Numbers game

A few weeks ago I penned a feature for Autosport magazine about the fastest five F1 cars in terms of the leaps they made over what had gone before. The arbiter was something called the Pomeroy Index, invented many decades ago by Laurence Pomeroy Jr as a way of comparing lap time capabilities of cars that never raced against each other.

He took the lap speed capability of the first winning grand prix car - the 1906 Renault - as an index figure of 100. For the purposes of the feature we updated the index up to 2004 where the Ferrari F2004 had a calculated index of 234.7, meaning it could theoretically get around any given track 2.347 times faster than Ferenc Szisz's old Renault.

The beauty of the index is that it can give you a figure for pretty much any car you choose. So I've been having what comedian Rob Brydon might call 'a bit of fun' with it. In honour of Hungarian Szisz, the winner of the very first grand prix, I based a grid around the Hungaroring.

So, taking Michael Schumacher's pole time of last year as a base, here is how the fastest cars of each preceding decade would theoretically line up behind it.

Theoretical Hungaroring Grid

      Car                 Driver               Time
2004  Ferrari F2004       Michael Schumacher   1:19.146
1993  Williams FW15C      Alain Prost          1:21.520
1989  McLaren MP4/5       Ayrton Senna         1:24.607
1979  Williams FW07       Alan Jones           1:32.601
1969  Lotus 49B           Jochen Rindt         1:44.314
1959  Cooper T51          Jack Brabham         2:08.058
1939  Mercedes W163       Hermann Lang         2:14.311
1948  Alfa-Romeo Alfetta  Jean-Pierre Wimille  2:21.671
1929  Alfa-Romeo P2       Achille Varzi        2:42.012
1919  Ballot              Rene Thomas          2:51.114
1906  Renault             Ferenc Szisz         3:05.756

Clearly such a race would be another cake-walk for Michael, and the home fans wouldn't have much to cheer, but there are some fascinating details. For example, the 1993 Williams FW15C - with 3.5-litre engine, slicks, active ride and full electronic gizmos admittedly - would have theoretically qualified 16th for last year's race, in between Ricardo Zonta's Toyota and Nick Heidfeld's Jordan. Ayrton Senna's '89 McLaren would have just edged out Gianmaria Bruni's Minardi for 19th on the grid.

The difference in resources between factory teams and independents is underlined in big letters when you consider that Jordan was racing at a good 1993 pace last year and Minardi at 1989 speeds (with the proviso that they were doing so within much moretechnically restrictive regulations - but even so).

Next I took a wander over to Belgium and the old Spa track, where Chris Amon left the F1 lap record at 152.08mph in 1970, in between the trees, buildings and drainage ditches. This time I worked the Pomeroy Index the opposite way - from the past to the present to extrapolate a lap time. Here's what a grid from there would look like with representation from the 34 years of F1 development that followed.

Old Spa Grid

     Car                  Driver         Time      Avg. speed
 1.  Ferrari F2004        M Schumacher   2:34.654  190.152mph
 2.  1998 McLaren MP4-13  Mika Hakkinen  2:44.557  183.004mph
 3.  1986 Lotus 98T       Ayrton Senna   2:51.088  178.289mph
 4.  1981 Renault RE30    Rene Arnoux    3:09.419  165.059mph
 5.  1970 March 701       Chris Amon     3:27.400  152.080mph

Imagine that: an average speed of over 190mph over those lethal public roads! Thrilling but terrifying, for it would only be a matter of time before the first fatality.

I'd bet that they would. I'd also bet that faced with challenges like this on a regular basis Michael Schumacher, with so much achievement behind him and so much to lose, would quit the sport. In fact, he'd have done it a long time ago, assuming he hadn't been hurt or worse along the way. That's why, remarkable though his career numbers are, they are relatively meaningless as a comparison to those who went before him.

Today's safety levels are really the only acceptable way the sport can exist. They are of the time. But they have definitely made the sport a philosophically smaller area of endeavour. The achievement levels of a Fangio or even a Stewart (who lefta safer sport than he joined, but one that was still lethally dangerous by today's standards) stand as enormous to anything that could be achieved today.

Even if Schumacher closes his career with 100 grand prix wins and 10 championships, it cannot rank alongside the achievements of those that were playing a entirely bigger, more serious game. That's not to denigrate Michael; it's just he's working a much smaller stage in terms of challenge, even if commercially it's vastly bigger.

Passing between the trees and brick walls at over 200mph, waiting for the tyre failure or the broken suspension and knowing that the next thing would be the switching off of the light - forever - he'd be reminded with nagging regularity that it was time to move on.