Dodgy Business

Early childhood heroes. Remember them? For me, there were two: Peter Lorimer, Leeds United footballer, him of the 70mph shot, and Jackie Stewart - blue Matra-Ford, long hair, shades and corduroy cap.

They get you into bother, these people. Put on the spot by a three-man school interview panel when I was 11, I told them I read widely. Truth is, where I came from, at a time when you could actually go beyond the garden gate without an escort, all we did was kick footballs from dawn till dusk. With a three-month summer interlude trying to impersonate Geoff Boycott or Dennis Lillee (an Aussie fast bowler in case you're struggling).

The head wanted more detail. What was the last book I'd read?

"Treasure Island," I lied. I'd seen it there in my bookcase but never opened it.

"Can you remember who wrote it?" he asked.

Easy. Robert Louis Stevenson.

"Can you spell Stevenson?"

Easy. S-T-E-P-H-E-N-S-O-N.

Furrowed brow. "Are you sure? Is it not a 'V' in the middle?"

Jackie Stewart, 1971 Race of Champions, Brands Hatch © LAT

"Oh, is it?" Bugger. Down at the second fence. Blatant porkie exposed.

"Okay," I sheepishly confessed. "I've got it but I haven't actually read it yet. I'm in the middle of 'The Exciting World Of Jackie Stewart', but I didn't think you'd be very impressed by the literary merits..."

He smiled a weak smile. Any other interesting books?

I decided not to go there with the analysis of Leeds United's 1969 championship-winning season...

Anyhow, he let me into his school, where the beautiful game was astonishingly absent and they played this tediously disjointed sport called rugby union. Suddenly, ox-like kids with the athleticism/skill of pregnant camels and the creative flair of lemmings, became serious 'players'. They'd never have got near a football team... Lorimer faded in the hero stakes, JYS was now clear leader.

And so, to the bemusement of my parents, a black corduroy cap was right up there on the Christmas list. It looked faintly ridiculous atop a pin-headed schoolboy, a sentiment obviously shared by a scary police horse, 16 hands high if it was a finger, which casually removed the hat and chomped merrily away when I found myself caught in a turnstile crush outside Roker Park (Sunderland's football ground before the Stadium of Rhyming Slang).

That was the last I saw of the hat but, 15 years on, in the mid eighties as a cub reporter for Autosport, I met Stewart himself. Nigel Roebuck was otherwise engaged and I got to stand in. You hear people say that meeting your heroes is frequently disappointing but, for me, it was the opposite.

Obviously, childhood hero-worship was born out of Jackie's exploits on the way to those 27 wins and three world titles, but this was different. Here I was, still young but with a job to do, trying to be professional. Stewart is a master at putting people at ease, eminently quotable, highly knowledgeable, sharp and accommodating. The 15 minutes he'd allocated me became 45. He didn't have to make that effort.

Whenever I've subsequently spoken to him, I've always been impressed by the pertinence of his thoughts and his insight. And, because he's done it, he always speaks with authority.

On Sunday morning in Melbourne I sought him out for a chat and, almost by accident, we got onto the topic of overtaking. I was fascinated by his observations.

Stewart is now a consultant to RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) and the subject arose because I'd asked him which aspects of Nico Rosberg's debut had particularly impressed him. The decisiveness of his overtaking in Bahrain, JYS thought, was phenomenal.

I put it to him that in Rosberg and Mark Webber, Williams have a combination with great potential.

Fernando Alonso (Renault) leads Mark Webber (Williams-Cosworth) in the 2006 Malaysian GP at Sepang © LAT

"The best combination," he said, immediately. "But Mark has got to learn to pass. He stays too long behind people. When you get up to someone, they think 'oh shit, he's caught me'. And that's when you nail them. When they've kept you behind for a while, they start to think 'I can deal with this'.

"You see, Nico thinks he can pass the guy, but Mark's worried about passing the guy. In case he moves over. But you have to put him in such a position that he doesn't move over. You've got to make him think that you are in control - snooker him to the point where he can't move over. I think Mark's got a flaw in the psychological confidence of making the move."

Then, perhaps aware that he was being a bit harsh, he added: "Or perhaps he's got the car set up so that he can brake here but not there."

I was interested in this. Last year, when press room discussion got around to Webber, there tended to be two distinct camps - those who thought he was doing a sterling job with a recalcitrant car, and those who thought he was making a bit of a pig's ear of it, with way too many errors.

I belonged squarely in the first camp. In Webber I see someone who is intrinsically tough, a superb qualifier, broad enough shoulders to be honest and straight-talking, and with the self discipline to train more like an endurance athlete. Alan Jones, plus, plus, plus. A man who really wants it.

But I did wonder a bit about racer's instinct. For instance, when he got himself caught up with Giancarlo Fisichella in Malaysia. Or perhaps the heavy-handedness which gives him a reputation for sometimes being marginal. But the way I see it, he was often qualifying last year's Williams where it shouldn't have been, then racing people with a car advantage.

"Yes," Stewart agreed. "Correct. And he did the same with Jaguar. But there's a difference between driving fast and racing. My son Paul could drive fast on a track on his own, and he drove beautifully. But ask him to qualify and he tightened up. Ask him to race, and he tightened up. I never felt that. If you feel it, you've either got to fix it or get over it. And some people never do.

"Jan Magnussen never got over it. Up to F1, the guy was superb. But as soon as F1 qualifying came, he froze. After the race got past the first 10 laps, he went like magic. But he could never conquer the wind-up that occurs. Could never dissipate it.

"Now, at the moment, Rosberg can pass and [Kimi] Raikkonen can pass. [Juan Pablo] Montoya can't pass the same way that Raikkonen can. Montoya finds more trouble. It's marginal, but it's there."

Interesting, I said, because the common perception is that Montoya is this great demon overtaker.

"Yes, but I think he does it with ballsiness while Raikkonen does it with precision. And it's a very subtle difference. But that's why Raikkonen, I think, will go on to win more Grands Prix and more championships than Montoya. Juan Pablo has got incredible skill, but his mind management is not as good."

So what about Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso?

"Oh, I think Michael is great and Fernando's move on Michael in Bahrain was a masterpiece."

I've got to confess, I thought that Jackie, 67 in June, was having a senior moment. I thought he was talking about Suzuka last year.

Fernando Alonso (Renault) passes Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) for the lead of the 2006 Bahrain Grand Prix © XPB/LAT

"No, no," he said. "Bahrain this year. I saw Michael that night and said to him that it was quite a move. Michael said, what move? Well, he said, 'Fernando had the inside line and could do what he liked with me'.

"But that's the point. Michael shouldn't have given him the inside line. Michael was told Fernando was leaving the pits, so he should have moved over and slowed him up coming out of the pits.

"That's all very well for me to say, but when I was looking at it I was thinking, when's he going to do it? I was amazed he didn't. Michael behaved very well but having said that, Alonso won the race. That was the win, right there..."

And so what about that move around the outside of Schuey at 130R?

"Fernando is good, no question," Stewart said, "but the Renault is easier to drive. It's incredibly driver-friendly and they've done a fantastic job in that team to create it. I really take my hat off to them.

"I said to Flavio how good the car was to look at. I told him I'd give away 40bhp for a car like that. Because it's never taking you by surprise, so therefore you are putting your full attention into finding speed and using your skill and ability, which Alonso has a lot of.

"You're not just trying to keep up with a challenging car. You really don't want a challenge in a car. You want an invitation to drive it. It has to make you look good and feel good. And the Renault does."

I still reckon what Alonso did to Schuey at Suzuka was brave, comfy-car or not. You always have to bear in mind who was on the receiving end.

In fact, for something as brave, I'm indebted to Peter Lorimer. For a bit of nostalgia and to while away a flight to Japan, I read his book. If you don't do seventies football, my apologies, but you don't really need to.

All you need know is that the hard man of the era was Liverpool's Tommy Smith, whose complexion was pimply if you were kind, badly pocked-marked if you weren't. Smith would make a Vinnie Jones or a Mark Webber look like the sugar plum fairy.

Leeds had a new player, Allan Clarke ('Sniffer' to aficionados), who fancied himself a bit. When the two teams met and ran out onto the pitch, Clarke produced a bit of sand-paper from his shorts and said, "Here you go Tommy, a present. It'll help you get rid of all the zits when you're having a bath..."

Smith spent the next 90 minutes chasing Clarke all over the pitch trying to break his leg while the rest of the Leeds forwards luxuriated in the gaping chasms left in the Liverpool defence.

Brave? Undoubtedly.

It's nice when they're both still heroes in middle age...