Why F1 fans should count their blessings

Post-Hungary, before heading off on holiday, I suggested in this column that while the BBC/Sky scenario may not be quite what Formula 1 fans have at present (an excellent, live, free service), we should look at the positives because it could have been worse.

A couple of readers responded suggesting that I didn't know what I was talking about. One of them wrote: "No amount of positive spinning is going to alter the fact that the fans feel they've been screwed, and constantly repeating the 'BBC had to make cuts' mantra isn't going to change a single opinion - if anything it just makes people even more bitter and resentful."

Sky/BBC deal 'saved free-to-air' F1 © LAT

I can understand the sentiment, obviously, but I couldn't avoid a wry smile when the reader asked: "Seriously though, does anyone inside F1 have even the faintest idea what it's like to be an F1 fan? Does anyone actually give a damn about the people who ultimately pay for F1?"

Well, sorry to disappoint you, but the majority of those inside F1 are in fact just that - fans. From ex-drivers turned broadcasters, through administrators and technicians - most are die-hard racing enthusiasts.

And for many of us, trying to follow the sport in the early days was no easy task - certainly it was very much more difficult than having to wait until 6pm or whenever to see the race, as terrestrial viewers (in the UK) will do next year.

Thinking about that, and about the time of the year, brought back to me the anxiety of August 1976. I was a huge Niki Lauda fan. Don't ask me why. Maybe it was Ferrari but I don't think so. Maybe the nine poles in 1974 and again in '75 when I was at such an impressionable age. Or the fact that the '74 British Grand Prix, one of only three races we got a few snatched clips from in those days, had been led by the Austrian until a rear tyre punctured.

I can still recall the freshly retired Jackie Stewart, in the TV expert role, spotting the 'depression' in the tyre profile before anyone else and announcing that Lauda would have to pit. He was right and when Lauda did come in, he was trapped in the pitlane by the blazer brigade and sundry hangers on. How times have changed! I felt his fury for him. Maybe that helped as well.

Anyway, I was 15 in '76 when my mother won a family holiday to Majorca in a biscuit competition. We were due to fly on Thursday, August 5, from Heathrow Airport and as I was attending a tennis camp in my native north-east early in the week, I was busy with the packing while watching the closing ceremony from the Montreal Olympics.

In 1974, F1 coverage in the UK was limited to a few races, like the British GP © LAT

The TV news then announced that James Hunt had won the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring and that Lauda had been critically injured in a fiery crash. That was the full extent of the information. I listened constantly to hourly news bulletins, fearing the worst.

Never mind waiting until 6pm, it was not until the following Thursday, as we arrived at Heathrow, that I was able to buy AUTOSPORT and find out what had happened. The fifth paragraph of the news story detailing Lauda's crash is revealing. It starts: "As many of you may already know, the race started on a damp track and all the runners, save Jochen Mass, started on wet tyres."

You wouldn't write that today because 95 per cent of your audience would already have seen every lap. Back then, any information would have been gleaned from reading short pieces in national papers, many of which had carried the account of Guy Edwards, one of those who helped pull Lauda from his blazing Ferrari.

The day that we flew, Lauda's life was evidently still in danger and the idea of spending a week on a Spanish-speaking island where I couldn't understand the news bulletins, and the British papers were a day late, filled me with frustration. All I knew was that Lauda was lying in a Mannheim hospital in a critical condition.

Plan B. On day one I was in the swimming pool, going up and down in my stars and stripes Speedos (the ones everyone bought after Mark Spitz won seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics). Regularly I was overtaken by this tanned, Amazonian girl, the only other person in the pool. I noted that she could stand up in the deep end, which I sure as hell couldn't. But when she climbed out and went to sit by her parents, who happened to be reading a German newspaper, my mind was made up.

When she dived back in, I asked her whether she spoke English and, thankfully, she did. I explained about Lauda and asked if there was anything about him in her parents' paper. There was, she said, then took me across, introduced me and kindly translated the article for me.

Few updates were available in the UK following Lauda's German GP shunt © LAT

The last paragraph of AUTOSPORT's Pit & Paddock story had read: "Time is the deciding factor and it is now up to Lauda's own will if he is to survive. As to his racing career, one must fear that that, anyway, is over."

Five days after the accident, however, Margit (that was her name) explained that the German press was more positive.

I complimented her on her swimming prowess, whereupon she said that she'd always done a lot of sport. I said that I played quite a lot of tennis and she revealed that so did she, asking if I fancied a hit that afternoon.

She had a serve that made the Williams sisters looked tame and a forehand like Steffi Graf's - before we'd ever seen her, of course. After two and a half hours under the Majorcan sun she'd barely broken sweat. I was like a beetroot. I didn't feel quite so bad when she explained, with a smile, that she'd won her area title and just missed out on the national training squads.

We played every day for a week and it didn't get any better. Every day she'd bring the paper and translate the Lauda updates for me. If the price of the latest information was the indignity of being run ragged on a tennis court - by a girl - then so be it.

When she revealed just before we left that the danger to Lauda's life had passed and they were even talking about a return to racing, I fell in love. Again. I'd like to think I qualify as a fan. Of racing, that is.