{"id":54991,"date":"2019-01-09T16:58:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T16:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/issue_content\/the-archives-august-2018\/"},"modified":"2019-07-19T14:31:44","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T13:31:44","slug":"archives-august-2018","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/august-2018\/44\/archives-august-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"The archives: August 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

A double triumph for Australian drivers reminds us what true world class is – in the face of whatever fate throws up<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was nice to appreciate there was something really to savour from this year\u2019s Monaco Grand Prix. What to the layman was plainly brain-numbingly dull – not so much watching paint dry as just gazing fixedly at the tin, still sealed \u2013 was for those who realised what was actually in train quite a nail-biting, tense experience\u2026<\/p>\n

It was so pleasing that the brightest smiley-person in decades of Formula 1 \u2013 Danny Ricciardo \u2013 was actually putting on a master-class in the multi-faceted skills demanded today of a Grand Prix racing driver. From selecting sub-menu B to managing overheating brakes, to experimenting with multiple engine, drive and diff settings, to compensating for lost gear ratios, the engaging Australian must have been juggling physical, intellectual (and emotional) challenges like a demented paper-hanger in a storm within the cockpit of that slinkily matte-finished Red Bull-Renault RB14.<\/p>\n

At any split second \u2013 as is the nature of motor sport at any level \u2013 it would have been all too easy for a moment\u2019s further distraction to have put him into the ever-threatening Monte Carlo guardrails and out of the race he so longed to win\u2026 and seemed set so to do.<\/p>\n

What sprang to mind within my fevered memory banks was Graham Hill\u2019s famous observation after stepping aside under the blue flags on Paddock Hill at Brands Hatch, during the 1972 British Grand Prix. His tweak at the steering wheel to make space enabling others to pass had put his Brabham onto loose marbles off-line. He promptly slithered straight off, and careened into the unforgiving safety bank \u2013 very firmly out of the race. The cleaned-up version of his subsequent admission, printed in the media at the time, was \u201cFrom gentleman to twit in a tenth of a second\u2026\u201d. What he certainly said within my hearing was \u201cFrom ace to a****ole in a tenth of a second\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n

So, at any moment during his admirable drive at Monte Carlo, Danny Ricciardo could most easily have fallen foul of exactly similar misfortune \u2013 \u201cFrom ace to a****ole\u201d indeed. But of course he did not.<\/p>\n

In fact, what a great day Sunday, May 27, 2018 really proved to be for Australian motor sport. Not just one Antipodean son hit the headlines by winning a great motor racing classic \u2013 but with Will Power winning the Indianapolis \u2018500\u2019 in his Team Penske Dallara-Chevrolet we could surely celebrate a double-headed success for our old friends \u2013 without ever forgetting that the same bunch of colonials are also my country\u2019s deadly test-cricketing foes\u2026 but then I am not at all prejudiced.<\/p>\n

I do, however, know one thing for sure. Australian triple-World Champion Jack Brabham \u2013 who won at Monaco in 1959, who threw away a second win there in the very last corner in 1970 and who also contested the Indy \u2018500\u2019 in 1961, 1964 and 1969-70 \u2013 would have been chuffed to bits by such a day.<\/p>\n

Set such single-seat open-wheeler international success for Aussie drivers against a national motor sporting regime down under in which \u2018proper\u2019 racing cars have long been submerged by an over-hyped diet of tin-top super saloons and it makes me think that perhaps there is some proper taste and true style left in the world after all.<\/p>\n

What prompts me to demonstrate what an Italian friend of mine refers to laughingly as such \u2018snobismo<\/i>\u2019? Well, about six or seven years ago I remember a plainly young Australian fan contributing to one of the internet enthusiast fora in which an argument was raging \u2013 now there\u2019s a surprise \u2013 over candidates for the title of being \u2018The Greatest Racing Driver of All Time\u2019. Well, this poor, quality-deprived and thereby deluded kid offered his contention that \u2013 well, I can\u2019t recall which driver it was exactly, but I think it would have been either of the multiple Aussie Super Saloon Champions Mark Skaife or Jamie Whincup \u2013 was his stand-out candidate for plainly just having to be the greatest racing driver the world had ever seen.<\/p>\n

Now against a perhaps more considered \u2013 and certainly better-advised listing of such names as Nuvolari, Caracciola, Clark, Stewart, De Palma, Lockhart, Peterson, Hamilton etc \u2013 I\u2019m really sorry, but I figure that Skaife and Whincup are truly unclassifiable, however fine their true talents might be.<\/p>\n

But put a well-tuned Aussie racing driver upon the genuinely international stage in a mainstream single-seater like a Formula 1 car round Monte Carlo or an Indy car around the Motor Speedway, and hey, here are colonials with a proper claim to fame. It\u2019s called, I believe, world-class. And I know for sure that dear old Jack would have been on the \u2019phone, absolutely relishing it. How would the call have started? Probably \u201c\u2019Allo. It\u2019s Jek. I see your blokes got well and truly beat, then \u2013 not just once, but twice\u2026 Whaddaya think about that, then?\u201d. He was, after all, a very proud Orstrylian. And all credit to them on that great, great day.<\/p>\n

AS THIS YEAR\u2019S British Grand Prix looms large at Silverstone we can think back 30 years to the 1988 edition. Remember that? It was the day when the darkest ash-grey rain clouds clamped down all over Northamptonshire and cold, drenching, incessant rain simply hosed down upon Formula 1\u2019s finest. And at the end of that benighted race\u2019s opening lap it was Gerhard Berger\u2019s Ferrari which burst first out of the grey-blue gloom and spume ahead of Ayrton Senna\u2019s McLaren-Honda MP4\/4.<\/p>\n

Now of course 1988 was the season in which those darned McLaren-Hondas won virtually everything in sight, and but for Senna tripping over Jean-Louis Schlesser\u2019s Williams in the first chicane late in that year\u2019s Italian Grand Prix, they most certainly would have done so. And so great had been the MP4\/4s\u2019 domination, so firm their grip upon the competition, that Berger\u2019s appearance in the lead at Silverstone on that opening lap of the British Grand Prix \u2013 round 8 of the World Championship series, mind \u2013 was actually the very first lap of the entire season not<\/i> to be led by a McLaren-Honda\u2026<\/p>\n

So intense was the rain and so dense the spray cloud that Berger\u2019s Ferrari F1\/87\/88C was towing behind it that the genial (and capable) Austrian actually held his lead over Senna\u2019s McLaren-Honda for the next 13 laps. Senna explained later \u201cThere was no way I was going to finish if I kept up that sort of speed throughout the race so I figured that there wasn\u2019t much chance for him\u2026\u201d \u2013 and in fuel conservation terms that was certainly true.<\/p>\n

Now in contrast that day McLaren\u2019s second driver, Alain Prost, was having a really bad time and it was as the leading duo tore through the murk and came up actually to lap the second MP4\/4 driver, that Senna made his decisive move \u2013 tearing into the Woodcote chicane. Berger had hesitated for just one fleeting moment leaving Abbey Curve and nobody could afford to give Senna such a momentary opportunity. The Brazilian ripped surgically up the inside of the Ferrari \u2013 held what for mere mortals would have been a heart-stopping moment out of control on the puddles \u2013 and then the McLaren\u2019s nose was ahead \u2013 and in front of Prost too as the French star intelligently surrendered room, that day utterly out-classed.<\/p>\n

The Ferraris thereafter were falling ever further behind on fuel requirement, and after 90 minutes or so it was Senna who finally twitched and danced his McLaren over the finish line to win the first really wet British Grand Prix in three decades \u2013 while Berger, almost out of fuel, stammered his Ferrari home ninth.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Alain Prost had never been in contention \u2013 seeming totally out of sorts he drove as if he was on a running-in programme \u2013 and had finally given up the struggle, voluntarily retiring his McLaren. He simply admitted \u201cWhen there is a lot of standing water on the track I don\u2019t like it. I have never pretended I do. I can be quick in the rain, especially if I\u2019m on my own.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the start I was simply swamped in the middle of the field. Okay, it\u2019s the same for everybody, but when you are flat out on the straight, you see absolutely nothing at all. Nothing! I\u2019m not worried about driving on a slippery track surface. That\u2019s all part of the business we\u2019re in. But when you\u2019re driving blind \u2013 that\u2019s not motor racing in my book.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy view is that motor racing should be run in the dry. Look at the British Open golf last week. They cancelled the third day because the weather was so bad. And in America, of course, they don\u2019t race Indycars in the rain\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Our old friend and colleague, the late Alan Henry, said it all when he wrote: \u201cAyrton Senna just smiled the smile of a winner. A winner who perhaps now felt that he had established a wafer-thin psychological advantage over his most dangerous rival\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n

The temporarily tortured Prost meanwhile (perhaps in fact affected deep down for ever after) was excoriated by the French press for this poor Silverstone showing, sparking further verbal self-defence. \u201cAt the end of the day\u2026\u201d, he protested, \u201c\u2026it\u2019s my judgement, and my life and if people won\u2019t accept that view, it\u2019s their problem, not mine. I can live with that\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n

Many of his fellow world-class racing drivers \u2013 throughout history \u2013 would not have said as much, and a few indeed would not have thought as much \u2013 but Alain Prost is a very bright bloke, indeed. And he is still here \u2013 and many of those fellow superstars with a differing mind-set are not. In all cases, in every aspect of life, it\u2019s the end result that counts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":748,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167,196],"issue_decade":[121600],"issue_year":[121673],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/748"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222830,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54991\/revisions\/222830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54991"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=54991"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=54991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}