A Good Month for Bad F1 Anniversaries

Rubens Barrichello makes way to Michael Schumacher at 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, from English Wikipedia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is a terrible month for anniversaries, or maybe a good month for terrible anniversaries.  We have recently passed the anniversary of Ayrton Senna’s death on 1 May 1994.  We have progressed onto the 30^th anniversary of Canadian daredevil driver, Gilles Villeneuve, at Zolder on 8 May 1982.  Looking for, and failing to find, some more positive anniversaries, I discovered that it is 20 years since Nigel Mansell was in the middle of his 5 race winning streak at the start of his tedious steamrollering of the 1992 World Championship in the active suspension Williams FW14B.    One of the best scenes in the movie Senna is a brief shot of the Williams in a pit garage, with the unmanned car dancing like a hyperactive Transformer, as the mechanics adjust the suspension telemetry.

Talking of unfair advantages, it is exactly 10 years this month since the notorious Austrian Grand Prix held on 12 May 2002.  This was the race in which Rubens Barrichello, leading in his Ferrari, was ordered to move over to allow his illustrious teammate, Michael Schumacher, to pass. This was only the 6^th race of the season.  Schumacher had already won 4 of the preceding 5 races and was leading the championship by over 20 points.  David Coulthard’s win at Monaco later that month would be the last occasion in the 2002 season on which any car other than a Ferrari crossed the finish line first.  If ever there was an occasion when team orders were not called for, this was it.  Only when the boos began ringing around the A1 Ring did Schumacher and Ferrari team principal Jean Todt look suitably shamefaced, the German meaninglessly pushing the Brazilian onto the top step of the podium.

As usual, Bernie Ecclestone managed to miss the point entirely.  He commented “I did not like what I saw.  Team orders are only acceptable if the championship is in the balance at the end of the year…They could have come up with something more elegant or more discrete.”  So the problem wasn’t asking Rubens to move over, but that Ferrari made it too blatant.  Fortunately, Ferrari learned their lesson and applied the much more subtle “Alonso is faster than you” tactic in Germany 2010.

It seems inevitable, with such a tight championship challenge, that we will hear more about team orders this season.  Indeed, Lotus has already been criticised for not forcing Romain Grosjean to move aside for Kimi Raikkonen.  At least this year, unlike ten years ago, team tactics are likely to be justified.

FORMULA ONE MUM

Formula One – On a Jet Plane

Etihad Airways Logo on Ferrari Rear Wing (picture - Wiki Commons)

Mark Webber’s column for the BBC website raises the issue of Formula 1 travel and, specifically, the choice that drivers make in the time gap between the flyaway races; whether to remain acclimatised in the East or travel back to home base in Europe.

Not many people will feel sympathy for pampered F1 pilots, but it is recognised that poor travel choices can have an impact on their performances.  Michael Andretti’s decision to commute from his home in America was cited as a reason for the Hamburger Hill style-massacre that was his 1993 part-season with McLaren and we all know far too much about Lewis Hamilton’s conjugal trips to LA.  However, it is important to remember that the consequences of a 20 race calendar also impact on the mechanics, media folk and other less privileged members of the F1 paddock.

There is an impression that the growth in the number of races and those requiring a trip through the long haul departure lounge has been an inexorable process over decades.  In fact, these are relatively recent phenomena.  Looking back over the past ten, twenty and even thirty years there was a remarkable degree of consistency.  Thirty years ago in 1982, Keke Rosberg’s championship year consisted of 16 races of which just 6 were outside of Europe.  The position was identical for Nigel Mansell in 1992 and as recently as 2002 there were just 17 races, again with only 6 flyaways.  In contrast, this year we have 20 races of which 12 are unquestionably away fixtures.

So next time I have to rise at 6:30 a.m. to watch the pre-race grid walk, I will give a thought to the poor souls of the F1 paddock, so far from home and missing out on Simon Cowell’s latest talent travesty, BBC One’s The Voice, ITV’s Celebrities on the Slide, Jeremy Clarkson, Jeremy Kyle, fuel panics, hosepipe bans, the Boris and Ken show, austerity and tax credit cuts.  Then again….

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Departing Disgracefully

So, goodbye Jarno Trulli.  The Italian joins those other long-serving and long-suffering absentees from the 2012 F1 grid – Rubens Barrichello and Nick Heidfeld.  All three had notable talents, but somehow seemed to leap from being promising newcomers to steady veterans without an intervening period of outstanding success.  All three drivers’ departures are involuntary.  Whatever you think of Barrichello’s final season, I have to admire his refusal to go quietly into the night and to treat what turned out to be his last Brazilian GP as a farewell party.

Some drivers make “good” exits from the sport.  Both Juan Manuel Fangio and Jackie Stewart retired whilst still performing at their best.  Others, like Lauda and Prost, left prematurely but came back successfully.  From extensive study, here are some key rules for making a dignified GP exit:

• don’t go off in a sulk;
• don’t hint at “dark forces” having acted against you;
• don’t hang around like a bad smell, when the mojo’s gone, it’s gone;
• don’t have stop-start retirements, or if you do, come back winning;
• don’t spend your final season as a mobile chicane or crash magnate; and most importantly
• don’t become too “lardy” to fit in the car.

Here are some drivers who didn’t heed this advice:

For some drivers winning the World Championship is a springboard, for others it is a motivational diving board.  James Hunt’s post-championship performances were a downward spiral of diminishing returns.  Having joined the similarly declining Wolf Team in 1979, Hunt found the car and F1 racing in general no longer to his tastes.  Having failed to make any impact in the first few races of the season Hunt retired his car with transmission failure after just 4 laps of the Monaco GP.  He promptly announced his decision to retire from all forms of racing, choosing instead to spend more time with his budgerigars.

Like Hunt, in his heyday Aussie 1980 World Champion Alan Jones was known as a hard charger.  He quit the sport in style in 1981, winning his final race at Las Vegas.  However a few years and a few too many “barbies” later, AJ returned, with undiminished ego but expanded waistline.  In a one-off race for Arrows in 1983 he retired “feeling unwell”, before completing a full season with the Beatrice-Lola-Ford corporate vanity project in 1986.  During the season, AJ argued with his teammate, his team and pretty much everyone else off the track, whilst doing little racing on it.  Retiring again, Jones subsequently signed up for the GP Masters series only to withdraw due to fitness concerns.

Nigel Mansell was another serial retiree  with girth issues.  Our Nige announced his absolute definite, no turning back retirements from F1 at the British GP 1990, Italian GP 1992 and finally, finally, the Spanish GP 1995.  The Brit’s inability to quit might explain the Philip Morris corporation’s desire to pair him with McLaren for the 1995 season.  The Mansell and McLaren combination had “disaster” written all over it, which wasn’t the best choice of paintwork.  Having spent two years supersizing in America, Mansell struggled to squeeze into the MP4/10, until a special “FB” wide load version was constructed for him.  Two dismal outings ended with Il Leone abandoning a perfectly healthy car, and the remainder of his reputation, in the pits at Barcelona.  “Nigel chose not to continue” said Ron Dennis through lips thinner than a Murder She Wrote plot line.

Damon Hill, Mansell’s successor at Williams, sadly followed his compatriot’s less than glorious path into retirement.  Hill stopped racing after a moderately successful 1998 season.  However, for some inexplicable reason, he kept turning up and driving a Jordan around on race weekends during  1999.  Having been soundly outpaced by teammate Frentzen, Hill made a half-hearted lunge for retirement after the French GP, but dragged the agony out to the final race in Japan.  Like Mansell, Hill retired a fully functioning F1 car 22 laps into his final race, with the F1 Yearbook accurately recording the retirement reason as “Discouraged”.  “I lost so much time…that in the end I reckoned there was no point in going on.”  Quite so.

However, the absolute worst departure from F1 was the Columbian bull in a china shop that was Juan Pablo Montoya’s 2006 half-season with McLaren.  When he first came into the sport, “Monty” was the swashbuckling hero who was going to topple the Schumacher and Ferrari juggernaut.  A total of 94 GP starts, 13 pole positions, 30 podiums and 7 wins should have made for a notable career.  Instead, the name Montoya only brings to mind the “tennis” injury  that caused him to miss his first few races with McLaren; his frosty relationship with Ron Dennis; punting Nico Rosberg off the track in Canada and knocking his own teammate out of the following Indianapolis GP and causing a multi-car pile up.  The Columbian responded to the ensuing criticism with all the maturity of a sulky teenaged, announcing his immediate and permanent departure from F1.  He became the first driver to quit F1 to take up dodgem car racing in the US. What a mess.

Are there any alternative examples of disgraceful F1 departures?

FORMULA ONE MUM