Dave Baker

Motor sport is a dangerous and exciting sport, what little regulation that existed during the Fangio/Moss/Hawthorn era ensured the drivers had to keep themselves out of trouble, no ship to shore ensured they wouldn’t have known Alonso was about to beat their fastest lap therefore risking damage to their car was just not an option.

The now discredited team orders were accepted by everyone then because the team managers couldn’t be in the car with the driver and what could be conveyed on a pit board had to be deciphered by team mates. That’s what made Fangio/Moss and Hawthorn et al great, the ability to think whilst driving instead of being remotely controlled and instructed on what fuel mix to use every lap.

Were it not for the ludicrously overcomplicated nature of F1 and the FIA the Piquet/Alonso incident would never have happened. F1 is a very simple proposition, put 20 or so guys in cars and drop the flag, the one that crosses the line first is the winner. If one of them deliberately drives into another, best he watches his back at the next race which sounds like a recipe for Death Race but it’s been proven that it breeds more sportsmen than maniacs.

Eliminate FIA interference, I live in hope that Jean Todt will accomplish that feat but I doubt it, the best he can manage will be to improve a fundamentally flawed organisation.

Oh, and Greg Broughton…….I believe you would rather Clark and Stewart’s reputations remain untarnished, not unburnished, to burnish something is to polish it.;)

BTW, the Jochen Mass article was one of my favourite reads since the Frank Gardner interview. Well done all.

Guys, this isn’t the Daily Mail website, as at least one of you seems to misapprehend – it’s Motor Sport. And you know what? The vast majority of Motor Sport’s readers are dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts who love all the good things about our sport, irrespective of what part of the world those good things come from, but also abhor any of the bad things about it, again irrespective of nationality. We criticise the various acts which have stained Schumacher’s career not because he is German, but because he was wrong. Full stop.

And you know what else? Motor Sport readers, like the vast majority of Britain’s many real F1 fans (who pay to watch, come rain or come shine, in good times for British motor racing and in bad), LOVE their heroes wherever they come from, Germany most certainly included.

Witness the genuine warmth with which Sebastian Vettel’s win was greeted at Silverstone this year – despite the fact that he was emerging as a challenger to a British driver for the world title. Read the current edition of Motor Sport (I suspect many of Nigel Roebuck’s critics don’t or won’t) and you will come across a very affectionately written piece by Simon Taylor (a Brit) on Jochen Mass (a German), in which the similar warmth in which Mass is held by the British motorsport community comes across just as strongly.

The much-missed Stefan Bellof; Smokin’ Jo Winkelhock in the tin tops; Hans-Joachim Stuck – all were held in great affection and esteem by British fans.
I don’t detect any British animus whatsoever to the various German stars in F1 today. Alongside Vettel, I would say that Nico Rosberg, Timo Glock, Nick Heidfeld and Adrian Sutil are all regarded well enough by British fans. Speaking personally, I like them all as individuals and, whilst naturally I wouldn’t place them all as equals in terms of driving talent, I think each of them has shone from time to time in Grands Prix and I’ve cheered them all when they have (and groaned at the bad luck of them all too, particularly Sutil at Monaco, I suppose).

Finally, anyone who can append trite comments about British anti-Germanism to an article by Nigel Roebuck, of all people, really does not know their man. Anyone who’s followed his fine articles over the years knows that he has two or three genuine heroes. Gilles Villeneuve and Jean Behra are two of them, but, above all his other heroes, I think I’m right in saying that Mr Roebuck places Bernd Rosemeyer, the great German driver of the thirties.

The people who have made the remarks in question owe Nigel Roebuck an apology. If the problem is not they themselves are just anti-British, they may even be big enough to offer one.

Prost (another quite brilliant driver)committed acts oft missed that people would question. Senna was silly to try to get all eye for an eye but Prosts actions were relevant contextually nonetheless.

It was obvious to many observers but Senna vehemently denied it at the time. He later admitted as much many years later.

I put both Senna and Schumacher in the “flawed genius” category. Jim Clark’s and Jackie Stewart’s reputation, however, remain unburnished.

I am incredulous that the FIA could have sat on it for months when more than a few people must have cottoned on to what had happened at the time.

Perhaps the desertion of BMW, Honda and Toyota, and the way sponsors have distanced themselves from Tiger Woods will be all the stimulus the FIA need to raise their game and to stop insulting the intelligence of people that follow F1?

Merry Xmas

Piquet’s action is the more treacherous for its lengthy premeditation period and the circumstances under which the “truth” came to light (as you succinctly summed up: fired, revenge).

Schumacher’s treacheries were the split-second acts of a sportsman’s mind gone numb with the thought of being beaten by someone, anyone, he considered an inferior. Like Senna before him, this competitiveness is probably best known only to a few mad people at the top of their respective games. It doesn’t justify anything, but it sure is a lot more romantic to imagine what goes on in the minds of our beloved sport’s “greats” at their moments of weakness than picturing a petulent Piquet trying to save his justly waning career.

I agree completely with your comparisons between Schuey’s “accident” and Piquet’s. While I don’t think you’ve commented so far in re. the punishment’s for Flav and Pat, I think Flav’s lifetime ban is highly disproportional to Pat’s 5 year penalty. Why? More F1 politics, I suppose.