This blog has now closed. Please visit my new blog, Stepreo.

Archive: Jacques Villeneuve

Michael Schumacher: The most divisive man in F1

5 August 2009 00:07

Who is the most controversial man in F1? Is it Bernie Ecclestone with his bizarre comments about Hitler and Jewish black female drivers? Is it Max Mosley with his political posturing and ~~Nazi~~ German prisoner themed sex orgies? Nope — it’s Michael Schumacher.

When it was announced that Michael Schumacher was preparing to replace Felipe Massa at Ferrari while the Brazilian convalesces, the great ideological gulf among F1 fans suddenly re-emerged. I can’t remember seeing such strong reactions on any issue about any subject, let alone F1.

For some people, Michael Schumacher might as well be Jesus. You could produce video evidence of him killing a kitten and he would still be the greatest man on earth. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t appreciate genius when they see it?

For others, there is nothing that can redeem Michael Schumacher. He is a serial cheat whose team-mates were all hamstrung and whose seven World Drivers’ Championships are among the least deserving ever awarded. You must surely see that he is the most evil man on earth?

My view is slightly more nuanced. He was a bit of both. His record speaks for itself, and he must take credit especially for his ability to build a team around him. But I hated the way he went about racing.

Incidentally, for a fair-minded assessment of Michael Schumacher, I highly recommend James Allen’s book, The Edge of Greatness. I always thought James Allen as a commentator was too biased in favour of Schumacher, but his book displays a very measured and nuanced assessment of his qualities as a driver, and his failings as a sportsperson.

I must come straight out and say that I have never been a fan of Michael Schumacher. Never. And for me, his talent was tainted by his tendency to bend the rules whenever he had the slightest opportunity.

I don’t even rate him much as a racer. For me, his wheel-to-wheel skills were rather poor, and he disguised this by being overly aggressive. That was why he often panicked under pressure, such as at Jerez in 1997. If he found himself in the midfield, he sometimes had very clumsy races indeed — his botched move on Takuma Sato at Suzuka in 2003 springs to mind.

Schumacher was famous for relying on Ross Brawn strategies to “overtake in the pitlane” rather than try to make a genuine overtaking move. I highly doubt that Schumacher would have won as many Championships if refuelling wasn’t legal. I won’t lie: 2000–2004 were my least favourite years of watching F1 since I first fell in love with the sport in the mid-1990s.

Since Schumacher left F1 I do feel as though I have started to enjoy F1 a lot more. Even though some of the drivers are not perfect in terms of their adherence to the rules or their spirit of fair competition, it feels a lot less like a dark cloud such as Rascassegate will come rumbling over the hills at any moment.

Now, of course, he is back in F1 and it has changed again. It amuses me greatly that even weeks before his first grand prix back is due to start, he already sought ways to cheat, to unfairly gain an advantage over his competitors. It says it all about him in one action.

Williams are not my favourite team either, but they were totally right to block this blatant infringement of the rules. Just a couple of weeks before, Toro Rosso’s new driver Jaime Alguersuari was refused a similar request, and he did a perfectly adequate job. Quite why a supposedly great 7 times World Champion needs to practice so much is not clear to me.

Ferrari’s enormously arrogant statement in retaliation against the blocked request sums up why I can’t stand the team so much. Apparently they think the red rule should still exist. What happened to that spirit of cooperation they were supposedly so keen on? I guess now that the Concorde Agreement is signed, cordial relations are not so important any more.

It is clear that the testing rules need amending. I have been saying so for a long time now. But until a new set of rules are agreed upon, everyone needs to adhere to them, otherwise you may as well just rip the rulebook up (some would argue Ferrari have ripped up the rulebook and written their own anyway).

This is all a sign that Michael Schumacher does not intend to simply go through the motions. I had wondered quite what was in this comeback for Schumacher. I saw easily why Ferrari were interested. But what could possibly have motivated Schumacher?

After all, he potentially has so much to lose. With his wife and kids — and we know his wife is concerned because he says he has made an “arrangement” with her that health is the top priority — he surely doesn’t want to be doing something so dangerous. He cannot possibly need the money, and he certainly doesn’t have anything else to prove (unless he wants somehow to prove that he can be a good sportsperson, but that opportunity has already been shot).

He also risks being embarrassed because of his waning ability. At 40, he is the oldest driver to compete in F1 since Nigel Mansell in 1995, and let us not forget that Mansell’s last period as an F1 driver was not exactly a roaring success. And after two and a half years out of competitive grand prix racing, there is every chance that he will be rusty during his forthcoming races.

But now we know what motivates him — it is his sheer, ruthless competitiveness. He may have initially agreed out of “loyalty” to Ferrari, but once he’s a driver again he is up to the same old tricks, looking for the slightest advantage wherever it may come from.

Of course, many would say that this is what sets him apart from everyone else.

14 comments

Henry Surtees

20 July 2009 01:30

Categories: Formula Two, History

This evening I came home to read about the tragic news of the death of Henry Surtees in yesterday’s second Formula Two race at Brands Hatch.

Yesterday afternoon I opted to watch the German MotoGP, where spectators were treated to an excellent motor race. Once that was over, I logged onto the internet. It was soon clear that there had been a serious accident in Formula Two.

Henry Surtees was struck on the head by a loose tyre after he drove into the path of debris from Jack Clarke’s accident. Clarke spun off and hit the barrier, sending his wheel flying into the path of Surtees. It seems as though Surtees was immediately knocked unconscious. His car went straight on at Dingle Dell, hitting the barrier and coming to a standstill shortly afterwards.

Straight away it was clear that it was a nasty accident, and the fact that there was very little news regarding his condition in the following hours rang alarm bells. Later in the evening news broke that Henry Surtees had died.

It is trivial to point out that motorsport is dangerous. But a lot of effort has been put in over the years to try and eradicate and chance of serious injury or death. The risk posed by flying wheels and tyres must count among the most difficult of these problems to solve, and yesterday’s tragic events at Brands Hatch underline just how dangerous they can be.

The two most recent fatalities related to Formula 1 were both caused by loose wheels. During the 2001 Australian Grand Prix, circuit marshal Graham Beveridge was struck by a tyre which was sent flying after Jacques Villeneuve was involved in a high-speed accident with Ralf Schumacher. Just a few races before at the 2000 Italian Grand Prix, another marshal, Paolo Ghislimberti, was killed following a first-lap pile-up where Jarno Trulli’s tyres flew off his car. Those are the only two F1-related fatalities since the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994.

Since those accidents, a lot of effort has been put into strengthening the wheel tethers which are supposed to prevent wheels from flying off at high speed. Unfortunately, a solution has not yet been found, and wheel continue to fly off cars regularly. At this years Australian Grand Prix, Robert Kubica narrowly avoided being struck on the head by a flying tyre following his accident involving Sebastian Vettel.

All forms of motorsport face such dangers, and Formula Two has had some accidents involving flying rear tyres already in its short history, as Brits on Pole have noted. Questions are already tentatively being asked about the safety of the Formula Two cars which are designed and built by WilliamsF1. But the tragic death of Henry Surtees only underlines the risks that we already knew existed in motorsport.

The situation is particularly awful given that his father, the World Champion Grand Prix motorcyclist and Formula 1 driver John Surtees, raced in F1 during the 1960s and early 1970s, when the sport was probably at its most dangerous, and is still alive today. Henry Surtees, racing in an age when motor racing has probably never been so safe, died when he was just 18.

Both clearly had high hopes that Henry Surtees would reach F1. Here is a video from March of this year where John and Henry Surtees explain what attracted them to Formula Two.

My thoughts are with the family and friends of Henry Surtees.

6 comments

Disaster averted — there will be one Formula 1

25 June 2009 02:12

Categories: News, Opinion

A deal has been struck between Max Mosley, Fota and Bernie Ecclestone, and the threat of a breakaway series has been averted. I think there were a lot of people out there who quite liked the idea of a breakaway series. Indeed, given the choice between Max Mosley’s rotten vision and a Fota-run series, I would have gone for the Fota series every time.

But a split would have been a calamitous situation. The new series, despite having all the big names and probably some decent circuits, would still have taken some time to find its feet. Plus, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Fota series would have got good television coverage. Don’t forget that for the vast majority of fans, television is the only way we can consume the sport that we love, so this is an essential element.

In a lot of ways, the roots of the current problem in Formula 1 lie with Bernie Ecclestone. Or, to be more precise, CVC. They are the ones who suck the money out of the sport in order to pay the interest on their debts. That is why F1 ends up visiting sterile circuits with minuscule crowds — because those governments will pay huge sums of money for the privilege of holding an F1 race. That is probably also the reason for the fervour over cost cutting. If the teams spend less, Bernie can get away with giving the teams less of the sport’s revenues, and giving CVC more of them.

But despite that problem with CVC, I can’t find it in myself to be too angry with Bernie Ecclestone. In truth, he has done a great job of promoting the sport, and F1 may never have appealed to me were it not for Bernie’s efforts. Sure, there are a lot of areas where he can improve, particularly on the dire online offering.

But under Bernie Ecclestone, the television coverage of Formula 1 has been revolutionised. He got his fingers burnt with the adventurous F1 Digital+ endeavour. But while those innovatory days may be no more (and it is notable that F1 is still not broadcast in HD), today’s FOM-produced World Feed (used for all races except Monaco and Japan) is based on many of those innovations and television coverage has improved immeasurably over the past fifteen or so years.

We seldom have to deal with relatively amateurish efforts from the host broadcasters. Just compare these two videos of the same incident as it unfolded live. One is from the FOM F1 Digital+ World Feed, and the other was from the host broadcaster. (To view them side-by-side ‘as live’, start the second video when the first video reaches 17 seconds.)

The difference in quality is massive. F1 Digital+ caught the accident live so viewers knew immediately what happened. This was no coincidence. It happened because a system of sensors around the circuit could detect when cars were running close together, and coverage automatically switched to those cars in the expectation of some kind of incident unfolding. Later, replays from multiple angles enhanced the viewer’s understanding of the incident.

Meanwhile, the host broadcaster cut to Ralf Schumacher climbing out of his car ten seconds after the incident originally started. And it was a long time until viewers found out that the accident also involved Jacques Villeneuve — and there was only one angle of the incident. Note also how Martin Brundle had to rely on the superior coverage which he could see outside his commentary box window to tell viewers that Villeneuve was unhurt.

The Australian host broadcasters were not dummies. They just did the best job they could with the resources they had at their disposal. “Bernievision” was only good because of heavy investment and years of experimentation.

Bernie’s television operation was pretty impressive even in 2001, though not all of the innovations remain in today’s coverage. But it is thanks to Bernie Ecclestone that today’s coverage is more like the first video than the second one. A Fota-run championship would not have had such a slick operation going from day one, and the fans would have been worse off for it.

(For more on the amazing “Bernievision”, check out these decade-old articles on GrandPrix.com: Inside Bakersville and Inside the F1 digital television centre.)

Then there is the question of whether it would have had any coverage at all. The BBC would have been scared off, and television executives would have been confused. They want the World Championship, whether or not an alternative series is better in the eyes of the fans. Take, for instance, the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, which I hear is better than the FIA’s World Rally Championship. Not that I’d know, because the former is ghettoised on Eurosport while the FIA’s weak WRC gets terrestrial coverage.

No matter if it has all the current teams and good circuits — signing up to show a new series is a risk which television executives wouldn’t want to take. The prospect of the best F1 series being on some pay channel and having no terrestrial coverage was a real one. That aspect of the breakaway scared me.

On the other hand, the proposed breakaway presented the opportunity to create a great new version of Formula 1, unshackled from the financial needs of CVC or the warped politics of Max Mosley. Fota had some crazy ideas, but they carried out market research and were far more receptive to the views of fans than the FIA have ever been.

I particularly liked the idea that the new series could have been particularly focussed on attracting an American audience. The FIA Formula 1 Championship has dumped on US fans time and again, and today there is no race in North America even though it is a major market for the manufacturers.

There would also have been a careful look at ticket prices and the fees circuits have to pay to hold an F1 race. No-one (apart from Bernie apparently) likes to arrive at sterile circuits with a dozen people in the grandstand. It comes across on television too, whether or not FOM’s cameramen are instructed to avoid shots of empty grandstands.

I could feel the atmosphere of the passionate British crowd on the television. The difference could hardly be more stark from the previous race at Turkey, where the crowd was around 10% of the size. And Silverstone is a circuit that Bernie wants to move away from.

Even the little things that are wrong with F1 could have had the magnifying glass applied to them. Such as, why can’t a driver keep the same number for his whole career. In other categories such as Nascar or MotoGP, a driver’s number becomes part of his legend, every bit as important as, say, his helmet design. Even in the history of Formula 1, the number 27 car is almost synonymous with Gilles Villeneuve. Imagine the marketing potential too. But in the clinical world of Formula 1, driver numbers are determined by the positions of last year’s Constructors’ Championship.

In short, the breakaway could have been a great opportunity to fix everything that is broken with F1. I doubt the breakaway would have been a true ‘split’, and it probably wouldn’t have had the same consequences as the Cart / IRL split. It was pretty clear from the fact that the FIA never released a finalised 2010 entry list that the FIA didn’t have a 2010 F1 Championship to speak of, and Fota’s would have been the only show in town.

That, I think, is why the deal must be seen as a victory for Fota. It has turned out to be a powerful organisation that did after all have the ability to at last stand up to Max Mosley’s dictatorial authority.

There is a part of me that suspects that the FIA as an organisation simply isn’t fit for the purpose of overseeing motorsports. We will eventually see how things develop with Max Mosley’s successor. I think today is just the starting point though, and we will see some more loose ends being tied up in the coming months. There will be power struggles there too, I am sure.

It looks like these negotiations will in fact be handled by Michel Boeri. That in itself is interesting because he is the promoter of the Monaco Grand Prix. It was reported that he would take the Monaco GP with him to the Fota camp if the breakaway went ahead.

What we need now, most of all, is someone in charge of the FIA who is not a glorified politician, constantly interfering. I remember Maurice Hamilton making the point once that everyone knows who Max Mosley is, and many people can tell you that Jean-Marie Balestre was his predecessor. But not many can tell you who Balestre’s predecessor was (for you history buffs, on the Fisa side it was Pierre Ugeux, and in the FIA it was Paul Metternich). Yet the sport still ran.

It sounds like from now on there will be more checks and balances in place, with the F1 Commission being given more of a say from now on. No doubt Fota will continue to play its role too, and I think it would be best for everyone if Williams and Force India re-joined and USF1, Campos and Manor all joined too. That way the teams, who create the sport, can have a say in its governance too.

Speaking of the new teams, I think as we sit here today, with much of the damage repaired, the biggest shame of this episode is that two capable teams have been denied a place on the entry list as a result of Max Mosley’s petty politicking. I think many of us can’t wait to see Prodrive finally get a chance to enter F1, and Lola were a promising prospect too.

No doubt the FIA actually had a tough choice to make, as according to Joe Saward at least the Manor Grand Prix team is actually a seriously strong prospect. With costs set to be cut and a more stable future for F1 promised, and with that troublesome Max fellow out of the way, at least we know there are capable teams that are ready to fill any potential gaps that appear.

4 comments

The Red Bull RB5 launch

10 February 2009 15:32

Categories: History, Opinion

Among the final cars to launch was the Red Bull Racing RB5, which was launched yesterday. We can safely assume that the Toro Rosso will be very similar, while we are led to believe that the Force India will be in large part a McLaren customer car. Everything has gone all quiet on the Honda front in recent days, so who knows if that car will ever break cover.

So this is it then. And good things come to those who wait. The RB5 is a real beauty, though you wouldn’t expect anything else from the pencil of Adrian Newey.

Of course, we are now used to the strange new wings so the RB5 doesn’t have that shock factor to it. But the RB5 has all the sleek style you would expect from a Newey design. The pointy, narrow front nose has become something of a Newey trademark over the past five years or so. It’s very interesting to see that he has stuck to this principle, while other teams appear to be adopting wider, chunkier nose designs.

F1 Technical describes the front wing as “the most advanced out there”. You can’t fail to be struck by the detail in the front wing which doesn’t seem present in most of the other teams’ designs.

History shows that Adrian Newey adapts well to radical regulation changes, as James Allen recently noted. The 1996 Williams was about as dominant as a car gets. I have strong memories of that season. It was my first full year of watching F1, and the Williams car was awesome. I still remember to this day that they had the Constructors’ Championship wrapped up in Hungary. Amazing when you consider that their two drivers were hardly the greatest ever to grace a race track.

By the time the regulations radically changed again in 1998, Newey had moved to McLaren and he nailed it right away again. The McLarens were utterly dominant in Australia, and they clinched both Championships that season, ending a seven year long drought.

But beware Adrian Newey’s Achilles’ heel. The RB5 is among the last cars to be unveiled because Red Bull have made the decision to forego track time in order to give Newey more time to perfect his design. This may result in the RB5 being a fast car with possibly the best aerodynamics. But you have to hope that it works.

It’s the opposite approach to Ferrari’s. Ferrari launched their car a month ago, deciding that they would like plenty of time to “debug” the car. But if something is wrong with the RB5, they won’t have long to debug it. That is even more of a worry this year when in-season testing is banned.

You get the sense that Adrian Newey likes things to be “just right” from his perspective, even if that is at the expense of other things — even things as basic as fitting the driver into the car (hello, Alex Wurz and Juan Pablo Montoya!). It is not a pragmatic approach. Newey’s cars look the best on paper, but he has developed a reputation for being involved with unreliable cars.

In 2008 Red Bull had a fairly solid year reliability-wise. But the fact that the RB5 had to be stopped with gearbox issues just 14 laps into its first run does not bode well. Red Bull’s 2007 season was notorious for gearbox problems. Let us hope for Red Bull’s sake that they will not make a return.

1 comment

Honda's withdrawal in context

8 December 2008 00:01

Categories: Opinion

I had planned on my next post being the second part of my driver rankings. Unfortunately, real life events have intervened. In the meantime, events have overtaken me as Formula 1 was hit by a huge news story on Friday — Honda’s sudden withdrawal from the sport.

Now, normally such an announcement wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. Ever since I started watching Formula 1 in the mid-1990s, I have watched teams and manufacturers come and go on a regular basis.

I saw Renault withdraw from the sport as engine supplier to Williams and Benetton in 1997, only to return as a fully-fledged constructor when they bought the Benetton team just a few years later in 2000. Ford came to the party when they bought the Stewart team in 1999, only to leave the sport entirely a few years later in 2004. Peugeot left the sport in a huff at their own lack of success in 2000, having only joined the circus in 1994.

I learnt quickly, therefore, that manufacturers’ interest in F1 is almost always transient. For every Mercedes that appears fully committed, there are a handful of Renaults and Hondas who will enter and exit the sport according to the wind direction.

Honda’s announcement was shocking partly because of its suddenness. The speed with which the decision was taken is made clear when you read James Allen’s account. There is also the fact that at the start of this year Honda owned not one but two F1 teams. Now they have dramatically trimmed right back to zero, and will not even offer an engine supply to any teams next season.

There is also the fact that Honda were massive spenders in F1. This appeared to signify a magnificent commitment to the sport, despite the relative lack of success. But the flipside of this is that it made Honda an absolute laughing stock within the sport.

The huge amount of money the Honda F1 team spent also made it more vulnerable to the red pen of the bosses. No other manufacturer will save as much money by axing their F1 team. It may be true that Honda’s withdrawal is for political reasons, as former BAR-Honda driver Jacques Villeneuve posits. But it is Honda’s huge costs, coupled with the utter lack of success, that made it vulnerable to such political manoeuvring.

As such, the withdrawal of Honda is not such a shock when you think about it, even though I wouldn’t have predicted it. Moreover, Honda is not a fixture of Formula 1 like Ferrari, or even Mercedes. The current incarnation of the Honda F1 project only got the nod in 1998, and even then it was quickly reigned in to become a mere engine supply deal with BAR. Honda bought the team when tobacco sponsorship left the sport just a few years ago. Despite having run a team in the 1960s, and the huge success of the corporation as an engine supplier in the 1980s, an F1 institution it is not.

What makes people worried, though, is the economic climate in which this news has come. Whereas Ford found a buyer for Jaguar Racing easily enough in Red Bull in 2003, buyers for Honda will be thin on the ground due to the lack of credit that will be available to interested parties.

Next season’s Formula 1 calendar has already lost two races — Canada and France — and China and both German circuits currently in use have recently warned that they may not hold races for much longer. Again, it all comes down to money, with circuit owners being unable or unwilling to pay Bernie Ecclestone’s fast-increasing costs of staging a grand prix at the same time as attendances are tumbling.

Meanwhile, car sales are in freefall on a global scale, with a number of large car manufacturers seemingly in serious financial danger unless drastic action is taken. In the backdrop of these events, participation in motorsports looks like an extravagance. Even if the old “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” mantra holds true in normal times, right now western consumers are tightening their belts meaning that any increase in sales may be too small to be justifiable.

As such, Honda’s withdrawal is seen as just another sign that Formula 1 faces a crisis. We have a slimmed-down calendar that relies increasingly on flyaway races away from the sport’s European heartland to help pay CVC’s bills, and no races in the vitally important North American market for the first time in five decades.

Now there is a slimmed-down grid of just 18 cars — a number that is getting smaller. When you consider that the 2008 season was originally destined to contain 24 entries, F1 has essentially lost a quarter of its teams in a matter of months. Formula 1 is beginning to look like a shadow of its former self.

Now the question everyone is asking is, “who is next?” Initially the finger pointed at Toyota. Many pointed out that Toyota are only really in F1 because Honda were there. Toyota are also, like Honda, huge spenders with little to show for it.

But Toyota quickly put the lid on the speculation by issuing a statement that appeared to affirm their commitment to F1 — although, as James Allen pointed out, the word “currently” in front of “committed” looks like a carefully worded way to give them an easy exit should things take a turn for the worse. After all, if Honda’s decision was so sudden, why would a decision from Toyota not be?

BMW and Mercedes-Benz have both also affirmed their commitment to F1. But one manufacturer has spoken with a deafening silence.

I always suspected that the first manufacturer to go would be Renault. Its CEO, Carlos Ghosn, is said to be sceptical of motorsport participation, and there has been a question mark over the team’s future ever since he joined Renault in 2005. Besides which, Renault’s history in F1 has shown that it will come and go as it pleases.

Even though some news websites have reported that Renault is committed to F1, I have seen no quotes which the other manufacturers have been happy enough to provide. Was the media palmed off with a stock answer from a Renault spokesperson?

Meanwhile, rumours circulate around Red Bull. Dietrich Mateschitz recently re-bought Gerhard Berger’s 50% stake in Toro Rosso, but many think he did this so that he could sell it more easily. But with billions to play with and no car sales to drop off a cliff, I see little reason why he would pull the plug on both teams.

Williams has been perceived to be in a vulnerable position for a few years now. It is the last brave privateer team that is in it not to sell cars and not to sell drinks, but purely for the love of racing. It has been hit hard, but it doesn’t have to be seen to be reducing costs for political reasons like the manufacturers have to. Ironically, Williams may be safer than some of the manufacturers now.

We will just have to wait and see. It’s clear that Formula 1 is currently undergoing a massive change. Could the ground be being laid for a return to a privateer era? If so, you won’t find me complaining too much, no matter how painful the current events are in the medium-term.

5 comments

doctorvee