Nigel Roebuck: Fifth Column

Upon learning of Ross Brawn's move to Honda, I confess that my first reaction was to ponder - yet once more - on the foolishness (and more) of Nigel Stepney. For all his bitterness and delusions of grandeur, had he trod the straight and narrow at Maranello for one more year, he might be in the pound seats now to work again with his former boss.

Whatever we think of Stepney, and the chaos he and Mike Coughlan have wrought on Formula 1, there was never any doubt about his abilities as a chief mechanic. During Stepney's time at Ferrari, Michael Schumacher won five world championships on the trot, and the level of consistent reliability achieved by the team was staggering. Even his most avowed critic would hesitate to dispute that Stepney's contribution to this was other than considerable: Ferrari may have 'won' the constructors' championship again in 2007, but by their standards reliability was notably less impressive than before.