The Second Coming

Have you ever taken a close look at Alexander Wurz's helmet design? It is a striking and colorful piece of art combining, according to Wurz, sky blue at the top, the red and white colors of the Austrian flag in the middle, earth green on the bottom and jagged zigzag design elements at the top and the bottom.

The zigzags could represent the mountains of Austria or the initials "A" and "W" but, in retrospect, these jagged symbols could just as easily reflect the ups and downs of Wurz's career in Formula One, of which there have been many.

I have always liked Alexander Wurz as a person and have admired him as a driver ever since that day at Monaco in 1998, when the 24 year-old Austrian in his blue and white Benetton B198-Playlife, went wheel to wheel with the vastly more-experienced Michael Schumacher in his Ferrari F300. It was a memorable duel that remains one of the most thrilling in recent history.

Wurz's Benetton dogged the Ferrari through the most famous serpentine of turns in Formula One - Mirabeau, the Station/Loewes Monte Carlo Grand Hairpin, Portier (where Wurz incongruously got the blue flag from the corner marshal to let Schumacher by) and down to the Mediterranean Sea.

Trading red paint with Schumi and banging sidepods and suspensions, the rookie was seemingly unaware that people simply do not pass in those circuitous turns in modern Formula One, and they certainly do not pass two-time world champions there.

To be sure, it was rash and impetuous move for which Wurz eventually paid the price, crashing spectacularly from his first Monaco Grand Prix at half-distance coming out of the tunnel. But he had made his mark by taking it to the champion after only nine races in Formula One.

Alex Wurz © XPB/LAT

Wurz owed his initial drive in the 1997 Benetton B197-Renault to a sinus condition that forced fellow Austrian Gerhard Berger, the regular Benetton driver who would be retiring at the end of that year, to stand down for three races in mid-season - the Canadian, French and British Grands Prix.

Those three races not only gave Wurz a preview of what it would be like in 1998, when he would join Benetton as a permanent race driver alongside Giancarlo Fisichella, but also enabled him to display his promise as he took third place at Silverstone in only his third race.

Although a rookie in Formula One, Wurz was already a winner, having won the Le Mans 24-Hour Endurance Race in 1996 while co-driving the Joest-Porsche WSC95 with Manuel Reuter and Davy Jones - Wurz is still the youngest winner of Le Mans at 22 years old. It seemed only a matter of time before he would prove himself in Grand Prix racing.

But having broken into Formula One with such promise, Wurz saw his Super Nova quickly fade, partially due to the arrival on the scene of another Super Nova, Kimi Raikkonen. Raikkonen, as the latest 'great thing', was scooped up by McLaren boss Ron Dennis for the 2002 season, a seat for which Wurz was being strongly considered.

After spiraling down the grid from Benetton's second driver to McLaren's test driver and then finally to Williams as third driver by 2006, it seemed that Alexander Wurz had been consigned to the ash heap of Formula One - test driving.

Stranger still, when Austrians came back to Formula One in full force with Gerhard Berger at BMW (then later on with Toro Rosso) and Dietrich Mateschitz and Helmut Marko at Red Bull, Wurz seemed to have been overlooked - there was no 'Austrian' seat for him at BMW or Red Bull.

And so the stolid Austrian stayed in Grand Prix purgatory for six long years, re-building his reputation at McLaren as test driver before re-emerging as a full-time race driver in the 2007 season, teamed with Nico Rosberg at Williams-Toyota.

When Wurz begins the 2007 season he will be 33 years old, older than Ralf Schumacher but younger than Red Bull's 35 year-old 'Uncle' David Coulthard, who this year succeeds Michael Schumacher as the oldest active driver on the grid.

Alex Wurz (Benetton-Renault B198) fights with Michael Schumacher (Ferrari F399) during the 1998 Monaco Grand Prix © LAT

Like the figure Lazarus from the Bible, and in a sport where comebacks rarely happen, Alexander Wurz has come back from the dead, and he has done it with great character and in unique fashion.

Wurz has tested for Benetton/Renault, McLaren-Mercedes and Williams - and although Formula One is something less than a meritocracy he has got his second chance in Formula One totally on merit. He has impressed team after team with his testing skills and his engineering and technical knowledge to the point where he could not be denied.

Under the heading of 'what you've done for us lately', perhaps you saw Alexander Wurz's thrilling lap at the 2006 British Grand Prix during the first session of Friday Practice. Wurz had the No.35 Williams FW28-Cosworth slithering and twitching throughout the lap, besting championed third driver Anthony Davidson's No. 36 Honda in the process. Hopefully this is prologue for his performances in 2007 on Saturday and Sunday.

But how well can we expect Wurz to do as a born-again race driver in the Williams FW29-Toyota?

At Benetton/Renault, for three and one-half years, Wurz had one podium finish (1997 British Grand Prix), one fastest lap (1998 Argentinean Grand Prix), some brilliant races and some spectacular crashes. The barrel roll melee at the Senna curve on lap one of the 1998 Canadian Grand Prix was the best remembered of those accidents and amazingly, after a re-start, Wurz went on to finish fourth in that race.

But although his time with Benetton/Renault was Wurz's best opportunity thus far in Formula One, he was, in truth, there during a hiatus. He joined the team that Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn built well after the glory days of 1994-95 and left the team well before it morphed into Renault F1 in the Alonso years.

Wurz's second podium came an astonishing eight years after his first top-three finish - and only then on a technicality. After six years and 70,000 kilometers testing for McLaren, Wurz finally got his chance when Juan Pablo Montoya fell to a tennis injury and, in the 2005 San Marino Grand Prix he was able to race the McLaren-MP4-20 he had nurtured as a test driver.

He made the best of his first race seat in five years with a fine fourth place finish - and when the BAR-Honda team was disqualified because of an illegal fuel system that became third.

Alex Wurz rolls his Benetton during the start of the 1998 Canadian Grand Prix © LAT

Typical of Wurz's luck, his fine performance at Imola was probably overshadowed and overlooked by others because of the thrilling duel between Fernando Alonso and Michel Schumacher that was to set the tone for the last two years of great races between Schumacher and the Spanish Moss.

You can be sure that Wurz will also make the best of his drive for Williams in 2007, a team he joined as test driver in 2006, but admittedly a team that is very much in the doldrums at the moment.

When Wurz came into Formula One in 1997, Williams was absolutely on top; with the Rothmans-sponsored Williams/Renault, Damon Hill had been world drivers' champion in 1996 and Jacques Villeneuve steered their car to succeed Hill as world champion in 1997.

Even now, Williams, with nine championships, ranks second behind Ferrari, which has 14 championships, though the team has not won a race since Juan Pablo Montoya won the season-ending 2004 Brazilian Grand Prix in his Williams F26.

Ten years on from the Glory Days, the 2006 Williams F1 team was a disaster, finishing eighth in the constructors' standings, just ahead of Toro Rosso, Midland and Super Aguri, notwithstanding the efforts of the able Mark Webber and his talented rookie teammate Nico Rosberg.

The Williams-Cosworth Bridgestone combination briefly sparkled at the beginning of the 2006 due to Cosworth's edge in the engine department, only to quickly dissemble as the season wore on, with bad luck and bad engineering coming together in a devastating way to ruin the 2006 season for all concerned.

The season-ending 2006 Brazilian Grand Prix summed up the season, with the two Williams drivers getting in each other's way at the start, ending their races before the Senna Curve, turn 1, lap 1. Nico Roseberg completed lap 1 with his wing torn off, which caused him to have a horrific accident in the fast left-hander that leads to the main straight in Brazil, destroying the car. It all typified this disappointing season.

Wurz is lucky in that Williams F1 can only go up from here.

Alex Wurz tests the Williams-Toyota at Silverstone © XPB/LAT

With Bridgestone now the sole tyre supplier, Wurz's work as a Williams test driver on Bridgestones in 2006 (for the requisite 42 test days and thousands of kilometers) may give him and the Williams team the marginal benefit last year's Bridgestone runners are expected to have over the ex-Michelin runners in 2007.

And the Toyota powerplant is the other bright spot for the Williams team, which, it will be remembered, had the distinction of winning the first race for Honda as an engine supplier when Nico Rosberg's father, Keke Rosberg, triumphed in the sweltering US Grand Prix at Dallas in 1984 in the Williams FW09-Honda. Williams could conceivably do the same thing for Toyota since Williams as a Formula One team may have the edge on Toyota as a team.

By the time the 2007 season rolls around, Toyota will probably have outdistanced General Motors as the world's top automobile manufacturer (as Toyota supplanted Ford for second place last year).

After five years of dilly-dallying in Formula One, you can be sure the 2007 Toyota V8 engines will be powerful and reliable - and the Williams FW29 will be the beneficiary of that powerplant. Taking a reliable Toyota engine with a Williams-designed chassis, the team, for the first time in years, both Williams and Wurz, will have a chance to run a competitive car as they bid to become comeback kids.

So, hopefully, the tallest driver in Formula One, and now one of the oldest, will redeem in 2007 the aspirations he had coming into Formula One in 1997 off a victory at Le Mans in 1996. Back then, that must have made it all seem so easy to him: but dreams, 10 years in the making, to have a permanent race seat in Formula One are about to come true; deja vu all over again.