F1 1997: the same old story?

It ended, alas, in controversy, as we have come to expect of World Championship deciders in the contemporary era. Towards the end of the European Grand Prix at Jerez, Jacques Villeneuve aimed his Williams-Renault inside Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari as they braked for a tight right-hander. And Schumacher, for once taken completely unawares, simply and cack-handedly drove into Villeneuve. Happily, it was the Ferrari which came off worst.

As Schumacher slid helplessly into the gravel trap, Villeneuve his Williams damaged but still operational continued to the finish, and thus to the World Championship, a result which, in the circumstances, gave me particular delight. If Villeneuve’s stock rose consummately that day, so Schumacher’s appropriately fell. Everyone remembered Adelaide, the race which settled the World Championship in 1994, when the German, under pressure from Hill’s Williams, hit a wall, came back on the track in a now hobbled Benetton, and contrived to collide with Damon at the next corner. Those who then gave Michael the benefit of the doubt have revised their opinions since Jerez; those who did not shrugged that his attempt to remove Villeneuve was merely more of the same.

As Jackie Stewart put it, “I don’t believe that what Michael did in Spain was acceptable, nor that it should be tolerated. Even in the late ’90s, there is room in motor racing for morals, for a sense of ethics. If we don’t have that, I don’t believe we have a sport any more.” It was no surprise that JYS responded in this fashion, for he took a similar stand against Ayrton Senna seven years ago, when the McLaren driver brutally and quite deliberately turfed Alain Prost’s Ferrari off at the first corner of the Japanese Grand Prix.

At the time Stewart’s comments helped some of us believe we were sane, after all, for some luminaries were disposed, fatuously, to go along with Senna’s contention that Prost had ‘left a gap.’ Mario Andretti, dry and succinct as ever, was very sound on that point. “If there’d been no run-off there,” he observed, “there’d have been no gap…” Had Senna not felt he could blithely take himself and another off the road at 150mph with relative impunity, in other words, he would have never tried it. A year on, the Brazilian was no longer talking about gaps left by Prost, instead with complete self-justification, of course admitting that, yes, he had acted with malice aforethought. Whether Schumacher will ever come similarly clean about Jerez ’97 or, for that matter, Adelaide ’94 remains to be seen.

The pity of it is that, until eight minutes past three on October 26, until the 48th lap of the final race of the year, Schumacher had driven as flawless a season as any man may reasonably expect. In what was not the best car, he had won five Grands Prix, two of which Monte Carlo and Spa stand comparison with any of history’s great wet weather drives; more than that, though, he had consistently impressed with his commitment, never less than absolute, and also with the way he had conducted himself out of the car.

Then, in a split-second, he tainted everything. Few would dispute that, on raw skill, Schumacher belongs in the pantheon, but his willingness, at the last, to hit well south of the belt keeps him from the company of Fangio, Moss or Clark. After the 1981 Caesars Palace Grand Prix, one youthful never-was of a driver asked Carlos Reutemann why he had not made sure of the World Championship simply by putting Nelson Piquet in the wall. “After all, no one would have known,” he ventured. “I’d have known,” said Carlos.

As team principal Flavio Briatore left Benetton, and Formula One, at the end of the season, so also Berger decided to retire, after 13 seasons at the top. For many, he was about the last free spirit in Grand Prix racing, and his longtime team-mate and friend Jean Alesi must now take up the mantle.

Once again Jordan went through a Formula One season without winning, but at least the Peugeot-powered cars were usually competitive in 1997, and had the team enjoyed the services of an experienced driver, that breakthrough victory might well have come. As it was, Giancarlo Fisichella while not the Second Messiah some have suggested gave a generally fine account of himself, and looks like the best young Italian for a generation. While sometimes no quicker than Ralf Schumacher, he clearly had the edge on grey cells and, when it came to charm, was comfortably ahead, too.

In all truth, close fight for the World Championship notwithstanding, one could not describe this as a vintage year for Formula 1, for although it contained elements of greatness, and one or two of genius, rather too many races were processional, and a handful downright soporific. Perhaps the major rule changes for 1998, while serving undoubtedly to disfigure the appearance of the Grand Prix car, will yet encourage racing, to the point that pit stops cease to be the only realistic way of making places.

In the meantime, though, let us celebrate the fact that Villeneuve beat Schumacher and, more to the point, that he did it by passing him on the track. Cleanly.