Rosberg's Monaco win; F1's return to Spa

Constant travel, therefore, is tedious, but it was interesting to note the week after Monte Carlo that when next we congregated - at some ungodly hour - in the appalling cloisters of Heathrow, everyone appeared to be in high spirits. We were going to Spa! And that, supplemented by the thought that Monaco was out of the way for another 12 months, was cause enough for celebration. Had we been en route for Zolder, the tone of the morning would have been rather different.

As you may have gathered over the past few years, the Monaco Grand Prix is not my favourite race, although it cannot be denied that the circuit offers an unparalleled opportunity to witness, close up, the capability of Grand Prix car and driver. It is the easiest place in the world in which to keep a lap chart, because the order so rarely changes. To move up, you must rely on the charity of the man in front, and that to me is not racing.

Your other alternative, of course, is to get the revs absolutely right when you let in the clutch at the green light. After qualifying Eddie Cheever told me that he doubted that Keke Rosberg would be a real threat in the race, saying that even the World Champion would be unable to find a place to overtake. At the same time Cheever worried about the possibility of a wet race: "I've always enjoyed the rain, you know, but what concerns me is the start. I have never yet made a standing start in the rain with a turbocharged car..."

That being the case, it was not surprising that he veered around a little when the race began. He had been third on the grid, and he was still in that position as the pack threaded through the Ste Devote chicane. But the damage was already done: Rosberg was ahead of him, up from fifth.

Keke went away from the line with his rear tyres as good as alight, and I will never know how, on slicks, he found the traction to beat Cheever and the two Ferraris to the first corner. But he did, then passing Prost with the glitter and precision of a meat slicer, at which point the race was effectively over.

During the next few laps Rosberg demoralised the rest, pulling clear at an absurd rate as the line dried out. But if this was a World Champion's charge, it was also controlled and intelligent. Approaching Mirabeau, for example, Keke was following a curious path down the inside. The street falls away to the kerb, and was draining better there. He was actively seeking places kind to his dry tyres and to hell with the conventional line. In 1961, at the Nurburgring, Stirling Moss started on wets, but the rain came only in the late stages. Until then, Stirling held the Ferraris at bay, actually looking for oil over which to drive, because that would allow his tyres to live a little longer.

It seems to me that Rosberg at Monaco and Moss at the 'Ring have much in common. Keke I believe to be the fastest driver in the business, just as Stirling was in his time. In 1961 Moss very often had no answer to the horsepower of the Ferraris. Only at two circuits, Monte Carlo and the Nurburgring, could a nimble chassis and sheer driving ability balance the equation, and he won both, each time with the red cars at his heels.

In the same way, at Monaco, Rosberg recognised a rare opportunity to challenge - even defeat - the turbos, and he made the most of it with a demonstration of irresistible aggression and flair.

For me, though, Keke was even more impressive at Spa. This was a race he could not hope to win unless the leading turbos fell by the wayside, but there was no sign - from his driving - that he acknowledged the fact. At the end of the first lap he was seventh, clinging on to the BMW power of Piquet and Winkelhock, and there he stayed, lap after lap. No other Cosworth car was remotely in the picture. This was a racer acting on instinct.

"What a fantastic place!" he commented on Friday, drawing on his immediate post-qualifying cigarette. "I think I need a seven-tenths of a second improvement in the chassis - which I know is there somewhere - and then I can race with the turbos."

Most of his Cosworth colleagues could only whine about being short of power, but Rosberg showed what could be done with a good chassis and uncompromising attitude. He looked upon Spa not as a lost cause, a 'turbo track', but as a place to get his teeth into. No one approached his pace through Eau Rouge, and consequently his exit speed - up the long climb to Les Combes - allowed him to stay in the slipstream of the turbos.

Given a whiff of victory, most drivers can find a little bit more within themselves, but Rosberg is one of those very few in whom the flame of aggression burns constantly. Rare is the reigning World Champion who behaves that way. My respect for this one grows by the race.



It was pleasant indeed, when we arrived at Spa-Francorchamps on Thursday afternoon, to be able to drive round the circuit, for the opportunity rarely arises at purpose-built 'autodromes'. The original 8.76-mile track was, of course, made up entirely of public roads, and the 'new' section, which turns right at the top of the hill and plunges off down into a valley, is also open to traffic, although its use is not encouraged, as temporary wooden barriers indicate.

I had not seen the revised and shortened circuit before, and could hardly have been more impressed. It follows the natural contours of the land, and is therefore anything but bland, retaining instead the essential character of Spa-Francorchamps as a true driver's circuit.

After several laps of it, we set off around the original track, and its impact was as great as ever. Motorway building has removed some parts altogether, but you can still marvel at a corner like Burnenville, where Moss crashed in 1960, following suspension failure on his Lotus 18. "I remember the last lap in 1970," Chris Amon once told me. "I was chasing Pedro Rodriguez, and the BRM was streets quicker at the top end than my March. I made a conscious decision to take the Masta Kink flat - something I'd never tried even in practice, and I don't think anyone else had, either. I made it through somehow, and took about 50 yards off him. But, I tell you what, it wasn't something you'd want to do every day..."

We approached the Masta Kink - two very definite corners, incidentally, rather than a left-right flick - and I thought again about going through there at 185mph - in a March 701... Amon, who finished second behind Pedro that day (the two of them having averaged almost 150), always loved Spa-Francorchamps, although he doubted its validity as a true test in later years. "I next went back in '73," he said, "to drive a Matra sports car in the 1000kms, and by then the Kink had become comfortably flat every lap, even for a sports car. I reckon that quite soon most of the circuit would have been flat - flat for everyone, I mean - and it would have got boring, just a very dangerous slipstreamer of a track."

That same day Henri Pescarolo lapped a Matra at the staggering average of 163mph, and as we drove round we speculated about the current Grand Prix car's potential lap speed - 170? 175? The new track offers an average some 50mph less than that, and doubtless there were those in the place who decried it as a pale imitation of "the real Spa." These are the people who think racing drivers should wear barbed-wire crash helmets...

I was entranced by the place, and delighted that the revised circuit takes in part of the old. And one of the most agreeable aspects of the weekend was that I found my enthusiasm shared by the drivers, most of whom had never raced at a track like this, being raised on an autodrome diet. Niki Lauda and Jean-Pierre Jarier said they didn't relish the idea of racing there in the rain, but otherwise there was overwhelming approval.

Over the weekend, I interviewed Alain Prost for a forthcoming feature article, and told him of my surprise that there had been so little 'safety' talk. His response was interesting: "For me, this circuit is incredible, and it means something to me to race here. One of my great heroes was Jim Clark ..."

A surprisingly emotional response from a man of unemotional reputation. "Perhaps," he went on, "this generation of drivers is different from the last. Safety is something taken granted these days, to a far greater extent than in the past, but it depends how you look upon it. It seems to me that you cannot criticise a track simply because it is fast. We have a lot of horsepower these days, so anywhere is going to be fast in places, after all.

"I don't know," he said, "if you have made a lap of this circuit." I told him I had. "Well, perhaps you can't do that in most places. If you could, you would know that this circuit is certainly not the most dangerous we use. For me, it is much safer than, say, Long Beach. Perhaps," he concluded, "there is less talk of safety than there used to be, but the sport is undoubtedly safer than it was. That's one reason, and another may be that, in my opinion, there are no real stars today. I think we are a bunch of good professional drivers, but there is no one out ahead, no one acting as a 'spokesman' for the drivers. The point about this kind of track is that provide a good race, maybe. Monaco, you know, is fun in practice, particularly when you are going for a quick time and you get a clear lap, but I don't enjoy the race there because you can't pass. Here all things are possible."

Indeed they are. In the event, planned pit stops served to break up what had been a riveting struggle, but there was no doubt that the return to Spa- Francorchamps was an artistic success and, I would imagine, a financial one. Flemish and Walloon polemics may dictate that the race returns, every other year, to Zolder, but I hope not. With Spa-Francorchamps in business as a Formula 1 circuit again, the notion of staging the Belgian Grand Prix anywhere else is patently absurd.