The new and old 'Rings

Spectating - as a journalist - at the 'Ring was inevitably, dare I say, a dead loss. While this may sound like heresy, it is nonetheless true, for there was always the obligation to stay in the vicinity of the pits. And often the afternoon was one of stupefying boredom, a procession of strung out cars which came by every seven or eight minutes. The 1971 race was one such - Stewart from flag to flag. Adrenalin was surely pumping in the cockpit, but in the press box it was dormant.

For Sunday to have any meaning, therefore, I would work through a routine. First of all there were the laps in my own car, this to put those 176 corners into some rough shape in my mind. And the practice days I used to get around as much as possible, spectate at Flugplatz, Bergwerk, Pflanzgarten. And this gave meaning to my Sunday afternoon, reminded me what the fellows were actually doing during their long absences from my sight.

I was last there in 1976, and recall trembling at the sight of Ronnie Peterson hammering down the Fuchsrohre on a rainy Saturday morning, car fighting him all the way. No image of the race the other week is as clear in my mind.

The stimulus, therefore, of a Grand Prix at the Nurburgring was not an instant thing. Sitting opposite the pits, you have a straight in front of you, much as at any other circuit. And it was as if you were seeing the cars pass only every fifth lap or so, such was the interval involved. True appreciation of the race came later, when you spoke to the drivers, found out who had done what where, related it to your own memory of Breidscheid or Brunnchen - "You passed him there? On the outside!..."

I went through the first part of my 'Ring Rigmarole again this time. After eight years away, the grandeur of the place was striking, the three laps exhilarating - even at the modest clip of a hired Renault 9. But beyond immediate pleasure there was no reason for the exercise for it now served no purpose in helping with my report. Indeed, it was probably a great mistake, for what chance remained now of judging objectively the new circuit?

Well, none. And if I'm honest about it, I set off to Germany without the slightest intention of judging it objectively. I knew I was going to hate it, and was actually relieved to find it really was as bland as I had known it would be...

Only one memento comfortably stays. The old grandstand, with Sport Hotel behind, somehow escaped the vandal bulldozers, so that my race day view of the 1984 Nurburgring was no different from that of previous years. And I saw the cars pass 67 times, rather than the 12 or 14 times past. Wow! And they came by me every minute and a half or so.

Yes, but where had they been in the meantime? Through a series of constant-radius turns called Castrol, Sachs and Dunlop, Shell and Veedol. Evocative, huh? Such food for the imagination.

Occasionally, when I've been in North America for a while, I momentarily forget where I am. Is this Dallas, Detroit, Montreal or what? The skyscrapers are standard, and tell me nothing. It could be Washington, Los Angeles... And increasingly there is the same sensation at race circuits, the same PoW fence in the paddock, armco, manicured grass.

This new 'Nurburgring' must unquestionably have come from a computer, so entirely lacking is it in any human idiosyncracy. Someone somewhere fed in all the relevant data... between two and three miles... no bumps... no tightening radius corners (banned by FISA - dangerous)... no long straights with slow corners at the end (which would open up distinct possibilities for overtaking)... no grandstands anywhere near the track (might permit reading of the cars' numbers)... plenty of TV camera points (gelt)...

How, I wonder, were the people at Spa permitted to get away with their new circuit, a real maverick in these modern times? Most agree that the revised track, brought back into the World Championship last year, is a complete success, and there is no mystery to this. For one thing, the circuit owners retained a considerable portion of the original circuit; for another, they took care to ensure that its character was retained in the new section.

Why was such a policy not adopted at the Nurburgring? There was, after all, virtually unlimited money available for the project. Or, failing that, why could not the cash have been spent on complete refurbishment of the old South Circuit, in itself superb and the site of the German Grand Prix of 1960 (that year an F2 race)?

Instead, they chose to bury the Sudschleife under millions of tons of earth, building on top of it the excrescence we saw the other day.

All this, however, is relative. A few days afterwards I was speaking to Chris Amon on the 'phone. These days a contented farmer at home in New Zealand, Christopher still keeps up with what is happening in Formula 1. "How was it?" he asked. And I launched into a diatribe, at one point mentioning that I'd made the mistake of first reminding myself of the old circuit.

"Yes," Amon said, "but you never drove round the original 'Ring, did you? The pre-'71 circuit.

"To my mind," he went on, "they'd already ruined it by 1971, changed its character completely. They'd taken most of the bumps out - particularly the one at Brunnchen - and they'd knocked a lot of trees down, opened up some of the corners, widened it in lots of places. It wasn't the same place at all.

"The thing about the original Nurburgring was that you had to know it, because the trees meant that most of the corners were blind - you were always having to commit the car to an apex you couldn't see. That's where the satisfaction lay in the place. And I never agreed, frankly, that it was a lot safer afterwards, because the changes made it so much quicker."

At the last race on the long circuit - 1976 - Amon refused to take the restart in the aftermath of Lauda's accident, packing up and leaving for home.

"That's right, and it was the only time I ever did anything like that. I'll admit that I was ill at ease that whole weekend. I was in the Ensign, remember, and had recently had two huge shunts in the thing because it had broken - and you had more chance of a car breaking at the 'Ring than anywhere else, let's face it. So that didn't do much for my peace of mind.

"What made up my mind to go home, though, was what happened after Niki's shunt. We all pulled up there at the accident scene, and I was just appalled that hardly anything was being done for him. I mean, it was Lunger and Merzario and those guys who got him out of the car, not marshals - there weren't any there! Stuck and I ran up the bank to a 'phone to tell them to get a bloody ambulance round.

"That, to me, was not acceptable. We all knew we took a risk every time we got in a car, which is fair enough. And there were always places where you really wouldn't want to have a shunt. Also fair enough. But if you had a shunt, I think you had the right to expect that everything possible would be done to help you - and that wasn't the case with Niki at all.

"So that was what made up my mind, right there and then. The place was nearly 15 miles round - the length of five normal circuits. And, OK, that meant you needed a lot of marshals and doctors. As it was, they were a very long time getting to Niki, and it made a big impression on me. I didn't try and organise a walk-out or anything - that was never my way, and the other guys could do what they liked.

"At the time a lot of people said that I'd 'walked out on the Nurburgring', but I didn't feel that at all. It was simply a matter of inadequate marshalling. And, as far as I was concerned, the 'Ring had ceased to be the 'Ring six years earlier..."

I don't think Chris would have been much impressed with the new circuit. And the marshalling was still lamentable...



The most spectacular book to come my way in years is Un Sorcier, Une Equipe, Christian Huet's remarkable treatise on the life and work of Amedee Gordini. It was officially launched at a ceremony in Paris a few days before the European Grand Prix, and - maintaining the Gordini connection - several members of the Renault Fl team were present, including Jean Sage, Patrick Tambay and Derek Warwick.

In attendance also was Juan Manuel Fangio, who frequently leaves Argentina for a European tour at this time of the year, beginning with Monza and the Italian Grand Prix. The great man, of course, drove a Gordini occasionally.

L'Equipe, the daily sports paper in France, enterprisingly organised a major feature for its weekend colour supplement, in which Fl correspondent Johnny Rives drove both a Renault RE50 and a Grand Prix Gordini. And so also did D. Warwick.

"It was a fabulous day," Derek said, "although unfortunately it rained the whole time. We ran at this tiny little Carol circuit, near Paris, a place where the motorcycle guys still race, apparently. It's a lovely little circuit - absolutely ideal for Superkarts. About the length of the Brands short circuit, but much narrower.

"First of all I drove the RE50 for five or six laps, just playing. And I spun it...

"Just before the pits there's a hairpin, and I was in first gear, you know, barp-barp-barp on the throttle, show off, getting sideways. I must have looked a right wally...

"Anyway, that was just to warm the car up for Johnny to drive, and then I drove the Gordini. First of all I wasn't to drive it, and then they said OK. One lap, they said, very slowly. The car was built in 1954, the year I was born.

"I was amazed. I'd never driven an old Grand Prix car. The first thing is, you get in the car, then think 'seat belts'! Then you think 'rollover bar'... You feel though you're sitting on the car, rather than in it. And in front of you is this steering wheel out of a double-decker bus! And the way the dashboard is, if you go right across the lock you bash your knuckles...

"Having said that, though, the gearbox was pretty reasonable. In fact, when I got out the first thing I did was tell Jean Sage that it was better than in RE50...

"Anyway, in the end I did six or seven laps, and it was really fabulous. I can't you tell how much I enjoyed it. Mind you, I was on tiptoe all the time. It was very progressive on the throttle, and I was giving it a bit of the old oversteer, you know, posing in front of the crowd, arm out of the window sort of stuff! Then I tried to go quicker, and a couple of times I locked up going into the hairpins -seemed to have very little in the way of brakes, but I think the system needed bleeding.

"It made me realise just how much those guys earned their money. I felt terribly vulnerable - it would be so easy to get thrown out. I drove round the old 'Ring when I got here, and I thought in one of those cars, with trees everywhere... It felt very heavy to drive, particularly the steering. And they used to race for three hours or more."

Warwick was extremely excited at meeting Fangio, who was there to watch. "He was itching to get in the car, and I think he would have driven it if the weather had been good. What an amazing man. He's 73 now, but he still looks really fit. Someone was telling me that he did a hillclimb only last year, in one of the Mercedes Formula 1 cars.

"It was a 30-kilometre hillclimb - and apparently he went past the finishing line absolutely flat chat, and kept going for another 25 kilometres or so, ending up in some town that was further up the mountain! What a wonderful man..."