Benetton: what crisis?

Browse pages
Current page

1

Current page

2

Current page

3

Current page

4

Current page

5

Current page

6

Current page

7

Current page

8

Current page

9

Current page

10

Current page

11

Current page

12

Current page

13

Current page

14

Current page

15

Current page

16

Current page

17

Current page

18

Current page

19

Current page

20

Current page

21

Current page

22

Current page

23

Current page

24

Current page

25

Current page

26

Current page

27

Current page

28

Current page

29

Current page

30

Current page

31

Current page

32

Current page

33

Current page

34

Current page

35

Current page

36

Current page

37

Current page

38

Current page

39

Current page

40

Current page

41

Current page

42

Current page

43

Current page

44

Current page

45

Current page

46

Current page

47

Current page

48

Current page

49

Current page

50

Current page

51

Current page

52

Current page

53

Current page

54

Current page

55

Current page

56

Current page

57

Current page

58

Current page

59

Current page

60

Current page

61

Current page

62

Current page

63

Current page

64

Current page

65

Current page

66

Current page

67

Current page

68

Current page

69

Current page

70

Current page

71

Current page

72

Current page

73

Current page

74

Current page

75

Current page

76

Current page

77

Current page

78

Current page

79

Current page

80

Current page

81

Current page

82

Current page

83

Current page

84

Current page

85

Current page

86

Current page

87

Current page

88

Current page

89

Current page

90

Current page

91

Current page

92

Current page

93

Current page

94

Current page

95

Current page

96

Current page

97

Current page

98

Current page

99

Current page

100

Current page

101

Current page

102

Current page

103

Current page

104

Current page

105

Current page

106

Current page

107

Current page

108

Current page

109

Current page

110

Current page

111

Current page

112

Current page

113

Current page

114

Current page

115

Current page

116

Current page

117

Current page

118

Current page

119

Current page

120

Current page

121

Current page

122

Current page

123

Current page

124

Current page

125

Current page

126

Current page

127

Current page

128

Current page

129

Current page

130

Current page

131

Current page

132

Current page

133

Current page

134

Current page

135

Current page

136

Current page

137

Current page

138

Current page

139

Current page

140

Current page

141

Current page

142

Current page

143

Current page

144

Current page

145

Current page

146

Current page

147

Current page

148

Current page

149

Current page

150

Current page

151

Current page

152

Current page

153

Current page

154

Current page

155

Current page

156

Current page

157

Current page

158

Current page

159

Current page

160

Current page

161

Current page

162

Current page

163

Current page

164

Twenty minutes into the second qualifying session for the Spanish Grand Prix, Michael Schumacher sat in the cockpit of his Benetton, gazing dispassionately at the TV monitors.

He might just as well have poured himself a coffee and tuned the screen into the Antiques Roadshow, for even by that early stage he had consigned pole position to the history books. Having produced an astonishing Senna-style lap a full seven tenths clear of even his own benchmark, he subsequently went on to dominate the race too.

Furthermore, having upped the ante last year by switching to a three-stop strategy, Benetton won this time around by reversing the ploy and making Goodyear’s new C compound last throughout a two-stop gameplan.

Two poles and two wins from four races, and a one point lead in the World Championship not bad for a team popularly portrayed as being in crisis after Imola…

The Chris Eubank of Formula One, Benetton has become the champion that everybody loves to hate. Schumacher, it was said, couldn’t handle the pressure; Benetton, ran the theory, had lost its way and, once lost, would never regain its poise.

But was Imola really such a disaster?

Although Schumacher seems to have spent much of the first four Grands Prix revolving in practice, and had clouted a wall hard in the second untimed session in San Marino, all of the cars have proved more sensitive with the new regulations. For him to crash out of the race heavily, on his first lap on slicks in still-damp conditions, was an uncharacteristic error.

If, indeed, it was an error. Benetton’s telemetry revealed no mechanical problem, although the finger of suspicion has subsequently been pointed at tyre pressures.

Whatever the cause, the incident damaged his car .and his title prospects but his confidence remains demonstrably intact.

humans “If you want to blame it on pressure, think you would be wrong,” he says of the accident. “I can assure you I have had a lot more pressure under different circumstances, like when I made my F1 debut, or last year. People say I am taking risks. Any race driver takes risks. I try to drive 100 per cent all the time, not 99, not 101. We are all humans, we all make mistakes. When people say I am under pressure I like to answer the best way I can and in Barcelona I think I have done that.”

Ross Brawn, Benetton’s Technical Director, suspects that the whole issue has been blown out of proportion: “Somebody came up to me after qualifying in Spain and said. ‘Michael really had to drive hard for that lap.’ I said to him, ‘You don’t think all the other drivers were?’

“Oh they weren’t driving as hard as Michael.’

“I said, ‘Look, I’ve seen Alesi drive, and I’ve seen the others drive. Everybody is balls out, everybody is on the limit, so to think that Michael could hold some in reserve normally, but now is having to drive exceptionally hard, is a mistake.’

“I think what we’ve had, and are gradually getting to terms with, is a car that perhaps isn’t as predictable as it could be, and that on occasions has caught the drivers out, I don’t think that’s a question of overdriving.”

But, patently, the media response to Benetton’s early problems has been an over-reaction. So why did the team so obviously struggle in the opening races?

“I think there are two things, really,” assesses Brawn, “One is that you must never underestimate how long it takes with a new partnership, like ours with Renault, to get everything sorted out. The second is that last year we had the luxury in most races of having such a margin that we could be conservative in the way we approached various things. This year, when it is a lot more competitive, you have to be more aggressive in everything you do.”

Without doubt the early change to the airbox regulations did little to aid the team’s cause. The B195 had originally been designed with a smaller engine intake, costing power, and with a humpback on the engine cover, costing downforce. When both aspects are modified, the engineers expect to liberate 10-15 more horsepower from Renault’s V10 engine.

But even before the rule changes, Benetton was playing catch-up. Alain Prost says that a team would normally accomplish 10-12,000 kilometres of testing over the winter. Having switched from a Ford powerplant to Renault, Benetton completed what is estimated to be only a fifth of that distance.

“There were two major reliability issues which took some time to solve.” admits Brawn. ‘And they hurt. One was a problem due to the vibration of the engine, which was fairly severe. The other was a hydraulic pump drive problem which was fairly banal but which took an awful long time to get working.

‘We had to go through a fairly steep learning curve to discover how to make it all work because Renault quite rightly wouldn’t tell us what Williams had done. I respect that, because I wouldn’t want them telling Williams what we were doing.

“That meant we went racing with a car which we had managed to make reliable, but really the performance wasn’t where we needed it.”

The heavy criticism rankles. “What we had last. year didn’t happen by accident. We didn’t just magic a car that no-one understood, and the same people are behind this one as well.”

Schumacher’s pit crew had their own answer to the critics. They hung out one of the offending articles taped to the World Champion’s pit board during qualifying. The board read: ‘P1’.