October 18, 2006
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Perspective on World Formula One Driving Championship from Michael Lawrence
Many sections of the media are taking it as read that Fernando is World Champion bar an unfortunate incident. At Suzuka, Michael seemed to have ten points in the bank, then suffered an unfortunate incident. Not many people thought that Schumacher could claw back 25 points over the second half of the season and go to Suzuka at the top of the table.
Maybe, just for once, the fat lady could be persuaded not to sing. I’ve never met anyone who wanted the fat lady to sing.
Regardless of what happens in Brazil, we have been witnessing something truly remarkable. You would not have thought, by he way has been driving recently, that Michael had announced his retirement. It is rare that a driver who has actually announced his retirement has been driving like Michael has. There have been drivers who have made the decision, Jochen Rindt and Jackie Stewart among them, who have still taken wins. Mika Hakkinen won the US GP in 2001, but he had not finally renounced F1. There was the possibility he would take a sabbatical, instead he went to DTM.
Tazio Nuvolari once announced his retirement then went on holiday to America. While he was on the boat, an offer came from Auto Union and he caught the next boat back.
When Mario Andretti, whom I regard as one of the greatest of all drivers, announced his retirement, he had past his best and his final season was labelled Arrivederci Mario. It was a sentimental farewell with nobody expecting him to be running near the front. It was also an opportunity for fans to pay tribute, which is a rare occasion in motor racing.
Americans are very good at that sort of thing and I think it comes down to migration to America. People came from all over and a common language took time to sort out, so promoters put on shows that everyone could understand. When Phineas T. Barnum exhibited ‘Jumbo’, the largest elephant in captivity (he made London Zoo a good offer) regardless of where your parents came from, or what language you spoke, you thought, That is one big beast.
AJ Foyt could hardly walk when he made his last appearance in the Indianapolis 500, a race he had won four times. There was no way he was race fit, but he started his last 500 from the front row. I may not be the only person to remember that CART turbo engines were regulated by a standard ‘pop off’ valve chosen at random. I bet that most teams chose from one set of valves and AJ chose from another set, of one.
Indianapolis honoured one of its greatest drivers, who had to retire after a couple of laps, but nobody protested his ‘pop off’ valve, not even the guy who was one place outside of qualifying. The crowd did not think it had been short changed, either. There’s No Business Like Show Business.
When it came to media attention, in his final season, Mario Andretti upstaged everyone else on the grid, even though nobody thought he would win a race. I bet his sponsors reckoned they got a fair return for their investment.
Some commentators have wondered if the promoters of F1 secretly hope that Alonso will take the title so that Michael does not take what they like to call ‘the coveted No. 1′ (race number) into retirement with him. This is just media froth, it’s been a good ten years since numbers on most cars have been visible on television, space on a car is too valuable to waste on numbers.
I’d like to say this just once for the benefit of media numbnuts, there never has been a ‘coveted No. 1′. There was a time when Ferrari drivers wanted to have ’27′, which had been Gilles Villeneuve‘s number, hardly anyone has give much thought to numbers.
Most commentators have missed the fact that Michael goes into retirement at the top of his game, I cannot remember him driving better, and Fernando has matched him. There is a seamless passing of the torch, and this has not always been the case.
There have been many occasions in Grand Prix history when that has not been the case. Prewar, Rudolf Caracciola and Tazio Nuvolari rarely raced together for years. Nuvolari, with Alfa Romeo, mainly raced in Italy while Mercedes Benz entered Caracciola in the European Mountain Championship. Stirling Moss’s accident in 1962 must have robbed us of epic battles with Jim Clark, and not only in F1. Clark’s death robbed us four or five years of battles against Jackie Stewart.
Ascari and Fangio did not often meet on equal terms and by the time Moss came to the fore, Fangio was getting a little long in the tooth. Fangio was anyway a single seater specialist while Moss could drive anything at a time when sports car racing held equal status to Formula One.
What we have seen this year has been two fabulous drivers locking horns in roughly equivalent cars. They have been on different tyres, sure, and Renault faltered when its ‘mass damper’ system was barred. Michael can still win the title, but that will take nothing away from Fernando, the torch will be passed from one great driver to another.
In the case of Moss and Clark, Stirling has told me he was getting anxious about Jimmy, but Clark had not established equality when Stirling had his accident. Jimmy never had the standard by which he could measure himself though, of course, he became the one who set the standard.
Regular readers may know that I regard Moss as the greatest driver of all, so let me make an argument for Clark. Some people think that Clark had an advantage with the Lotus 25, but nobody else won with it, it was only Jimmy who won with a Lotus 25. Lotus had the same V8 Coventry Climax engines as Cooper and Brabham, but Jimmy won almost all the races for Climax V8s, including non Championship events, even when Brabham fielded better chassis. Clark had fewer breakdowns than anyone and preservation of the engine was part of the driver’s craft whereas, today, engineers set the limit while drivers stretch what they are given.
I do not look back to some imagined Golden Age, there never was one. There have been times when drivers have been able to work on a broader canvas, when the star could appear to make a big difference. Much of that is a myth and stems from the time when components such as wishbones were welded on jigs. There were limits of tolerances, but the star got the best bits, no two chassis or engines were the same. These days, components are identical which is why drivers in the same team are so much closer. One may be quicker than the other, but it is the driver who is making the difference, not a fabricator making wishbones with a welding torch.
I doubt whether there has ever been more driver talent on a Formula One grid than there is today. There are drivers chosen for seats because they chime in with the aspirations of the team’s sponsors, but they are not ‘pay drivers’ in the sense that once existed when some organisers would pay teams to run a third car for a local hero, who maybe did only that one F1 race in his entire career. You can no longer buy a secondhand car and hope to negotiate an entry.
When TV directors remember that there are 22 cars in a race, one thing which has impressed me is the commitment of the entire field. We know that not all drivers are equal, even in the same car, but they are all competing. There have been times when a large chunk of an F1 field were turning up for a fun weekend.
I do not think that the standard has ever been higher, but that drivers have to operate within a more narrow band to make a difference than when Nuvolari was able to spend a lot of his time going sideways. Nuvolari, incidentally, upset the Alfa Romeo’s chief designer, the remarkable Vittorio Jano, because Jano thought Nuvolari was an utter hooligan to be doing that to his cars.
Over the Winter we can discuss Alonso’s retirement at Monza and Schumacher’s blatant cheating in Monaco at the end of qualifying, we can pick over the bones of any season. The important thing for the sport is that Michael is not leaving a vacuum, regardless of the outcome in Brazil. It is not often that we have been left without a vacuum.
We have a foundation on which to discuss next season. We have the musical chairs, with Alonso going to McLaren and Raikkonen to Ferrari. Felipe Massa has surprised me, not so much by his pace, but by his maturity. There’s Red Bull with Adrian Newey, Williams with Toyota engines, and Ferrari while Ross Brawn goes fishing. There’s the speed of Robert Kubica, Spyker with what appears to be sensible funding, and Jenson Button looking like a really serious prospect.
Michael Schumacher‘s incredible record will always be there to aim at and the sad thing is that, not long into 2007 he will be ‘yesterday’s man’. That will inevitably come, but right now he is very much the man of today. He has never driven better than in his last few races.
One thing that impressed me is that, after his retirement, which must have been a terrible disappointment, Michael made a point of thanking every single member of the team. I can think of drivers who would have disappeared into the motor home and later issued a statement.
Denis Jenkinson once said that if a driver was a natural winner, the odd retirement did not upset him, because it was unnatural. The fact that Michael was able to go to every member of his ‘family’ and thank them, even though the car had let him down, shows what a great champion he is. I have not always been enthusiastic about his tactics, but I have to say that gesture impressed me.
My dream result in Brazil would be a dead heat between Schumacher and Alonso. It would give Fernando the title, it would give Michael a last win, and it would establish a base line for the future.
Michael made his debut in F1 in 1991. Forget motor racing, what were you doing in 1991? Everyone has a different story, but a lot has happened to us all in fifteen years, some committed fans were not even born. In real terms, you have to be in your twenties not to have known Formula One without Michael Schumacher.
I hope that Formula One can find an appropriate way to bid farewell to Michael Schumacher in Brazil. Maybe Bernie could make a few trans Atlantic phone calls because there is no way that Americans would let such a great champion just walk away.
‘Jumbo’ was just the name given to an elephant in London Zoo, it meant nothing, and that was the point, it could have been called ‘Roderick’, or anything. Phineas T. Barnum made ‘Jumbo’ mean something and we do not take trips on a Roderick jet.
England gave the world Shakespeare, but it had to be America which gave the world a silent version of Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew (1929) with the immortal credit, it was a silent movie, remember, ‘additional dialogue by Sam Taylor’.
There’s No Business Like Show Business…
