Memories of the Osterreichring

The breakfast menu never varied: orange juice, rolls and jam, wonderful coffee and two boiled eggs apiece. Every day we would crack the tops in the vain hope that perhaps something might have delayed the old girl this morning, distracted her attention between popping the eggs in the pan and removing them, so that for once they might have had time to assume some kind of solid form. It never happened.

We tried to explain, and she tried to understand, but the language barrier was impenetrable. Finally, one year I remembered ahead of time, asked a German colleague for the means of saying, "Please cook them a little longer," and noted it down in my diary.

It worked a treat. Frau Omaser responded as if the secret of life had been revealed; the years fell away from her face as she understood finally what we had been trying to get across since the mid-seventies.

Next morning the eggs were perfect. She stood there, beaming, as we expressed approval, and suddenly life took on a different aspect. The last Austrian problem had been solved.

And then Bernie took the race away, transported it over the border to Budapest. He had his reasons, presumably, but none are apparent to any simple lover of Grand Prix racing.

We had two years, actually, when the races ran back to back. In 1986 and '87 we went to Hungary, then to Austria the following week, and the contrast was Chambertin after Piat d'Or. On the first of those occasions I bumped into Bernie in the tunnel at the Osterreichring. He was in genial mood: "Good to be here, isn't it?" It was, and I agreed. He hadn't said, "Good to be here after the Hungaroring, isn't it?" but I thought it implicit in his tone.

There aren't any problems with the eggs in Budapest, because most people speak English - or, rather, American. We stay in the Forum Hotel, and it could be anywhere. Except that a single room runs out at $300 a night, and they like the whole deal paid in advance, please. When you're travelling on your own coin, you tend to notice these things. Hungary may have formally renounced Communism only in the last 12 months; from our first visit there, it was clear the hoteliers, anyway, had few lessons to learn from wicked capitalists. Forget about forints: here, as in Mexico, they like the ubiquitous buck.

Thing is, the Forum and sundry places like it are ideal for 'the corporate guest'. Lobbies abound with folk dressed up to the eyes, in preparation for another heavy evening on the PR circuit. If this is August, it must be Budapest.

August used to mean a flight to Vienna, then a three-hour drive to Styria, at the foot of whose mountains sits perhaps the greatest race track on this earth. If the Hungaroring personifies everything that is mediocre in our sanitised times, the Osterreichring was strong meat, a track which lent itself to legend.

Amazingly, it is only 20 years since Grand Prix cars went there for the first time; amazingly, because when you laid eyes on the place, it was always so easy to imagine such as Rosemeyer and Caracciola there. History was somehow conferred upon it.

It had a knack, the Osterreichring, of producing the unexpected, the memorable. At that first Grand Prix, in 1970, one of Ferrari's countless resurgences was beginning, Ickx and Regazzoni racing away to a 1-2 on a torrid afternoon. The crowds had come in expectation of another victory in a summer of triumph for Rindt and the Lotus 72, but the Fates were wilful. Jochen retired that day; his people were not to know they had witnessed his last Grand Prix.

The following year Jo Siffert enraptured everyone with his BRM victory. It was a win in the sport's greatest traditions. Devastated by the recent death of Pedro Rodriguez in a stupid little Interserie race, BRM needed shepherding just then, and Siffert nobly stepped forward. The firm team leader now, he dominated in Austria, even coping with a slow puncture in the late stages. But poor Seppi, too, was within sight of losing his life.

The Austrian Grand Prix had an unpredictable quality that was beguiling. In 1975, for example, Vittorio Brambilla took his only victory there. In torrential rain - as well as thunder and lightning - he put his renowned lack of imagination to work, and was in the lead when they stopped the race.

Over the line he went, waving his arm in exuberant salute... and then the revs raced, and the orange March disappeared in a waltz from our sight. It was crumpled when it returned from its slowing down lap, but I have never seen a more joyous winner.

For the rest there was no reason to smile, nothing to detract from the stark tragedy of the morning. In the warm-up Mark Donohue had gone over the fence at the Hella-Licht Kurve, then unprotected by a chicane. He was conscious, even talking, after-wards, but had suffered a huge blow to the head from a scaffolding pole. By lunchtime the extent of his injuries was known in the paddock, and a couple of days later he died.

That weekend I can remember with some clarity, and it brings home again how much has changed in 15 years. I went to Austria in Chris Amon's light aircraft, which inevitably left late - so late, in fact, that by the time we arrived Zeltweg's military airfield was closed. That meant going to Graz, where it took time to arrange a hire car. At which point Chris remembered he had forgotten where we were staying.

This had all our attention. Concentrate, we said. What's the name of the place? Silence. Then, haltingly: "I seem to remember something about 'knickers off'..." We scanned a map. Niklasdorf? That had to be it, so we called every hotel in the place until one said, yes, the Ensign team was booked in there. As we walked in, Mo Nunn and his boys were having coffee...

By Sunday night, Amon's emotions were jumbled. Saddened by Donohue's accident, he was yet elated at returning to Formula 1; relieved, too, to be in one piece after a race in such Wagnerian conditions.

"Schnapps!" he ordered, at the end of dinner. "For everyone!"

Nunn, sitting next to me, was visibly unnerved. "Is he always like this?" he whispered. "I mean, we've never had a driver who even smoked before..."

I have no idea what time I retired that night, save that it was before Amon. The following morning I was jolted violently from sleep by a cat stamping its feet on the carpet; the journey back to Graz was a blur.

Then there was the condition of the pilot. If I felt rough, it was assuredly better than Chris did. "You, er, OK to fly?" I asked. He said he was. Black coffee was the thing.

There had been a massive storm through the previous evening, and it lingered still. But off we set, and, as always when it mattered, Amon's concentration was right there. The road gang still at work behind my eyes, I tried to doze - anything to avoid look-ing at the gauges or the blackness outside. Eventually, we made it back to Luton, and I've always suspected it was via Singapore.

One way and another, schnapps seems to figure prominently in recollections of Austria. A dinner with Innes Ireland inevitably concluded with several. "Nectar, lad! Landlord's a friend of mine - brews it himself. Pure as a virgin, this stuff..." he said.

It was indeed nectar, but unfortunately it appeared to act on Innes like LSD, in the sense that it amplified his notion of the possible. At three in the morning I had to dissuade him several times from climbing the outside of the clock tower in the hamlet in which we found ourselves. "Did it in '61, lad! When I won the race..." Yes, I argued, but that was then, and this is now. Reluctantly he acquiesced.

After which I drove back along deserted roads to Frau Omaser's house in Zeltweg. In the passenger seat, semi-conscious, was colleague Alan Henry, who had driven on the way out. When he took the wheel the following morning, no seat adjustment was necessary, which was strange, because he is approximately a foot taller than I. No satisfactory explanation for this has ever been found.

Most memories of Zeltweg and its majestic circuit are fond ones. Watson winning for Penske in 1976... Ronnie's drive in the rain in '78, his last victory, and perhaps his greatest... de Angelis beating Rosberg by a foot or so in '82... Niki winning his home race at last, two years later... Prost coping with a dying engine in 1986, winning and keeping himself in contention for the championship... Mansell's unforgettable sleight-of-hand pass of Piquet in the last race...

More than anything, though, I remember the feel of the place, the sense of well-being, the impression of a great occasion. On a hot day it seemed like quite a step up the hillside to the Boschkurve, but the rewards were immense. In qualifying trim, the turbos approached at well the wrong side of 200mph, braked, snicked down a gear, then pointed into that downhill right-hander, which went on and on. Any illusions you could do this thing yourself were dispelled in a moment at the Boschkurve. Or the Rindtkurve, for that matter, or any of half a dozen other spots around the circuit.

It isn't like that at the Hungaroring, which is slow and sinewy in the modern manner, apparently purpose-built for the prevention of passing. Mansell's win last year was probably the best of his life, but came only by chance. The Ferrari was quicker over the lap than the McLaren, yes, but Senna had more power by far, so Nigel was never close enough at the only true overtaking spot, into the right-hander at the end of the pit straight. Finally, Ayrton had to back off momentarily for a slowing Johansson, and his rival's matchless opportunism won the day.

So, Hungary it is this weekend, and not Austria. Dese are de conditions dat prevail. Earlier this year word was strong that the Budapest race was on flimsy ground, that Zeltweg would be back on the schedule in 1991. Everyone - corporate guests apart, presumably - hopes so, and no one more than I. Even if it means going to work on an underdone egg.