Nigel Roebuck: Fifth Column

As we went into the closing laps of Sunday's European Grand Prix - for some daft reason, local motor racing politics determined it could not be the 'German Grand Prix' - the afternoon was looking pretty reasonable to Fernando Alonso.

True enough, in the dry conditions his McLaren-Mercedes couldn't quite live with Massa's Ferrari, but he was on course for eight points, and if that meant dropping a couple to Felipe, well, so be it. More important by far was that Kimi Raikkonen, winner of the two most recent races, and Lewis Hamilton, victorious in the two before that, were not going to score at all.

"I like races where the conditions change and you have to adapt," said Alonso, "but although I knew rain was expected before the end of the race, and that would be better for me, still I wasn't sure I wanted it. Knowing Lewis was out of the points, and Kimi too, I was quite happy with second place - but when the rain came, I went for it..."

So he did, and that marked him out - again - as a warrior, a racer. In this era, as we know, the world championship is all, and no one is more aware of that than Alonso, but a mere racing driver might have stuck with the pragmatic approach Fernando talked about, and banked eight safe points in the title deposit account.

For a racer, though, it's different. Once it became slippery, the Ferrari's advantage evaporated - and as soon as there was a sniff of victory Alonso was committed to the battle. Forget that only two points separate first from second: this was a matter of winning.

The enterprise was not without some risk. Massa had led for virtually the entire distance, and for more than an hour had been confident of his car's superiority in the dry. If, at the last, his victory was going to come under threat, it was a reasonable bet he wasn't going to let it go without a vigorous defence. When grip levels are low, and it's a matter of seven laps to the flag, all things are possible.

In they both came, on lap 53, for tyres more appropriate for the new conditions, and when they were on their way again, Alonso was... bursting to get on terms with the Ferrari.

When Fernando is in this situation, he is not one to sit quietly, awaiting an opportunity. Rather, he becomes very inventive with his driving, ducking and bobbing around, playing with different lines, creating a blur in his rival's mirrors, trying to disconcert him, provoke him into a mistake.

While this may be deeply unsettling for the driver in front, for those who watch it is a spectacle to savour. I think back fondly to the 1981 Monaco Grand Prix, a race which summed up the character of Alan Jones better than any other I ever saw. As the race neared its halfway point, Nelson Piquet's Brabham was in the lead, eight or so seconds clear of Jones's Williams, but Alan had the hammer down, and began to close. By lap 40 they were nose to tail.

What you need to know, before I go any further, is that, while most of us mellow with time, Jones and Piquet at that time loathed each other. Alan was very much an oldfashioned, no-nonsense, racing driver - a racer if there was one - and if he acknowledged the fundamental talent of Nelson the driver, he had no time whatever for Nelson the man, whom he thought lightweight and devious. "First rule of thumb on the race track," he said to me once. "Never trust anyone from South America..."

AJ's other intense dislike, among his fellows, was for Carlos Reutemann - his team-mate at Williams. It was just as well, I suppose, that he pre-empted the PR age, to say nothing of PC.

So there we were at Monaco, with Jones pushing Piquet. A fortnight earlier, at Zolder, the two had had a comingtogether, which ended with the Brabham in the catch-fencing. In tears of rage, Nelson marched back to the pits, and there announced that the next time Jones did anything like that, he was going to 'put him over the wall'. Colourful stuff.

Ill-advised, though. Piquet's comments did not intimidate Jones - nothing could do that - but they did greatly annoy him, and doubtless came back to him as he crowded Piquet at Monaco. Nelson, for his part, now regretted he had passed up an excellent opportunity to keep quiet.

Alan applied pressure as if with a scalpel. For a couple of laps he was all but going over the top of the Brabham, and in those circumstances Piquet was clearly flustered, and began making mistakes. Then Jones would back off for a lap or two - before rushing up on Piquet once more.

Eventually Nelson's driving became ragged in the extreme, and when, with about 20 laps to go, he caught a couple of backmarkers at Tabac, he was panicked into trying to squeeze past them. Off line, and going too fast, he locked up and slid into the guardrail.

After the race, I found Jones and asked him how he had felt at that moment. "Well," he said, "I don't often piss myself laughing in a racing car..."

Alan was in a pretty good mood, all in all, which was surprising for he had not gone on to win. In the late laps he was hampered by fluctuating fuel pressure, and Villeneuve's horribly ill-handling Ferrari closed in. On the pit straight, with four laps to go, Alan left Gilles a gap about a foot wider than his car, and the invitation was instantly accepted.

"Early in the race," Jones said, "I was behind that red shitbox, and Villeneuve knew he was holding me up - and that if he carried on, his brakes weren't going to last. So he did the right thing - he left me a small gap at Mirabeau, and then I was free to go after Piquet. Later on, when I had my problem, I repaid the favour he had done me. If I couldn't win the race, I was glad he did. Proper bloke, Gilles..."

Forgive this digression from a quarter of a century ago, but Alonso's attacking tactics on Sunday reminded me somewhat of Jones's onslaught on Piquet - not in the sense of Fernando's taking malicious pleasure in hounding Massa (although the two have had their differences) as much as in the way he went about trying to unnerve him. Afterwards there were a few words, a bit of prodding between them before they went to the podium, but it was kids' stuff.

That said, with all that is going on with Ferrari and McLaren away from the race track at the moment, there is even less love lost between them than usual. If Ron Dennis had a sweeter moment on Sunday than seeing Alonso take the flag, it was surely receiving the winning constructor's trophy from a stone-faced Michael Schumacher. I assume Alan Jones was watching at home in Australia; I suspect he probably laughed.