Nigel Roebuck: Fifth Column

On recent days, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his death, many of us wrote of Gilles Villeneuve, and inevitably discussed the circumstances of his final days - circumstances which contributed to what happened at Zolder on May 8, 1982.

At the previous race, Imola, Villeneuve and Didier Pironi were cruising to a Ferrari one-two. In those non-refuelling days, the turbocharged cars were low on gas in the closing laps, and it was crucial that they should take it easy to the flag.

On the final lap, Pironi suddenly spurted past an unsuspecting Villeneuve and stole the victory. Gilles, incensed, vowed never to speak to Pironi again. Two weeks later, in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix, he was killed.

Forgive my going over these events again, but in one respect they are relevant to what happened in Monaco on Sunday. When I talked to Gilles, a week before his death, he was quite rational in his analysis of Imola.

"It was going to be my race because I was in front when we became first and second - Ferrari put out a board, saying 'Hold'. We were very low on fuel - Jesus Christ, can you imagine a scene where two Ferraris, leading a race in Italy, ran out of fuel on the last lap?"

Probably the two purest racers I ever saw were Villeneuve and Stirling Moss, yet neither had any problem, in certain circumstances, in accepting 'team orders'. Why? Because both men were consummate 'team players' - an outmoded virtue perhaps, but no less valuable for that.

We've had a good few of them over time. Men like Tony Brooks and Ronnie Peterson - great drivers, established drivers, well worthy of the world championship.

When Peterson joined Lotus for 1978, it was on the understanding that the plan was for Mario Andretti to win the world championship. Andretti had earned it, team owner Colin Chapman insisted: he had played a huge role in restoring the team to glory, and this was to be his year, okay? Peterson, his career then in a slump, agreed.

Although Andretti dominated the first half of '78, as the year wore on Peterson came on strong, and there were races at which he was plainly quicker. At Zandvoort, Mario was in trouble towards the end, but still Ronnie followed him over the line. Had he thought about overtaking? "If he'd really slowed, I'd have had to," said Peterson, "but otherwise, no - of course not. I'd given my word."

Both these men were mature F1 drivers, with talent from the top drawer. In 1978 the likelihood was that a Lotus driver would become champion, but if Ronnie were occasionally frustrated, he kept it to himself - indeed, in the course of that summer, his friendship with Mario grew ever stronger.

Different days, of course. But since Sunday, and the hysteria about Lewis Hamilton's not being 'allowed' to win the Monaco Grand Prix, I've considered other scenarios from the past. As with Lotus in 1978, so, for example, with Williams in '80: this, new arrival Carlos Reutemann was told, is to be Alan Jones's year, got it? Carlos, happy to be a Williams driver, got it.

Easy to forget now, but time was when a star driver, whose own car had failed, would take over that of his number two or three - indeed, one of Juan Manuel Fangio's most fabled drives came at Monaco in 1956, when he took over the car of Ferrari team-mate Peter Collins and began a frantic pursuit of Moss's Maserati.

Fangio and Collins shared the points earned by the car that day, and the same was true at Aintree the following year, when Moss took over Brooks's Vanwall and scored a famous first victory for a British car in a world championship grand prix.

Two years earlier, at the same circuit, Stirling had won his first grand prix, in a Mercedes. To this day, he says, he has no idea whether or not Fangio, the team leader, let him win on home soil. Juan Manuel - and Alfred Neubauer, the autocratic team manager - took that to the grave.

My point is that too often it is forgotten that grand prix racing is also a team sport. I'll concede that I was outraged by what occurred in Austria in 2002, when Rubens Barrichello dominated team-mate Michael Schumacher in both qualifying and race, and was then ordered to give way within yards of the flag, not least because that came across as Jean Todt giving the finger not only to the crowd, but to the sport as a whole. The only motivation was to give beloved Michael a few more points towards yet another championship - which he was already dominating, and which had reached only round six.

What happened at Monaco, it seems to me, was hardly the same thing. Perhaps, as many insisted, Hamilton was faster than Alonso all weekend, would have outqualified him, would have beaten him in the race, but the facts are that Fernando was fastest in both sessions on Thursday, duplicated the feat in qualifying, and then drove 78 perfect laps on Sunday - all without damaging a car. To suggest that the Monaco Grand Prix was handed to him strikes me as an absurdity.

Ron Dennis has been castigated for his role in the proceedings, but I have sympathy for his predicament. When Todt spoke to the press at the A1-Ring, the gist of his remarks was, 'I'm only interested in Ferrari - sod the lot of you'.

In the case of Dennis, though, one knows that any degree of manipulation in a race is fundamentally anathema to him. Ron has always been a believer in letting his drivers race each other, and Hamilton is not facing rules like those imposed by Lotus on Peterson or Williams on Reutemann

This was a matter of one race: as Dennis said on Sunday, "I don't like to see these things happen because I am an absolute racer, but it's the way you have to win the Monaco Grand Prix."

I come back to Villeneuve and Imola '82: 'Can you imagine a scene where two Ferraris, leading a race in Italy, ran out of fuel on the last lap?' Equally, can you imagine the approbation which would have come Dennis's way if he had given Alonso and Hamilton free rein, and finished up with a heap of silver trash, while Massa's Ferrari swept on to victory?

Monaco, let's face it, is a special case. Overtaking is nigh impossible even when the car in front is way slower (as Kimi Raikkonen can tell you), and the specification of the contemporary F1 car only exacerbates the problem. With a double world champion and a supernaturally talented rookie on his hands, Dennis already has a delicate situation to manage, and I, for one, don't blame him at all for his tactics on Sunday. No one loves racing more than I, but expecting it at Monaco is like ordering an absinthe in a tea room.

Now the FIA is to 'investigate' McLaren for its conduct in Monaco. One trusts, given that no action was taken against Ferrari five years ago, that it will conclude there is no case to answer. Hamilton has four seconds and a third from his five-race F1 career to date. He will win one soon, on a normal circuit like the A1-Ring - and assuredly will not be called upon simply to bolster a world champion's points tally.

Had there been an intervention of the safety car on Sunday, of course, McLaren's tactics would have worked to the advantage of Lewis. Would there, in that event, have been a similar outcry? No, I don't think so, either.