Motor Sport MagazineMotor Sport Magazine » Gilles Villeneuve

Not No1s, but first-rate drives

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:28:19 +0000

Dear Nigel,

There are ‘superstars’ in motor sport, but what has always captivated me are those instances where drivers not considered in the highest echelon have their ‘day of days’ – where they elevate themselves to produce an exceptional performance, not necessarily winning but demonstrating immense skill, determination and, in some cases, courage and integrity.

I’m thinking of Brundle in Canada and Britain in 1992, Warwick getting back in the Lotus after Donnelly’s 1990 crash, Patrese on several occasions in ’91, Tambay at Imola the year after Gilles’ death, Herbert finishing within 10 seconds of the winner at Rio ’89, Hill’s races at Japan and Australia in ’94 when he took the fight to Schumacher. What would you consider to be the standout performances from the ‘not quite number ones’ over the years?

Richard McConnell

Dear Richard,

There have been so many outstanding performances by ‘not quite numbers ones’ over the years, but let me keep it to three that stick in my mind – and three that ended in victories that were not inherited flukes, but well deserved.

First, I think of Jean-Pierre Beltoise at the 1972 Monaco Grand Prix. The weather was foul for that year’s race – not only torrentially wet but also, more surprisingly, distinctly cold. I can still remember the wind howling in from the sea. JPB, driving for BRM, qualified fourth but made a fantastic start – no rolling starts in the wet after laps behind the safety car in those days – and passed Ickx, Fittipaldi and Regazzoni before Ste Devote, thus taking a lead he was never to lose. Beltoise pulled away at a prodigious rate, and what says everything about his drive is that, after two-and-a-half hours, he took the chequered flag 40 seconds ahead of Ickx, himself acknowledged as a supreme wet weather driver.

Next comes Clay Regazzoni, and while I could have picked his perfect drive at the Nürburgring in 1974, instead I’ll go for Long Beach in ’76. From pole position – more than half a second quicker than Ferrari team-mate Lauda – Clay took the lead at the start and simply left everyone behind. There wasn’t the hint of a mistake, and on days like this you wondered why Regazzoni didn’t always drive this way.

Last, I’ll go with Riccardo Patrese at the 1991 Portuguese Grand Prix. It’s often forgotten that through the first half of that season Patrese out-qualified Williams-Renault team-mate Mansell every time out, and Riccardo was very much a factor that year. At Estoril his engine blew in final qualifying and he was allowed out in the T-car only at the very end of the session, once it had been established that Nigel didn’t need it. In a fury Riccardo took pole position, ahead of the McLarens of Berger and Senna – and Mansell. On race day no one could hold Patrese – who beat Senna by more than 20 seconds…

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The fuss about Stirling…

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:26:37 +0000

The fuss about Stirling…

Dear Nigel,

This might well brand me a heretic, and I’m aware that I risk public execution should I ever step foot into the UK again, but can you please explain to me what all the fuss is about Stirling Moss? Apart perhaps from his Mille Miglia win, what else did he ever really achieve? In the last few years he’s been trading on a reputation, and fortunately for him, the paying public are too young to have seen him race in his prime.

I’m always surprised that he’s referred to as a living legend – give me Brian Redman or Derek Bell over Moss any day. If we must have an elder statesman of motor sport, surely John Surtees is streets ahead of Stirling?

Martin McAllen

Dear Martin,

On reading your e-mail, I found myself in a bit of a dilemma. Was it a spoof – or was it the most fatuous question I have ever been asked?

Assuming it not to be a spoof, I should perhaps begin by telling you my opinion of Stirling Moss. I’m by no means alone in believing him to be the greatest racing driver God has yet put on this earth. Therefore we’re somewhat at odds, you might say.

More than any other driver before or since, it seems to me, Moss had no flaws worth the name. He excelled on all types of circuit, in all types of car, in all kinds of weather. He was a beautiful stylist, as pure a racer as ever there has been, and an absolute – old-fashioned word though it be in today’s world – sportsman.

If you’re seriously asking what Stirling achieved, ‘apart perhaps from his Mille Miglia win’, I suggest you buy a racing book or two and start reading. No, he never won the almighty World Championship, but so what? Neither did the likes of Jacky Ickx and Ronnie Peterson and Gilles Villeneuve, greater drivers by far than many who did win it. In 1958, for what it’s worth, Moss won four Grands Prix and lost the title to a driver (Mike Hawthorn) who won one.

Stirling’s greatest race was the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix, where he single-handedly took on – and beat – the far more powerful Ferraris, and did it, what’s more, in Rob Walker’s privately-entered, obsolete Lotus. Richie Ginther finished second that day, with Phil Hill third, and when I asked Ginther which had been his greatest drive, he said this: “Oh, Monaco ’61, no question. I was right on the limit all the way – and I think Stirling was, too. That son of a gun… believe me, any time you did well against him, you knew you’d really done something.”

Was Moss the greatest driver Ginther ever encountered? “Oh yes,” he said, as if the question were redundant. “And by a long way…”

‘In the last few years,’ you write, ‘he’s just been trading on a reputation, and fortunately for him, the paying public are too young ever to have seen him race in his prime.’ A cheap remark – particularly given that you are apparently old enough to have formed a high opinion of Messrs Surtees, Redman and Bell – and an inaccurate one, too. I rather doubt these gentlemen would endorse your opinion of S Moss.

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Villeneuve’s super-team

Nigel Roebuck — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:49:46 +0000

Villeneuve’s super-team

Dear Nigel,

Do you know the details of the ‘super-team’ that Gilles Villeneuve was putting together before his unfortunate death in 1982? My understanding is that his good friend and former Ferrari team-mate Jody Scheckter was involved in advising him, and a huge ‘blank cheque’ budget was in place. As anyone who ever witnessed his driving knew, he was clearly in need of better car.

Allan Fields

Dear Allan,

Gilles did indeed harbour thoughts of putting together a ‘super-team’, and put a fair amount of time and effort into trying to realize that aim. In the last few weeks of his life, though, I rather got the impression that he had tired of the idea, that in the end he wanted to concentrate on simply being a driver.

It was a couple of days after Imola in 1982 (where Didier Pironi ‘stole’ the victory from him on the last lap) that I had my last long conversation with him, on the phone. I’ve written of it many times, of his resolution never to speak to Pironi again, etc, and at one point I asked him if he would stay with Ferrari for 1983. “Not,” he said immediately, “if Pironi’s still there – no way”, and he added that he thought Didier probably would remain with Ferrari, not least because he was Marco Piccinini’s ‘favourite’.

Although Villeneuve loved Ferrari – the man as well as the team – I think he would indeed have left at the end of ’82 (unless the Old Man had intervened, and got rid of Pironi), and gone on to drive either for McLaren or Williams, both of whom were extremely keen to sign him.

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A glimpse of Schumacher greatness

Nigel Roebuck — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:48:31 +0000

A glimpse of Schumacher greatness

The Canadian Grand Prix was a frantic affair in every respect, and not surprisingly so. It’s difficult to categorise the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve – in essence it’s a normal road circuit, but it was built before huge run-offs were the norm, and the proximity of the guardrails and walls serves to convey the impression of a street track. By current standards, it is therefore extremely unforgiving – make a mistake, and the chances are that you will hit something.

That’s on a typically dry day. Safety cars tend to feature abnormally in the Canadian Grand Prix, and when you threw in the element of rain – such as we had for this year’s race – there was the potential for chaos. Before the start everyone was speculating about the number of safety car periods there might be, and it was sure that Bernd Maylander was in for a busy afternoon, but no one expected the sort of rain that eventually came down after 20 laps or so – the forecast had originally been for ‘showers’…

What we got, though, was effectively a monsoon, and after the pack had trailed around behind the safety car for half a dozen laps Charlie Whiting decided enough was enough and brought the race to a halt. There was a lot of noisy protest from sections of the crowd, but unquestionably it was the right call – within minutes the whole place was awash, and one thought back to Adelaide in 1991 when the race was red-flagged after only 14 laps, and never restarted. By calling a halt to things when he did, Whiting allowed for the possibility of further racing taking place later – more than two hours later, as it turned out.

They are fanatical about Formula 1 in Montréal, and few – if any – spectators drifted away during the enforced stop, even though it felt as though the rain would never stop. When it did, finally, they had every reason to rejoice that they had stayed. After nine more laps behind the safety car – in total, Maylander paced the field for 31 of the 70 laps – they were away again, and Jenson Button, after experiencing every racing incident known to man, wasn’t in the top 15.

As we know, a combination of two further safety car periods, clever tyre choice – and inspired driving – led to a situation where Button scythed up the order and took the lead on the very last lap, when Sebastian Vettel, who had comfortably led throughout, allowed himself to be pressured into a rare mistake. It was a scintillating drive by Jenson, perhaps the best we have ever seen from him: how often he excels in mixed conditions, such as at Melbourne last year, when again he was the winner.

Through the ‘second’ segment of the race someone else excelled, too. Even more than Button, Michael Schumacher long enjoyed a reputation for supremacy in uncertain conditions, but since his comeback at the beginning of last season, there have been very few occasions when Schumacher reminded one of the driver he had been.

In dry qualifying at Montréal, Michael had – as usual – been outqualified by Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, and he followed him, too, in the first segment of the race. When the deluge had abated, however, and the race restarted behind the safety car (with everyone on full wets), Schumacher dived into the pits as soon as Maylander pulled off and took on intermediates. Back in 12th place, in truth there was little to be lost, but his willingness to chance intermediates – and it was his decision to switch to them – was not only brave, but also inspired.

Over the next couple of laps the world and his wife came in for inters, but by then Michael was already enjoying the superiority of them. As others fell foul of the conditions, he began to move up, and his one-fell-swoop pass of the squabbling Massa and Kobayashi duo was pure Schumacher opportunism at its best.

By lap 51, with 19 to the flag, he was up into second place, and it began to look as though he would make the podium for the first time since his return. On lap 58, though, there was yet another three-lap safety car period (after Heidfeld had clattered into a wall) which closed up the pack once more, and on top of that Charlie Whiting decided by lap 63 that conditions – there was a dry ‘line’ all round the track by now – were such that DRS (the ‘moveable’ rear wing) could be enabled for the first time in the race.

Although he fought hard, Schumacher in this situation was unable to resist both Button and Webber, so in the end he finished fourth, and just missed that podium. I don’t suggest that Michael will ever again be the driver he was – in the dry he simply isn’t quick enough any more – but on a day of tricky and uncertain conditions, when experience and guile had a major role to play, he gave us the first real reminder of the greatness that once was. Afterwards he chose to shrug it off, but I’ll warrant that inwardly Schumacher got more satisfaction from this day in Montréal than any other since the comeback.

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Systems overdrive

Nigel Roebuck — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 08:43:20 +0000

Systems overdrive

Adrian Newey isn’t a fan of KERS, but why he would be? Yes, it provides an 80-horsepower boost for a few seconds a lap, but a genius like Adrian has subtler ways of going faster than employing a ‘push to pass’ button, and that’s what it amounts to. At a time when FIA president Max Mosley was insisting that Formula 1 needed drastically to cut its costs, so the governing body introduced KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System), the argument being that it was ‘green’ in concept and the beginning of a path down which F1 must proceed if it were to have any chance of long-term survival. And if it cost a massive amount of money to develop, well, too bad, start serving up cheaper Parmesan in the motorhomes…

For all its green credentials, KERS would never appeal to a man like Newey. For one thing, it is a component on an F1 car over which he has no control; for another, it necessarily screws up the purity of his designs. With or without KERS, the minimum weight limit of an F1 car is 640 kilos, so if you don’t run KERS – as with Red Bull at Melbourne – you run an equivalent weight of ballast, and that’s fine, because you can position ballast and use it to your car’s best advantage. Sebastian Vettel utterly dominated the Australian Grand Prix in a car of perfect balance – without KERS.

Melbourne, though, was a bit of a special case, for it lacks a straight of any consequence. Come Sepang, with two extremely long straights, and KERS simply had to come into the reckoning – even for Red Bull. Even though his team, concerned about a potential problem, requested that he not use it for a portion of the race, Vettel still won again. But Webber, whose system was inoperative from the start, was decidedly hampered. In the circumstances Mark’s fourth place was a great achievement, but on the long straights his lack of KERS invariably kept him from getting within the requisite one second of the car in front – which meant, of course, that he was unable to deploy his ‘moveable rear wing’, otherwise known as DRS (Drag Reduction System).

All initials and systems, contemporary F1, isn’t it? Fernando Alonso had the opposite problem: his KERS was working, but his DRS wasn’t…

Over time all manner of things have been considered to improve the quality of the racing – or, at least, to permit changes in the order. That’s why refuelling was originally brought back, for example, and why, at different times, there has been talk of weight penalties for successful cars (as in the Trophee Andros ice racing series), and more recently proposals of rallycross-style ‘short cuts’ on the circuits – and even sprinkler systems to create ‘rain’.

All these ideas have been a tacit acknowledgement of F1’s ‘lack of overtaking’ problem, and I confess that whenever anything like this comes up I find myself thinking, ‘What would Ayrton or Gilles have made of this?’ Or, come to that, Jenks? And it doesn’t take me long to arrive at an answer.

I really wasn’t surprised that Niki Lauda contemptuously dismissed the ‘moveable rear wing’: “Completely crazy – now the FIA decides where you can overtake…”

Some suggest that these systems are no different from adjustable boost in the turbo era, whereby you could temporarily award yourself some extra horsepower (at the same time knowing that it was eating into your restricted fuel allowance for the race). But that argument is hardly valid – if a following driver whopped up his boost to pass you, there was nothing to stop you doing the same to defend your position.

All cars were operating to the same rules at all times in the race, that’s my point, and surely that is fundamental to anything calling itself ‘Grand Prix racing’. DRS strikes me as akin to investing in the best running shoes for all competitors – and then putting stones in some of them.

By common consent, wet races are invariably far more exciting – hence the ‘sprinkler’ idea – but why is that the case? It’s not rocket science; it’s because there is less grip. No, we can’t un-invent downforce, but surely we can come up with a set of aerodynamic rules that permit cars closely to follow each other through fast corners, perhaps generating downforce from shaped underbody, rather than relying absolutely on external appendage.

“Ah, here’s the purist – the keeper of the flame…” Max would murmur when I arrived at one of his functions, and I couldn’t – and can’t – take issue. I’ve loved Grand Prix racing all my life, and I’ve never cared to see artifices introduced to turn the sport into ‘The Show’, particularly systems – like KERS and DRS – which involve no element of driving skill. Of course I want to see better racing as much as anyone – but it has to be real. Remember the Hanford Wing, which undoubtedly increased the amount of overtaking in CART events on superspeedways, but rendered the races farcical? ‘I pass you here each lap, and you pass me there…’

F1 has surely become way too convoluted and complicated. Some years ago I asked Patrick Head what he would do to improve F1. “Oh, ban wings,” he said immediately, somewhat to my surprise. Then he laughed. “But that would never happen – think of all that lost advertising space…”

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Seconds would be great…

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:28:36 +0000

Seconds would be great…

Dear Nigel,

I’ve just got hold of another copy of your excellent Grand Prix Greats (lost the first one years ago!) and three questions arise. Firstly, if you produced an updated version now, who would be in there from the intervening 25 years? Secondly, anyone in retrospect you’d leave out? And finally, one of the reasons for buying it again was to see my all-time favourite F1 photo – that amazing shot of Gilles brushing the barriers at Zeltweg. I’d love a copy!

Richard Morris

Dear Richard,

Ye Gods, it seems a very long time since I wrote Grand Prix Greats, and indeed it is – if memory serves, the book was published in 1986, since when quite a lot has happened in Grand Prix racing, if you think about it.

The sub-head on the cover of the book reads, ‘A personal appreciation of 25 famous Formula 1 drivers’, which is exactly what it is. At no time was it ever intended to be my assessment of the 25 best drivers – the publisher asked me simply to write about a selection of drivers I found particularly interesting, and inevitably some of those included were personal favourites, notably my childhood hero Jean Behra, Chris Amon, Clay Regazzoni and Patrick Depailler.

When the book was published, many were surprised by the omission of Tazio Nuvolari – believed by many to be the greatest driver who ever lived – but I left him out because so much had already been written about him, and I felt there was little I could add. As well as that, when, as a kid, I read about the drivers of that era, Bernd Rosemeyer and Nuvolari’s great rival Achille Varzi for some reason interested me more, and both are included in the book.

Over the years many have asked me if I planned ever to write a revised edition of Grand Prix Greats, and perhaps one day I will. Whenever I’ve discussed it with the publisher, though, I’ve made it clear that I would be reluctant to drop any of the original 25. In many cases some of those would need updating, of course, but in my mind any new edition would have to be greatly expanded, so as to add chapters on others I think worthy of inclusion. Off the top of my head, I’d put in Mansell, Schumacher, Häkkinen, Alonso, Räikkönen, Hamilton, World Champions all, but also such as Montoya and Kubica, both of whom have talent to throw away. And from way, way back, Jean-Pierre Wimille…

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Picking an ’82 winner

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:27:05 +0000

Picking an ’82 winner

Dear Nigel,

We’ve just had a season when a Ferrari driver could/should have won the F1 title but didn’t. Very rare for it to slip through the fingers of Ferrari of all teams when in the driving seat! The most recent occasion this happened prior to 2010 was perhaps 1982, for very different and tragic reasons of course. I know you were a fan and also a close pal of Gilles but, if you are able to look at it without bias, who in your mind would have got the upper hand had we been treated to a season-long Villeneuve-Pironi battle? Sure, Gilles appeared the more spectacular/quicker of the two, but Pironi perhaps the more shrewd and he was, after all, at the time of his accident beginning to stamp his authority on the season. And, no, nor can I believe that 28 years have since passed!

Joe Gillis

Dear Joe,

Yes, Gilles was a friend, and I think I’ll always believe him to be the fastest racing driver there has ever been, but your question is a good one, and I’ll do my best to be unbiased in answering it!

We know what happened in 1982: Pironi ‘stole’ the victory from Villeneuve at Imola, and two weeks later, at Zolder, Gilles was killed at the end of qualifying. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind – after talking at length to Villeneuve on the phone a couple of days after Imola, and again on the Friday at Zolder – that Pironi’s duplicity was responsible for the all-or-nothing frame of mind in which he went to his last race.

Three months later, of course, Didier – leading the World Championship – had the accident in practice at Hockenheim which was to end his motor racing career. And five years after that, having taken up powerboat racing, he was killed in an accident in the Needles Trophy.

At the end of 1982 Enzo Ferrari had a trophy made for him, inscribed – in Italian, of course – ‘Didier Pironi, the true World Champion of 1982’. And, had he not been so grievously injured at Hockenheim, I’m sure he would have taken the title that year. Would he have done so, however, if Villeneuve had still been around?

It’s certainly not impossible. No, he wasn’t as quick as Gilles – no one was – but in 1979 that had also been true of Jody Scheckter, and although Gilles had been the Ferrari driver who supplied the blinding speed and the drama, Jody had been the one to concentrate on points, and thus came out of the season as World Champion.

It could have gone that way for Pironi, too. Let’s bear in mind that Didier had gone beyond being merely a good Grand Prix driver, and was becoming a great one. As Mauro Forghieri put it to me, “Because Gilles was on another level, it wasn’t until he had gone that we began to realise just how good Pironi was…”

So… I think it could have gone either way, as in 1979. In my heart, though, I’ll always believe that Villeneuve would have done it, and you wouldn’t really expect me to say anything else, would you?

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Keke’s close call in Can-Am

Gordon Kirby — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:12:47 +0000

Keke’s close call in Can-Am

Back in 1979 Keke Rosberg was an eager young star, racing in both Formula 1 and the ‘new era’ Can-Am in America. Rosberg broke into F1 in 1978 driving various races for the Theodore, Wolf and ATS teams. In ‘79 he drove for Wolf through the second half of the year after James Hunt decided to quit mid-season. But at the start of ‘79 Keke had nothing in F1 and was committed to racing in the States in one of Paul Newman’s Lola-based Spyder Can-Am cars.

The Spyder was fast but fragile and burned up its front tyres. Rosberg won the season-opener at Road Atlanta and again at Watkins Glen in mid-summer. He also finished second to that year’s World Champion Alan Jones in Carl Haas’s Lola after a fierce battle at Mid-Ohio. But there were almost as many crashes.

“I had a bad year,” Keke recalls. “I was often very fast but I kept blowing front tyres. I pushed the fronts too hard, but they didn’t warn you. It just burst. It was the shoulder that went all the time. I had a huge shunt at Willow Springs in testing. I went about three miles across the desert in a cloud of dust.

“I had another big one at Laguna Seca. My first lap of qualifying was good, but not quite good enough. My brain said you should not do a second lap, but my heart said, ‘Go for it.’ And the right front tyre burst in turn one.

“In those days there was an earth bank and nothing else, and I hit the bank very, very hard in a Lola tub. The Lola limp was one of the best-known illnesses among racing drivers and I was lucky I didn’t break my legs. In fact, I didn’t break anything. But boy, was I messed up!

“It was a huge shunt. I had a girlfriend who used to fly for American Airlines and she nursed me that night because I was completely gone.

“When we did the warm-up on Sunday morning we taped my gloves to the steering wheel because I had no strength in my hands. I drove the warm-up in the spare car but I was so dizzy and felt so bad that I went straight back to the hotel and lay down for three hours. Then I came back and drove the race.

“I was running very strong. I think I was fourth, but of course I didn’t know where I was. I’d run out of brakes and was just not all there, and I didn’t have the strength to catch a slide out of the last turn. I spun and stalled the thing.”

Rosberg struggled home in sixth place a lap down and then recuperated in LA before the season-closer at Riverside. “My friend Mike Brockman took me to Los Angeles and I laid in his bed for nearly two weeks. I was so bad he came back from the office every day at lunchtime to feed me.”

At Riverside Keke put on quite a show, leading at one point but tearing off a bunch of bodywork after a collision with Geoff Lees. “I hit Geoff and took half the bodywork off, which wasn’t a problem. I was leading but Haas protested, so they black-flagged me. Otherwise I would have won that one, bodywork or no bodywork. That was the attitude in those days. As long as there were wheels on the car we would keep on driving.

“There were some good people in Can-Am in those days. Gilles [Villeneuve] came in and out, and Bobby Rahal was there and Price Cobb too, as well as guys like Jones and Jacky Ickx. It was a good time. But the tracks were so dangerous! The cars were very fast and the tracks were bad and it was a bad combination. At Watkins Glen you looked at the Armco and you didn’t want to think about it. It was a different time.”

Sometimes we forget how different.

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In appreciation of Alesi

Nigel Roebuck — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:37:23 +0000

In appreciation of Alesi

Dear Nigel,

Since Gilles Villeneuve’s tragic departure, there has been only one driver that really got to me, and whom I could appreciate (even when he wasn’t driving a Ferrari!) – and that was Jean Alesi. I was so impressed by his start in Formula 1 with Tyrrell, and then, when he moved to the team of my heart, it was like a dream… Unfortunately everything went wrong, and Alesi never had a car worthy of his talent. I rate him very highly – I believe he was every bit as good as Mika Häkkinen, and in the rain he was as good as Schumacher or Senna. What do you think of him, and how do you rate him compared to other drivers of his time?

Pedro Soares

Dear Pedro,

“You know me – I want so much to do this. I still have incredible determination; I want to drive as much as when I started…”

This was Jean Alesi in the summer of 2001, when he was driving for the Prost team, and struggling with an uncompetitive car. Yes, he might have wished to be at the other end of the grid, where one of his ability properly belonged, but – like Gilles Villeneuve – he still loved driving for its own sake, and I’m sure he always will.

Alesi’s arrival in F1, at the 1989 French Grand Prix, was startling, for he finished fourth after running as high as second. The F1 world took due note, for rookies almost never perform at that level; as well as that, Alesi was driving not for one of the big teams, but for Tyrrell, whose great days were long in the past. The following spring Jean led much of the US Grand Prix in Phoenix, fought a brief but memorable battle with Ayrton Senna, and finished second. At Monte Carlo, it was again Senna-Alesi.

Through that year, everyone was trying to sign him for 1991, and had Jean been a normal, pragmatic sort of F1 driver he would have weighed up his options and signed for Williams-Renault. Had he done so, who knows how many Grands Prix he might have won? If Frank had been able to sign him for ’91, after all, there would have been no need to sweet-talk Nigel Mansell out of his plan to retire. Williams was on the cusp of a period of domination, and Jean could have been in the pound seats.

As it was, heart ruled head – as it was always to do with Jean – and he committed himself to Ferrari, where it may fairly be said he wasted five years in usually uncompetitive cars. Jean himself doesn’t see it that way, of course, for he adored the team, and still says he has no regrets. You mention the lost Williams opportunity, and you get a rueful shrug: yes, for sure it would have been better for his career, but… there’s no point in thinking about it.

Just before Christmas one year, I was in Williams’s office, when someone came in with a case of champagne. “It’s from Jean!” Frank exclaimed, delightedly. “Isn’t that something? The first present I’ve ever been given by a racing driver – and he doesn’t even drive for me. Lovely bloke – and a remarkable driver. He’ll be here eventually…”

It never happened, though. After Ferrari, Alesi went to Benetton for two years, after which the management decided it should in future go for ‘yoof’, in the form of Giancarlo Fisichella, Jenson Button and Alex Wurz.

To my mind, Alesi was always among the very fastest drivers, but often overlooked was that, given a half-reliable car, he was also among the best finishers in the business. In two years with Benetton he made the podium 13 times.

There followed a couple of seasons with Sauber, a team he enjoyed, but not one capable of doing him justice. Twice though – at the A1-Ring in 1998, and Magny-Cours in ’99 – Jean started from the front row, on each occasion a treacherous track surface allowing his other-worldly car control to compensate for middling equipment.

Little needs to be said about his time with Prost. Alesi went there in a positive frame of mind, for Alain was not only a man he revered, but also his close friend. The two of them talked of forging a really strong French team, even envisaging a role for Jean after his retirement as a driver. As it was, though, everything went wrong, not least because Prost’s sponsors deserted him. Perhaps it’s true that one should never work with friends.

I must confess I found it extraordinary that the top teams continued to pass Jean by. Yes, he could be temperamental, and he tended to say what he thought – but, in the end, even in the 21st century do you hire a driver for his PR blandness or his speed?

Gerhard Berger, Alesi’s long-time team-mate at Ferrari and Benetton, remained a fan to the end of Jean’s F1 career. “For me, Jean was very underestimated. I thought he was really a very good racing driver. He didn’t make many mistakes in a race, he had unbelievable car control, he had speed, he had experience, he was quick in the rain – and he was a very good finisher.

“Jean’s problem was always that he had an image of being uncontrollable, but I didn’t think that was fair – particularly in his later years. I always thought the way he behaved depended entirely on how he was treated.”

So there you are, Pedro. Not only do I agree with you about Jean Alesi, but – more to the point – so do such as Frank Williams and Gerhard Berger. A lovely bloke, and a hugely talented driver.

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First American champions crowned

Gordon Kirby — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:21:02 +0000

First American champions crowned

Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas became the first major American racing champions of the year when they scored their eighth win of the year in the Grand-Am race at le Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal last Saturday driving Chip Ganassi’s Riley-BMW. Pruett has now won a total of 30 Grand-Am races, but this was the first time he or Ganassi enjoyed winning in Montreal.

Pruett, 50, took his third Grand-Am title and Ganassi’s fourth in the past six years but this was the first time they’ve done it with BMW engines. Pruett/Rojas beat defending champions Alex Gurney/Jon Fogarty’s Gainsco Riley-Chevrolet by barely a second in Montreal, wrapping-up the title after eleven of the twelve races. Pruett/Rojas and Gurney/Fogarty have been the stars of the Grand-Am in recent years, trading the championship back and forth since 2007.

On the same day at Mosport three hundred miles to the west Conor Daly won the Star-Mazda championship in style as he took his ninth pole of the year and then scored a runaway victory, his seventh this year, to wrap-up the Star Mazda title with one race to go. Eighteen-year old Daly is the son of former F1, Indy car and sports car racers Derek Daly (below with Conor). Conor won the Skip Barber National championship in 2008 and also scored an excellent win that year in the rain in the Walter Hayes Trophy Formula Ford race at Silverstone. Conor will test a GP3 car for Status Racing at Silverstone next week and hopes to race next year in Europe.

“My passion is Formula One,” Conor says. “That’s what I want to do and to be in Formula One you have to race in Europe. The goal is to be racing in Europe next year.”

Last Saturday night’s IndyCar race at the Chicagoland Speedway was won by Dario Franchitti who kept his championship hopes alive with a brilliant tactical win. Franchitti was mired in the pack for most of the race but beat everyone out of the pits from the last round of stops by not taking on fresh tyres. Dario then drove superbly to score his third win of the year, beating Dan Wheldon and Marco Andretti across the line. This was Dario’s twenty-sixth CART/IRL win and it moves him into a tie with Rodger Ward on the all-time IndyCar winners list.

Championship leader Will Power battled for the lead most of the way but had to make a last-minute stop for fuel, tumbling to sixteenth at the finish. As a result defending champion Franchitti has pulled to within twenty-five points of Power with three races to go so that Dario has a chance of winning his third IndyCar title in four years and Ganassi has a shot at taking three straight IndyCar championships.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

In love with their art

Nigel Roebuck — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:14:49 +0000

In love with their art

Dear Nigel,

Of all the drivers you have known over the years, who enjoyed the act of driving fast the most? Not the winning, but the actual experience of driving. In simpler terms, who was most likely to get out of the car at the end of a race, regardless of where they finished, with the words “That was fun!”?

Paul Gilfedder

Dear Paul,

Oh, I’d have to say Gilles Villeneuve. Don’t think I ever came across a driver – save perhaps Jean Alesi – who so much loved simply driving a Grand Prix car. “It’s a s***box,” Gilles cheerfully said of the 1980 Ferrari T5, “but I’m still happy to throw it round Fiorano all day, and the next, even though I know it’s reached the end of its development and isn’t going to get any better…”

Villeneuve’s no-holds-barred battle with René Arnoux’s Renault in the late laps at Dijon in 1979 has gone into motor racing legend. It was about as tough as Grand Prix racing gets, but – unlike the sort of stunts pulled routinely by M Schumacher – it was also completely fair, and at the end of the race there were no recriminations on either side: indeed, when they stepped from their cars, Gilles and René embraced. “That,” Gilles said, “was really fun!” And to this day René says it was the most enjoyable race of his career.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Shades of Imola ’82?

Nigel Roebuck — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:02:00 +0000

Shades of Imola ’82?

Dear Nigel,

I would love to hear your thoughts/opinions on Lewis Hamilton. For me, his raw talent, driving style and never-say-die attitude are strongly reminiscent of Gilles Villeneuve – I hope this is not being sacrilegious to you as I know you and Gilles were close. Anyway, at Istanbul, watching the pass on Lewis by Jenson Button when the former was clearly assuming a ‘hold station’ situation was in play, Lewis’ subsequent downbeat/subdued attitude on the podium was very reminiscent of Imola ’82… Thanks for the great articles and podcasts!

Rich Gray

Dear Rich,

Although Lewis Hamilton is a very different type from Gilles Villeneuve, I would agree with you that his driving style and never-say-die attitude are indeed reminiscent of Gilles. When I interviewed Lewis a couple of years ago, he spoke at length about his childhood worship of Ayrton Senna, and said that he based much of his attitude to the job of Grand Prix driver on Ayrton. But I have long thought there was more of Villeneuve than Senna in the way Hamilton goes racing – not least because I never saw Gilles do anything underhand on a race track, and neither have I ever seen Lewis do anything like that, either. I could not say that of Ayrton.

Keke Rosberg said this of Villeneuve: “Gilles was the hardest bastard I ever raced against, but always scrupulously fair – he was a giant of a driver.” In the same way, Hamilton takes no prisoners, but neither have I ever seen him do anything underhand.

Can’t agree with you, though, about Istanbul 2010 and Imola ’82. There is nothing whatever duplicitous about Jenson Button, and when he closed on Hamilton he didn’t know that Lewis had been told to turn his engine down, and thought it was game on. At Imola, though, the Ferraris, also running one-two in the late laps, were extremely marginal on fuel and Villeneuve, the team’s front-runner all day, was cruising to what he thought was victory, the team having given the ‘Hold’ sign to both drivers. At the very last overtaking point on the last lap, Didier Pironi suddenly sprinted by, and stole the win. Gilles vowed never to speak to him again, and only 13 days later died in qualifying at Zolder.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

2010 Canadian Grand Prix report

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:33:57 +0000

2010 Canadian Grand Prix report

“For me,” said Lewis Hamilton on Sunday afternoon, “this is one of the best races of the season – a fantastic crowd, a great atmosphere, and such a great track…”

It was at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve three years ago that Hamilton won his first Grand Prix, and this time around, too, he was always the man to beat. A memorable last-second pole position, and then a superb race drive, during which he was under pressure for virtually the entire distance. As in Turkey a fortnight ago it was a McLaren 1-2, with Jenson Button just a couple of seconds adrift of Lewis at the flag. Fernando Alonso, having pushed Hamilton hard for much of the afternoon, finished third finally, having suffered more than most from the traffic problems endemic to Montréal.

Fundamentally, the Canadian Grand Prix was all about tyres. In the old days, before refuelling was banned, tyre wear wasn’t too much of a consideration – essentially you raced a car in qualifying spec, always light, always on new-ish tyres. Now, though, looking after your tyres – particularly when the car is fuel-heavy in the early laps – has become an important new discipline for the drivers to learn, and in Montréal ‘graining’ was a problem for everyone, particularly with the softer of the Bridgestone compounds on offer (both compounds, of course, must be used during a race).

After qualifying the feeling was that Red Bull were in the pound seats, for although Hamilton had beaten them to pole position, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel (together with Renault’s Robert Kubica) had set their times on the harder Bridgestones. It was a certainty that all their major rivals would have to make a very early stop, at which point, went the received wisdom, Webber and Vettel would canter away into the distance.

In the event, it didn’t work out that way. Yes, the McLarens were indeed in early (Button stopping on lap six, Hamilton a lap later), but significantly Kubica – on the hard tyres, remember – was in after nine laps, and the Red Bulls stopped after 13 (Webber) and 14 (Vettel) laps. With a heavy fuel load, in other words, the harder Bridgestones didn’t last anything like as long as expected.

Even before the race started Mark’s day began badly, for his car required a gearbox change and that meant a five-place penalty on the grid, so that he started seventh, rather than second. Certainly Vettel had pushed Hamilton in the first few laps, but he was never able to get by him, and even with a clear track was unable to build enough of a cushion to keep his lead through his own first stop.

When the first round of stops was all done Hamilton was in front, chased hard by Alonso, then Button – and then Vettel and Webber. All (except Vettel) were now on the harder tyres – but McLaren and Ferrari, of course, already had the more troublesome soft ones out of the way.

This season, with refuelling banned, we have become accustomed to single-stop strategies, everyone beginning the race on the soft tyres, then coming for the harder ones and running through to the finish on them. Even though the track surface at Montréal is not particularly abrasive, though, that policy looked out of the question thanks to the graining problems, and ahead of the race Bridgestone folk reckoned everyone would need to stop at least twice.

So it proved, and different folk threw the dice in different ways. The Red Bull drivers, as we have said, both started on hard tyres, but when they made their first stops Vettel opted to switch to soft, whereas Webber took another set of hard.

In the short term, at least, this worked well for Mark. As the race neared half-distance, the three drivers ahead of him – Hamilton, Alonso, Vettel – all made their second stops, whereas Webber was able to stay out and at this point took over the lead. For 20 laps he looked very comfortable, but eventually the grip began to go away and his problem was that, with only his soft Bridgestones to come, he was obliged to stay out as long as possible before changing to them.

By lap 50, with 20 to the flag, Hamilton passed the hobbled Red Bull in front of the pits, and at the end of the lap Webber duly came in. This left Hamilton to fight off the advances of Alonso, while Fernando, at his absolute best in Montréal, was obliged also to keep a weather eye on Button.

On lap 56 Alonso was badly held up by the tardy HRT of Chandhok, which changed line unexpectedly in front of him. So much did the Ferrari have to slow that in an instant Button was past, and away up the road. Fernando, who had suffered similarly at the hand of Trulli’s Lotus earlier in the race, was afterwards remarkably charitable about the slow traffic: “Yes, I had a bad time with it today, but sometimes, you know, it can work to your advantage – over a season it evens out for everyone…”

Thereafter there was nothing to be done for Alonso, but although he finished only third he was delighted to be back on the podium. “It’s strange, this Formula 1,” he said later. “In Turkey we were nowhere – completely out of it – and we bring exactly the same car to Canada, and we’re competitive! I really think we had the pace to win today. For the next race, in Valencia, we have some major updates on the car, and I hope then we can start to be competitive everywhere…”

There was no denying the McLarens, though. With the air cleared between them, after the spot of unpleasantness in Istanbul, Hamilton and Button were all smiles afterwards. “It was a very difficult race,” said Jenson, “because of the tyre situation. The whole time you’re driving you never know if you’re not pushing hard enough because you’re saving your tyres – or maybe you’re pushing too hard, and hurting them. It’s so easy to grain tyres here…”

Hamilton agreed that it had been a tough race: “There’s the tyres, of course, but also the traffic is always a big problem here – almost as bad as at Monaco. I must say, too, that I was amazed there was no safety car period – you almost always get at least one here. Still, the car was fantastic, I must say, and I didn’t have worries here about running low on fuel – I managed to save some at certain points in the race, and there was no problem at all.”

Neither Red Bull driver made the podium in Canada, but in fact neither Vettel nor Webber was too disappointed. “We didn’t really expect to shine here,” said Mark. “It’s not really a track that brings out our car’s best qualities. But we scored some useful points – and Valencia, I’m sure, will be good for us.”

Sixth, behind Vettel and Webber, was Nico Rosberg, who drove a thoroughly excellent race for Mercedes after being disastrously held up by a first corner contretemps between Tonio Liuzzi’s Force India and Felipe Massa’s Ferrari. Rosberg was actually in 13^th place at the end of the opening lap, but came back strongly, on the way setting the third fastest lap of the Grand Prix.

His team-mate was rather less distinguished – indeed, this was probably the worst drive by Michael Schumacher most people could remember. Having qualified only 13^th, Michael made a good start and his race looked promising for a while, but thereafter we seemed to see only the worst of him, prompting one former F1 driver to comment that he drove ‘like a bad-tempered old man’. Off the pace, and plainly not enjoying the experience, Schumacher blocked and weaved and chopped, just as he always did, but now he was doing it from 12^th place, or whatever, and there was something curiously sad about it. This, after all, was a man who had won the Canadian Grand Prix seven times…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Would Gilles have quit Ferrari?

Nigel Roebuck — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:22:11 +0000

Would Gilles have quit Ferrari?

Dear Nigel,

First of all, many thanks for all the great pieces you’ve written over the years, including your book on Gilles Villeneuve.

I know you have been asked numerous questions about Gilles, but would appreciate your thoughts on the following, especially as he was (and still is) my ultimate all-time F1 hero.

Firstly, what was Gilles like as an individual? Was he the carefree, yet fearless driver that everyone seems to remember?

And secondly – particularly after the issue with Didier Pironi and the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix – would Gilles have stayed with Ferrari?

I understand this is all hypothetical, but do you think he would have made a move to Williams, Lotus or McLaren?

D. Paul Moncur

Dear Paul,

Hard to believe, isn’t it, that we’re closing in on the 30^th anniversary of Gilles Villeneuve’s death? I’m glad you’ve enjoyed my writings on him over the years.

What was he like as an individual? Well, I’ve always said that I liked the man even more than I admired the driver. Formula 1 was, of course, much ‘freer’ in Villeneuve’s era than it is now, but even then there were those in the sport whom you upset at your peril, and an appealing aspect of Gilles’s character was that he was completely without guile, and would always say what he thought about a given person or situation, regardless of the possible consequences for himself. That, of course, made him wonderful company – no one in the paddock ever made me laugh more. Yes, he was healthily cynical about certain people and their actions, and would put his salty sense of humour to good use as he talked about them, but for all that I always saw Gilles as an innocent in F1. As Keke Rosberg said, “On the track he was the hardest bastard I ever raced against – but always (itals) completely (end itals) fair. If you’d beaten him to a corner, he would never think of chopping you. He was a giant of a racing driver…”

After the debacle with Didier Pironi at Imola in 1982, I called him a couple of days later, and have never – even in the Senna/Prost days – known a racing driver so angry. He wasn’t screaming and shouting, but the intensity of his fury was evident. Pironi had duped him, stolen a Grand Prix victory from him, and he told me he would never exchange another word with him. When I asked him if he would stay with Ferrari beyond the end of that season, he said he wasn’t sure – “For sure no, if Pironi’s there…”

My belief is that he would have left, for either McLaren or Williams. Frank was always a huge admirer, and Ron Dennis had got as far as discussing numbers with him. Gilles always used to say that he would find it very difficult to leave Ferrari – “Enzo always finds a way of talking me round!” – but there’s no doubt that the events at Imola, and Marco Piccinini’s subsequent refusal to criticise Pironi, affected him profoundly, and, yes, I believe he would have made the move.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Remembering Gilles at play

Gordon Kirby — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:36:57 +0000

Remembering Gilles at play

Saturday is the anniversary of the death of Gilles Villeneuve at Zolder in 1982. I still recall Gilles’s four years in Formula Atlantic, and his 1976 season in particular when he won all but one race and began his leap to Formula 1 legend status with Ferrari. Back in 1976 and ‘77 former March F1 and F2 team manager Ray Wardell ran Villeneuve’s Atlantic cars out of Kris Harrison’s Ecurie Canada shop in Toronto, and Wardell has some funny stories to tell about Gilles.

“I remember the first time we went to a track together,” he says. “We went to Savannah in Georgia to test the new March Atlantic car. Bobby Rahal was going to drive the car first and then Gilles was going to try it.

“Gilles was driving us in a rental car and we arrived at the track and the gate was closed. So I got out and opened it, and Gilles pulled the car through and stopped. As I was getting back in the car he decided he was going to do a tyre burnout. He just lit the rear tyres up on the rental car and kept going until one burst! There was so much smoke I couldn’t breathe and I thought, ‘What the hell have I got involved in here?’

“Then about three or four hours later we were sitting in the pitroad waiting for our turn with the new car. Gilles and I were sitting in the hire car chatting. He’d changed the flat rear tyre and Rahal cruised by on track in his hire car. Well, the conversation immediately stopped. Gilles turned on the ignition and we were off down the pitroad. He was going to catch Rahal.

“We were hauling ass down the straight and there was almost a 90-degree corner at the end. I was thinking, ‘He’s gonna brake. No, he’s not gonna brake!’ And he threw the rental car sideways. I was hanging onto the hand-strap on the roof and my feet were almost in Villeneuve’s lap as we went around this right-hander on two wheels. I thought, ‘my God!’ I’d never seen car control like this. He kept going round the track like that until some more tyre tread flew off and he had to stop. That was Gilles. Any opportunity he had he was going to drive fast.”

Wardell recalls how close the Villeneuve family was and how champion-to-be Jacques behaved as a child. “I had quite a nice relationship with the family. Gilles and Joann were inseparable and little Jacques hardly spoke any English. He would come creeping round the car and if he saw me standing there he’d come running by and kick me in the shins. Then he’d run away laughing his head off!”

Wardell also recalls that, fierce racer though Gilles was, he was also an eminently fair sportsman. “Obviously he had a good working relationship with Jody [Scheckter], who I enjoyed working with as well. I think Gilles was lucky to go to Ferrari with the other driver being someone like Scheckter. On a couple of occasions Gilles actually tried to help Jody win races or points to win the championship.

“And of course who can forget that 1979 French Grand Prix when Gilles and René Arnoux had their fantastic wheel-to-wheel race, both of them racing as hard as humanly possible but both leaving each other room? They weren’t trying to be dangerous in any way. They were just being full-blown racing drivers. It was wonderful to watch.”

It was indeed.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Two legends reunited

Damien Smith — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:50:31 +0000

Two legends reunited

Jacky Ickx and Mario Andretti. Quite simply, two of the greatest racing drivers in motor racing history. Even their names, which carry the resonance of Grand Prix wins from a golden era, heroic sports car feats and more, are dripping with style and class.

As far as we’re aware, these two have never been interviewed together before, and yet these giants of racing formed a bond 40 years ago as team-mates at Ferrari racing in both Formula 1 and sports cars. When they joined us for our inaugural Motor Sport Hall of Fame event in February we had the perfect opportunity to reunite them – and get them talking about the Prancing Horse. The result is the cover story for the June issue of Motor Sport.

Editor-in-chief Nigel Roebuck was handed this enviable task, but it wasn’t exactly smooth running. He was made to sweat. Nigel had arranged to meet the pair in Signor Sassi, a favourite Italian restaurant, on the day of the Hall of Fame in London. Andretti had arrived from the States safe and sound the night before, but Ickx wouldn’t be so lucky.

Jacky spends much of his time in Mali these days, but he’d told us flying in from Africa would not be a problem. As it turned out, it wasn’t. But taking the short connecting trip from Brussels would be – his flight was cancelled. Typical!

I got the message in the morning and started to sweat. Jacky was one of our star guests for this special night and now I had images of him failing to make it (the message I got was that his flight was cancelled and I had images of him stranded in Africa!). But with characteristic coolness, Jacky came through for us. He jumped on the Eurostar, came straight to the restaurant and being a true gent was full of apologies (even though it wasn’t his fault, of course). Phew! The Hall of Fame was saved and I’d still get my future cover story.

Following the entertaining lunch, Nigel met up with Andretti again in Bahrain at the Grand Prix and Ickx at the Goodwood press day, topping up the material he’d already got from the two of them together. The result was 19,000 words of transcription from his Dictaphone – and he hates transcribing! I know, it’s hard to complain when you’re listening back to gems from such heroes, but we have to hand it to Nigel this month: he’s put in the hours…

Aside from Ickx and Andretti, there is an eclectic mix of stories in the new issue, from just about every era. Highlights for me include Anthony Rowlinson’s terrific interview with design genius John Barnard, Bruno Giacomelli talking to Paul Fearnley – and the photos of outlandish second-generation Can-Am cars in Gordon Kirby’s retrospective. The stars that passed through that series in the 1970s and early ’80s – including Jones, Villeneuve, Tambay, Rosberg and that man Ickx – has bestowed cult status on the era. So right up our street, then.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Psychological battles

Nigel Roebuck — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:44:40 +0000

Psychological battles

Dear Nigel,
Having just watched both the qualifying at Melbourne and highlights of the 1969 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, courtesy of YouTube, I was struck by the enormous gulf between F1 then and now. I was born in 1974 and my earliest memories of motor racing come from the early ’80s, but I’m a huge fan of ’60s and ’70s racing.

The biggest difference, it seems to me, is that the psychological challenge was greater in earlier years than it is now, when climbing into a racing car and going to the limit was extremely perilous. The kind of ‘mind management’ needed to overcome natural fears of death or injury mark out yesterday’s drivers as a breed apart.

I’m always staggered at the reaction to François Cevert’s death in 1973. The accident couldn’t have been more horrific, yet both drivers and team managers seemed able to put it behind them and get on with the job of racing. In Peter Revson’s biography, Peter Manso mentions Revson going to an exhibition of motor sport art which looked out on the spot where Cevert was killed that same day without batting an eyelid. Bernie Ecclestone has recalled mentioning the accident to Carlos Reutemann, and then the two of them moving on to discuss tyre choices for Sunday! Meanwhile Jody Scheckter, who did at least admit that what he saw changed his outlook on motor racing forever, was already in discussion with Ken Tyrrell with regards to joining the team in ’74. The only driver, it seems, who reacted ‘normally’ was James Hunt, who was described as looking pale and visibly shaken, yet remarkably he went on to finish second the next day!

Did it ever strike you that this sport is not only very exciting but also callous and indifferent to the lives of its main protagonists, and did you ever entertain doubts about whether it was all worth it?
Ryan

Dear Ryan,
No getting away from it, Grand Prix racing has changed out of recognition in the last 40 years, and no change has been more dramatic than that in safety. At Jacky Ickx recently said to me, “Nowadays you can do it, and you’re almost at risk zero – and that’s wonderful…”

It wasn’t like that in his era, though, and to some degree there was a sort of ‘Spitfire pilot’ attitude to the risks involved. During 1971, my first year of working as an F1 journalist, three Grand Prix drivers – Ignazio Giunti, Pedro Rodríguez, Jo Siffert – all lost their lives in racing accidents (although only Siffert was killed in an F1 race). That wasn’t untypical of the time. The year before, Piers Courage, Bruce McLaren and Jochen Rindt had all died. No surprise that Ickx – as you can read in the next issue of the magazine – is so grateful that he is still around.

I think you’re wrong, though, to suggest that the attitude within the sport to these tragedies was callous. Certainly, the death of a driver was more commonplace in those days, and therefore the sport’s participants were more accustomed to dealing with it, but that didn’t mean that the losses were not keenly felt. Of Jimmy Clark’s death, for example, Chris Amon said this: “We all felt we’d lost our leader. If it could happen to Jimmy, what chance did the rest of us have?”

It’s a fact that I have on occasion encountered callousness in motor racing – less than an hour after Gilles Villeneuve’s accident in 1982, another driver asked me, “Who d’you think will get the Ferrari drive?” – but it’s been very much the exception to the rule. The fact is, times were different, death was more prevalent by far – and the belief, I think, was that it had always been part of the sport. Very regrettable, but occasionally inevitable. And bear in mind, too, that this was all long before ‘public grieving’ became so fashionable. Motor racing people may have borne their grievances discreetly, but certainly they felt them.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

A milestone in F1 history

Damien Smith — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:04:19 +0000

A milestone in F1 history

Sixty years ago, the world was still recovering from the ravages of a world war. But it’s always remarkable how quickly people return to normal life after such devastation. By 1950, Grand Prix racing was already very well re-established, even if the cars (and most of the drivers) dated back to the immediate pre-war era. As a new decade began, the time was right to launch the first World Championship.

At the Bahrain Grand Prix last month Formula 1 acknowledged its heritage by celebrating the diamond anniversary of the World Championship in fitting style. All the living World Champions bar two (Kimi Räikkönen and Nelson Piquet) congregated at the desert circuit, along with a collection of fabulous cars from the past 60 years. Such a gathering is unlikely to ever happen again.

As F1 marks the anniversary, we at Motor Sport have decided to do the same. We’ve chosen this, the May issue, because it was on May 13 1950 that Silverstone hosted that landmark Grand Prix, the first to carry the weight of World Championship status.

To celebrate, we pooled some of the best motor racing writers to tell the story of 60 glorious years of GP action.

Doug Nye kicks things off with an overview of the 1950s. Now, as he says in his article, Doug was only a young child when the World Championship was born, but he was always a “good listener”. There is no better authority alive to look back at the decade of Fangio, Hawthorn, Moss, Mercedes and so on.

Into the 1960s, and Eoin Young takes up the story. The Kiwi was smack in the middle of it all back then, working with his mate Bruce McLaren and as a respected journalist, among other things.

We chose Alan Henry to tell the story of the 1970s. AH built his formidable reputation in the decade of flares and fuel shortages, enjoying friendships with the likes of Ronnie Peterson and Niki Lauda.

Our own editor-in-chief Nigel Roebuck covers the 1980s, an era as volatile as any he has known in the sport. It was the decade of the ‘superpowers’ – Villeneuve, Prost, Senna, Mansell and those magnificent turbos. For Nigel, the memories are recalled with a clarity as if they were yesterday.

Seasoned newspaper journalist Maurice Hamilton steps up for the 1990s and regular Motor Sport man Adam Cooper brings the story right up to date with the most recent decade. The ‘magnificent six’ put 60 years of F1 history into context just perfectly.

To complement the story of the decades, Simon Taylor lunched with the man who has started more Grands Prix than any other (except Rubens Barrichello, who took the lead in the longevity stakes two years ago). Yes, it’s Riccardo Patrese. He’s a true Italian gent, who tells us of his racing life, from enfant terrible to respected veteran. Former editor Simon Arron also makes his first appearance in our pages since 1996 to bring us the story of those Bahrain 60th anniversary celebrations.

It’s been a pleasure and a treat putting this issue together. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the office as each of the decade features landed and we began to build the pages. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed making it.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Jenks’s problem with Jochen…

Nigel Roebuck — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:35:25 +0000

Jenks’s problem with Jochen…

Dear Nigel,
Please clear something up for me. You knew both Jenks and Jochen Rindt. Can you tell my why Jenks didn’t believe Rindt would ever win a Grand Prix? He said he’d shave his beard if Rindt ever won and I remember a picture of Jenks sans beard in Road & Track years ago. Maybe I have the story mixed up because Jenks seemed to have such an eye for talent. Most books about that era mention Rindt’s natural ability and speed. Was Jenks really that dismissive of his talent?
Craig Lightcap

Dear Craig,
First of all I should say that, although Denis Jenkinson was one of my closest friends, I never – sadly for me – knew Jochen Rindt, for I began working as an F1 journalist at the beginning of 1971, a few months after Rindt’s death at Monza the previous September.

That said, I very well knew of Jenks’s somewhat controversial opinion of Jochen, and often quizzed him about it – and I have to say that I finished up none the wiser! Jenks, as we know, was a quirky fellow, and it wasn’t always easy to find logic in many of his opinions and conclusions – I suppose we’re all like that, to some degree. However, having said that he would shave off his beard if Rindt ever won a Grand Prix, he indeed kept his word after Jochen’s inaugural victory at Watkins Glen in 1969.

Jenks was always a man of strong opinions (thank God!), but I have to say that I never agreed with – or understood – his judgement of Rindt, whom he resolutely refused to accept as one of the artists of the sport, despite the fact that a man like Jack Brabham (for whom Jochen drove in 1968) considered him perhaps the greatest of all time. Jenks would suggest that Rindt’s spectacular, tail out style was ‘agricultural’, compared with the smoothness of a Clark or Stewart – and yet he loved that about Gilles Villeneuve!

It was, I think, something of a blind spot, and perhaps we all have them. Jenks tended to put people into one of two boxes – pro and anti – and once you were in either one, there you stayed forever. As well as that, of course, he had a mischievous taste for winding people up: he would, for example, praise Fangio for ‘winning a race at the slowest possible speed’ and then criticise Prost for doing the same thing! How, I would argue, is what Prost does any different from what Fangio did? “Just is…”

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Top 10 drivers revised

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:25:46 +0000

Top 10 drivers revised

Dear Nigel,
Based on what you have seen in last 30 years, how would you review your Top 10 list that was published in the book (itals) The Grand Prix Drivers (Racing heroes from Fangio to Prost) issued in 1987? Many thanks in advance for your attention.
Piero Dessimone

Dear Piero,
How nice to be reminded of that book we – Denis Jenkinson, Alan Henry, Maurice Hamilton and I – did all those years ago. The decade about which I was asked to write was the ’60s – a touch illogical since I didn’t start writing about F1 until 1971, but nevertheless a task I much enjoyed.

We compiled out Top 10s in 1987, and at the time I rated the drivers thus: Stirling Moss, Jimmy Clark, Alain Prost, Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jackie Stewart, Gilles Villeneuve, Ronnie Peterson, Niki Lauda, Jochen Rindt.

Were I compiling the list now, it would read as follows: Stirling Moss, Jimmy Clark, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jackie Stewart, Gilles Villeneuve, Michael Schumacher, Jochen Rindt.

Well, perspectives change a little as you get older…

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Saturn joins planet Penske

Gordon Kirby — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:58:23 +0000

Saturn joins planet Penske

I was going to write a lament about the loss of Montréal’s Canadian GP and the absence of Formula 1 from North America for the first time in 50 years. As we all know, massive crowds turned out year after year at le Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and the city rocked with race fever all week. Please Bernie, can we at least have Montréal back next year?

Before I could begin wailing about that though, an announcement came late last Friday that Penske Automotive has bought the Saturn division from the bankrupt General Motors. Roger Penske is America’s most successful racing team owner, of course, winning in Indycars, NASCAR and the American Le Mans Series, and historically in F1, Can-Am, long-distance sports car racing and Trans-Am. Penske cars have won more than 300 races, 20 national championships and a record 15 Indy 500s.

But from the start of his career as a successful sports car racer back in the late ’50s and early ’60s, Roger was driven by much greater ambitions than being a mere driver or team owner. Over the past 45 years he’s built a powerhouse of a company employing more than 40,000 people and generating annual revenues of more than $15 billion.

Penske Corporation includes a network of more than 100 car dealerships across the US and 310 worldwide, plus Penske Truck Leasing whose yellow trucks are ubiquitous across America. There’s also a private equity capitalisation business and a manufacturing group which includes factories in Germany and Italy building diesel engines and automotive components.

Penske’s personal wealth has taken a substantial hit over the past eight months but he remains one of motor racing’s richest, most motivated men, and buying an existing automobile manufacturer appears to be an entirely natural extension of his global company. Back in 1988 Penske bought the Detroit Diesel engine manufacturing business from General Motors and quickly turned it around. Seven years later he told me the methods he employed to make it successful and I’m sure he’ll apply the same techniques to Saturn.

“The strengths of Detroit Diesel were that they had good people and a manufacturing capability,” says Roger. “But they didn’t have the flexibility to operate in an entrepreneurial way, to get out there and go after business. We put the sales office back in the field. We put demonstration trucks out there. We brought customers to the plant. We leveraged the base of Penske Truck Leasing.

“From day one we reduced the salaried workforce by 25 per cent. Everyone became a salesman. We changed one-third of our distributors because they weren’t committed, or didn’t have the right facilities, or the capital employed, or the right people.”

At 72, Penske remains a remarkable dynamo of a man. He’s probably the most successful corporate mogul that motor racing has ever produced, not only in the Untied States but around the world too, and it will be intriguing to see what he’s able to do with Saturn.

“Saturn has a passionate customer base and an outstanding dealer network,” said Penske in a statement. “For nearly 20 years, Saturn has focused on treating the customer right. We share that philosophy, and we want to build on those strengths.”

Meanwhile Roger’s three race teams were in action last weekend at the Texas Motor Speedway (Indycar), Pocono in Pennsylvania (NASCAR Sprint Cup), and Watkins Glen in upstate New York (Grand-Am). Hélio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe scored a convincing Indycar one-two in Texas on Saturday night, with Briscoe leading the most laps and taking the points lead from Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti. At the Glen on Saturday afternoon Tim Bernard/Romain Dumas drove Penske’s Riley-Porsche to second place behind Scott Pruett/Memo Rojas, and at Pocono on Sunday Penske’s trio of NASCAR drivers were led home by Sam Hornish, who finished 10th. Lead driver Kurt Busch lost 18 laps changing a fuel pump and finished 37th.

And Roger flew from race to race, sitting atop his team’s scoring stands at the Glen and Texas on Saturday, and spotting for Busch from the top of Pocono’s grandstands on Sunday. After all these years he remains as hands-on a boss as ever.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Pironi – on a par with Prost?

Nigel Roebuck — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:16:01 +0000

Pironi – on a par with Prost?

Dear Nigel,

Didier Pironi was (and still is) given relatively bad press, not just because of his days at Ferrari with Gilles Villeneuve. Was this really deserved, and had he not crashed in Germany could he have actually become a greater champion than Alain Prost?

Steve Draper

Dear Steve,

My memories of Didier Pironi are equivocal, I must say, in that I keep the man and the driver in separate compartments. As I have often found, it’s not necessary to like the one to admire the other.

First, the driver. I thought Pironi’s natural ability very high, and by 1982 he was moving into the ‘great’ category. All right, he wasn’t as quick as Ferrari team-mate Gilles Villeneuve, but then neither was anyone else, and the fact that he was sometimes on terms with Gilles, in similar cars, spoke volumes for his talent and speed. Had it not been for the accident at Hockenheim, I have no doubts that he would have been France’s first World Champion – assuredly he would have won it in that year of ’82, three years before Alain Prost took the title for the first time.

Pironi the man, though, is more difficult to talk about. Although he was invariably courteous with journalists, and I never had any problems with him, there was beneath the quiet surface a raging ambition. On the track, he was a hard man.

Once, after one of those BMW Procar races, at Hockenheim in 1980, I saw Hans-Joachim Stuck literally screaming at Pironi in the pitlane – Stuck had been forced off the road by him, and was incensed. And what I remember most is that Didier never responded, but just stood there, looking vaguely bored. When I talked to Hans-Joachim about it later, he was almost lost for words: “You can’t talk to Pironi – it’s like he’s made of ice…”

I knew what he meant. Didier had a very calculating quality, and was a very ‘political’ racing driver. When he and Villeneuve had their controversial ‘race’ at Imola in 1982, he plainly stole the Grand Prix on the last lap, when Gilles thought they were following team orders, cruising in for a one-two finish.

There are many who believe that, in doing what he did, Pironi knew this was much more than stealing a Grand Prix victory, that his real intention, knowing what kind of a man Villeneuve was, had been to unsettle him. If so, it worked. When I talked to Gilles the following week, he told me his trust in Pironi had been destroyed, and he would never so much as speak to him again. And at the next race, of course, at Zolder, Villeneuve crashed to his death in the final qualifying session.

It was because of this that, when Didier himself later crashed disastrously at Hockenheim, I’m afraid to say there was rather less sympathy for him in the F1 community than might have been otherwise expected.
In answer to your question, no, I don’t believe Pironi could have become a greater champion than Prost. For me, Alain is emphatically among the greatest drivers of all time, and I don’t think Pironi would have gone on to 41 Grand Prix victories or four World Championships.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The truth about Andretti and Peterson

Nigel Roebuck — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:33:27 +0000

The truth about Andretti and Peterson

Hi Nigel,
On a Formula 1 thread I participate in one of the regulars made this statement: “Andretti spent his entire championship year screaming at Chapman to make Peterson slow down. This does not come from me, but from sources who were there, like Murray Walker and Nigel Roebuck.” I find it hard to believe that Mario behaved like that. Can you tell me if it is true, and if so, can you provide some insight into the circumstances?
Kenny DesPortes

Dear Kenny,
I’d love to know where this ‘thread’ imagined he had read that, but I certainly never wrote anything of the kind, and I’m pretty confident Murray Walker never said anything like it, either. It simply wasn’t true.

It’s a fact that in 1978 Ronnie Peterson – with the young Gilles Villeneuve coming up on the rails – was almost certainly the out-and-out fastest driver in F1, and I don’t think Andretti himself would take issue with that. It’s true, too, that when Colin Chapman told Mario that Ronnie would be his team-mate in ’78, he was less than thrilled: “Tell me where it’s written we need two stars in this team…”

Reasonably enough, Andretti felt that he had put in all the hard work, dragged Lotus back from the brink, and now someone else was probably going to benefit from all his efforts.

Before signing Peterson, Chapman made it very clear to him that 1978 was to be Andretti’s year, that he had earned it, and Ronnie accepted that without problem, for he well knew that his career was in the doldrums and needed resurrection. And being a completely honourable man, he stuck by his agreement. There had never been any personal animosity between the two drivers, and once they started working together they became the firmest of friends.

In the first half of the season, it’s fair to say, Andretti usually had much the upper hand, for he was brilliant at setting up a racing car, where Peterson, by general consent, was pretty clueless in that respect. In the second half of the year, however, things were very much closer, and at places like Brands Hatch, the Osterreichring and Zandvoort, Ronnie was the quicker of the two.

It would never have been necessary, however, for Mario to “scream at Chapman to make Peterson slow down”, because Colin would have done it himself, quite unbidden! As it was, Ronnie stuck absolutely by the terms of his contract, and no one ever doubted that he would. Even though he had signed a McLaren contract for 1979, he dismissed suggestions that now he could forget about his commitment to Chapman: “I gave my word,” he said simply.

At Monza Andretti became World Champion, and in that same race Peterson was killed. No one was more heartbroken than Mario. I think your ‘thread’ has got his wires crossed somewhere…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Bellof could have been champion

Nigel Roebuck — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:01:41 +0000

Bellof could have been champion

Dear Nigel,
For years I have been reading about the lost talent that was Stefan Bellof and always after finishing each article I find myself wanting to know more. I was wondering if Motor Sport has ever compiled a definitive article relating to his life, career and the impact he would have made on F1 had he survived? In Bellof I believe we were robbed of a driver who, had he lived, may now be regarded among the greats such as Gilles Villeneuve and Ayrton Senna.
Al Crawford

Dear Al,
Years ago I was asked to write a story for some magazine about the great lost talents of motor racing, in terms of drivers who had died before achieving what they should have done, and I put Stefan Bellof at the top of the list.

Wolfgang von Trips, who was killed at Monza in 1961 when on the verge of becoming World Champion, was long before my time as a journalist, of course, but from speaking to people who knew him well, von Trips sounds to have been remarkably similar to Bellof, both as driver and man. Fiercely quick, dedicated to racing, yet fun-loving away from the track, and wonderful company.

Stefan really was a delightful fellow, with a character very different from the ‘next’ great German driver. Nothing fazed him. In the appalling traffic on the way into the Dijon circuit, for the 1984 French Grand Prix, he – like everyone else – got badly delayed, but where the rest of us just sat there and swore, the insouciant Bellof simply drove his Porsche 911 through a farm gate, and proceeded to the circuit across ploughed fields!
Very pleased with that, he was, and it taught him a lesson, too. Forever after, it became his practice to arrive at a track very early in the morning, then sit down to breakfast with the Tyrrell mechanics. Gilles Villeneuve was very similar in that respect; no wonder that both men were so loved by their teams.

Martin Brundle, Bellof’s Tyrrell team-mate, once described him as ‘the fastest driver since Villeneuve’, which was a hell of a compliment, honestly paid. In a racing car, Stefan was very much of that school, incredibly fast, with freakish reactions. Like Gilles, too, he was also apparently without a sense of fear.

Had the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix not been stopped, would he have won it? Yes, possibly – so long, that is, as he managed to keep it on the road for the duration, and the same went for Ayrton Senna. As it was, the race, in truly dreadful conditions, was stopped after 31 of the scheduled 78 laps.

At that point, Senna’s Toleman was on the point of passing Alain Prost’s McLaren for the lead, and Bellof was running third, 13 seconds behind. Significantly, though, when the rain became really atrocious (ultimately leading to the stopping of the race), Bellof was catching Senna at a greater rate than Senna was catching Prost…

There were 27 drivers at Monaco that year, attempting to qualify for 20 positions on the grid, and Bellof was the last man to get in. At that time, Tyrrell continued to run the venerable Cosworth V8 engine, whereas every other team had turbo motors. While it may be said that, at Monaco, the throttle response of a normally-aspirated was preferable to that of a turbo, still the fact remains that the Cosworth was massively out-powered – and at Monte Carlo, with its multitude of short squirts between corners, that was a significant disadvantage, even in the wet.

Of course we’ll never know whether Stefan would have beaten Ayrton that day, had the race run its full distance. With 47 laps to go, it’s quite possible that he would have caught him, but getting by might have been a rather different matter – particularly when Senna was heading for what would have been his first Grand Prix victory.

Some, of course, have always reckoned that ultimately Senna or Bellof – or both – would have overdone it, as Nigel Mansell did earlier in the race, and that Prost would have gone on to win. Had that happened, of course – indeed, had Alain even been second – he would have been World Champion in 1984. As the race was stopped before half-distance, only half-points were awarded – and in those days you got only nine for a win. Thus, Prost got 4.5, and in the end he lost the title to Niki Lauda by only half a point. Even finishing second in a ‘full’ race would have given him six.

Would Bellof have been Germany’s first World Champion? Without any doubt he had the ability, and, although this has never been officially confirmed by Ferrari, there is little doubt that he would have partnered Michele Alboreto in the team in 1986. His death, in the 1985 Spa 1000Kms, was a truly dreadful loss to the sport, and even more of one to those who knew him.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Nannini’s sacrifices for F1

Nigel Roebuck — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:00:18 +0000

Nannini’s sacrifices for F1

Dear Nigel,
What are your memories of Alessandro Nannini and how did you rate him as a driver?
Sas Nader

Dear Sas,
Sandro Nannini was, I think, the last of the ‘classic’ Italian racing drivers, very much in the mould of Clay Regazzoni (technically Swiss, I know, but only by a few kilometres), rather than someone like Giancarlo Fisichella.

At Suzuka, in 1989, when Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna had the first of their tangles, there was considerable acrimony afterwards, and for me, and many others, the only saving grace of the day was that Nannini won the race.

Although the family business was – and is – one of the largest bakeries in Siena, Sandro appeared to live on cigarettes and coffee, and having myself, I’m afraid to say, followed a similar diet since I can remember, it was particularly pleasing to find a driver – the first since Rosberg – who found there was more to life than health food. If Nannini ever had a stamina problem, I never saw it, and the same was emphatically true of Keke.

Ultimately, Sandro elected to give up not just one of his bad habits, but both – and, what’s more, at the same time! This I thought positively heroic, for his devotion to tobacco and fearsomely strong espresso was profound. “Are you any quicker for it?” I asked him one day. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m certainly not so ’appy…”

Later, after his enforced retirement from F1, he raced for the Alfa Romeo ITC team, and, even with very restricted use of his right hand, was very quick indeed. I went to Magny-Cours for one of the races, and found him in the Alfa pit, ciggie in one hand, tiny coffee cup in the other. “What happened?” I said, and he laughed. “Pffff! For Formula 1, it was one thing, but this – this is just saloon cars…”

Sandro may have been very much a throwback, in terms of his attitude to life, but it certainly didn’t compromise his performances on the track. He became a very considerable racing driver, with tremendous flair, and it was an awful thing that his F1 career should have ended the way it did.

The helicopter accident occurred in October 1990, shortly after Nannini’s Benetton finished third, behind Prost and Mansell, at Estoril. Three weeks earlier, at Monza, it had been announced that he would be driving for Ferrari in ’91, and we were all much surprised – there had not been so much of a whisper of it before that weekend.

In fact, Ferrari had been hoping to sign Alesi, but Jean had got himself into a contractual wrangle with Tyrrell (for whom he was then driving) and Williams (for whom he had also signed!), and when a move to Ferrari began to look impossible, the team negotiated with Benetton to have Nannini.

The deal was made public on race morning at Monza, but when Sandro went to Maranello to sign the contract a few days later, he found the terms not quite what had been originally proposed. That being the case, he said that he would prefer to stay with Benetton.

In point of fact, it later became clear that Ferrari had negotiated Alesi out of his Tyrrell contract – and that Williams had decided not to stand in Jean’s way. By way of thanks for Frank’s helpful attitude, a Ferrari 641 was promised, and duly delivered a year later. For many years it resided in the Williams museum.

As for Nannini, his last racing contract was with Mercedes in 1997. He was one of those who really loved to drive racing cars, and I’m sure he misses it to this day. I haven’t seen him for a few years now, but Italian friends tell me he is never short of things to do, one of which – apparently – is consuming the products of the family business. As for the coffee and cigarettes, we can probably take them as read…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine