless recalling Rio 12 months ago, when he and Ayrton tangled. "If there's one this time, I want to be ahead of it..."

We anticipated this first race of the new season as eagerly as he. A good viewing spot is not easily found at Phoenix, but we were going to do our best. After all, we were laminated.