The Mechanic’s Tale

by Steve Matchett

  He then persuaded one of his colleagues from New York, Patrizia Spinelli, to leave America and join him in Oxfordshire. Patrizia is a PR genius; in the States she specialized in organizing sleek photo-shoots of the latest Benetton collections and getting the perfect exposure for the fashion company’s fresh offerings by placing them in just the right publications. Her appointment to Benetton Formula proved an inspired choice and she enormously enhanced the public image of the race team; through her contacts with the world of chic lifestyle magazines, she managed to promote the team in areas of the media whose editors would normally choke on their low-cal spritzers at the very idea of including photographs and articles about stinking, oily race cars.

  Being owned by such a big concern as the Benetton Group meant that the team had a strong financial basis from which to grow, but results on the track had been poor. True, they had won a race in their initial year as Benetton Formula Ltd but one lone victory wasn’t really what Luciano had in mind for his new team. People (read: big, well-heeled sponsors) like to be associated with a winner and for the Benetton marketing formula to work, the team had to win a lot more than just once; it was, therefore, time to restructure the technical side of the company.

  Halfway through 1989 Ferrari announced that John Barnard would not be staying with the team for the following year. At the time Barnard was considered to be among the leading Formula One designers in the business (some said the best), and if Ferrari, for whatever reason, wished to part with him then so be it, but Barnard certainly wouldn’t be out of work for long. Cue Flavio and the Benetton Formula cheque book. And in October, after all the details had been finalized and the contracts had been read, rewritten, reread, signed and finally exchanged, a Witney press release stated that Mr John Barnard would be joining Benetton Formula as the team’s technical director for the 1990 season onwards.

  Even when working with Lotus, Stepney had always held Barnard’s design work in high esteem; when the prospect of becoming Benetton’s chief mechanic arose, Nigel jumped at both the chance of promotion and the possibility to work alongside the great man himself. Next came the announcement that, for the next two years, three-times World Champion Nelson Piquet had been contracted to the team as their number-one driver. With the finance in place, Barnard as designer, and Piquet in the car, it was now quite obvious that Benetton was looking to Formula One big-time.

  Back to Stepney’s office and my interview. The team was growing and it wanted to increase the sub-assembly department to cope with the expansion. It was almost certain that Barnard would be designing and testing a transverse gearbox for his car and Nigel was impressed with my working knowledge of the Ferrari systems. I looked enthusiastic and thanked him. (I then moved the conversation quickly on, choosing not to expand on the subject of just how deep my knowledge of these boxes actually was.). ‘Of course,’ he explained, ‘we wouldn’t let you loose on the gearboxes straight away. You’d start by building the uprights and steering-racks; little by little.’

  ‘Well, there we are,’ said Nigel, smiling, ‘that’s us and what we’re up to. Now, financially, what will it take to drag you away from BMW?’ Drag me away? I’d have started work for them there and then! I told him what I was earning and said I’d be quite happy to be paid the same. ‘We can do that,’ he assured me. ‘We could even go a little more. How does £15,000 sound?’ An instant £4000 pay rise? I would have taken a drop in wages if he had asked but I didn’t tell him that.

  ‘Okay, well, thank you for coming to see us Mr Matchett, we’ll be in touch in a week or so.’ Another firm handshake. ‘Oh,’ added Nigel as I walked towards the Escort, ‘I liked the presentation of your letter, it looked quite striking in that folder and I liked the way it read too; nice touch that. I like it when people push a bit!’ I felt my face beginning to warm; now it was Nigel’s turn to use slightly ambiguous wording. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘perhaps it was a bit…’

  ‘No, it was good,’ he interrupted, ‘very carefully written! I’ll be in touch.’

  This was perfect. Here was a chance to work with real professionals, in a company that looked financially secure, and judging by the casual atmosphere of the factory (the mechanics were all wearing team-issue Benetton jeans embroidered with the team’s logo) my initial impressions about their relaxed philosophy to the job seemed correct. This was the team for me. If I was excited by the possibility of working with Onyx, I was doubly so at the idea of joining Benetton.

  9th October 1989

  Dear Mr Matchett,

  Further to your recent interview on 4th October.

  We are unable to offer you a position as detailed in our discussions on your recent visit to us. Up until the 6th October you and another candidate were in the running for a position within our team, but due to certain policy changes within the structure of our company, we have withheld any further employment of personnel in certain departments, of which Sub-assembly is one.

  We shall be reviewing our staff recruitment situation at the beginning of 1990 and your name is high on the list of contenders.

  Yours sincerely,

  FOR AND ON BEHALF OF BENETTON FORMULA LIMITED

  Nigel Stepney,

  Chief Mechanic

  What a devastating blow to morale. That morning, when I saw another of Benetton’s rabbits hopping around the hall, I really thought that this was it: game on! But no. It had taken me some minutes of gentle persuasion to carefully extricate the letter and the envelope too from Heidi, Mum’s black and somewhat loopy collie cross, who had tried to eat most of it before declaring it tasteless. Heidi, an unwanted pup who had decided to adopt us some years before, had grown into a wonderful friend: ferociously brave at the sound of the door bell, docile as a lamb with children and calming, easy company at night. In other words, the perfect house dog. But not once, throughout her long and distinguished life, did she ever allow the post through the door or the milk to arrive on the step without making a massive scene. I still have that letter from Nigel – perforated by the bites of a hundred eager teeth – which is how I’ve managed to reproduce the exact wording of it here. On first reading it I swiftly concluded that it meant ‘thanks, but no thanks’. However, at work later in the day, where I read it again, feeling a little more optimistic, I decided that perhaps that final, slightly enigmatic line might contain just a glimmer of hope. Before bed, when I read it a third time, I settled on the idea that I had been right in the first place and that it really did mean no.

  The next morning I rang Onyx and asked to speak to Greg Field. The voice on the other end of the line told me that Mr Field was no longer with the company. I asked to be put through to the new team manager, who told me that things were a bit chaotic at the moment and that he could find no record of my interview taking place. I asked if I could see him and go through the interview process again? ‘Why not send me your details in the post,’ he said, ‘but when we do need someone we normally advertise our vacancies in the national motoring press. Why not keep an eye on the appointments page in Autosport?’ he advised before giving a curt goodbye.

  Less than two weeks after receiving the letter from Nigel Stepney, Benetton went on to score their second Grand Prix victory, with Alessandro Nannini being elevated from second place and declared the race winner. Ayrton Senna, after that infamous coming together with Prost, was disqualified from the results despite winning the Japanese Grand Prix, a decision which also deprived him of the Drivers’ Championship.

  It was a result filled with bitterness for Senna, although not directed towards Nannini or Benetton, but the FIA were later to feel the full force of the Brazilian’s anger; and it certainly wasn’t the most desirable way for Benetton to claim another win, but in Formula One you grab the trophies when and wherever they are offered. Whether declared the winner or not, even to be able to follow Senna’s McLaren across the finish-line was sufficient to indicate that Benetton was finally getting its act together and was clearly destined for much greater things.

  How
ever, if my interpretation of Benetton’s chief mechanic’s letter proved correct, it was also pretty clear that I wouldn’t be joining the team in the quest to become Formula One World Champions.

  1990 – Chapter Three

  A sleepless night – A call from Nigel – Taking a correct

  address – Pulling up roots – First day at school – Joining the

  race team – A whole new language – Metallurgy for beginners –

  The first race – A one-two finish in Japan – A pledge

  of allegiance in Adelaide

  It was freezing outside, and at first the inside of the flat felt even colder. However, it was a little warmer once I’d heaved the mattress off the bed and dragged it downstairs to be near the fire, whose one glowing mantle, smelling strongly of the burning dust of disuse, was the sole supply of heat. In the layout of the flat it was true that the fire was fairly centrally located, although it scarcely fulfilled the role of supplying central heating; five hours after spluttering into life there were still traces of ice on the inside of the windows.

  At some point during the evening the musty smell of burning dust finally subsided, only to be replaced by the even stronger whiff of grilling mackerel: my headless and gutted dinner wrapped in foil, which Mum had given me as I set off for Woodstock. It would need only a few minutes under a hot grill. I love grilled fish (hate their bones), and for years after I’d left home Mum would give me fresh fish to take back with me whenever I visited. I wasn’t familiar with the oven settings and so I managed to burn the fish with no effort at all. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, I was hungry and despite a certain burnt, dry quality the fish still tasted pretty good. Besides there was nothing else in the kitchen to cook/burn even if I’d felt sufficiently inspired to try. I’d buy a few things tomorrow.

  I flung the thick duvet over the mattress, and my old clock was quietly marking time by the makeshift bed, a little familiarity in an otherwise foreign setting. After two or three days of being lived in, perhaps the flat would start to come back to life and, hopefully, after a couple of weeks it would even start to feel like home. I’d finally rolled on to the mattress at around half-past midnight and had spent the next three hours listening to the traffic growing less frequent and the slight hiss of the gas fire, which I had left burning to try and encourage some semblance of warmth back in the place.

  Now it was either very late or very early, close to four o’clock in the morning. I was very tired, completely washed out, my eyes sore from night driving, my arms complaining from lugging boxes up long, steep stairs. By rights I should have been asleep ages ago but a potent mixture of excitement and apprehension was making any worthwhile rest impossible. I lay there, still and quiet in the dead of night, trying to identify the slightest sound: an occasional drip of the kitchen tap; the slow creak of an upstairs floorboard (how do they do that when there’s no one else there?); the scratching of tiny claws on a roof slate: presumably an owl or a mouse (or ten huge rats getting ready to pounce). Within a few days I would feel more at ease and the calm of sleep would come much easier, but on that first long night, half awake in the dark, as I tried to remember where the light switches were, and how I could stop the windows rattling whenever a truck drove past, my surroundings all felt very alien.

  Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

  All mimsy were the borogoves,

  And the mome raths outgrabe.

  Wednesday, 31 January had been a long and busy day, and as I huddled for warmth beneath my quilt I went back over the events which had brought me to this icy flat. The move. The big move. The pulling up of twenty-seven years of family-tied roots and finally moving away from home. Complete independence; a big moment. I kept telling myself that this is one of life’s great events, a time that everyone remembers, but I’d been so busy all day that the real significance of what I was doing hadn’t registered.

  On that Wednesday morning I had gone to work at the BMW dealership for the last time. On 2 January, I handed the service manager my letter of resignation; I would be leaving at the end of the month. He seemed saddened by the news at first, but when I explained why I was leaving and where I was going he broke into a broad grin. ‘No! Really! But that’s fantastic news; well done! Bloody well done! I knew you were planning something, but I never imagined for a second it was a move into Formula One; bloody well done!’ He seemed quite excited but he was nowhere near as excited as I had been when Nigel Stepney phoned me just after Christmas. ‘Still interested in the sub-assembly job?’ he asked casually. ‘Good. Now, can you come down and see me tomorrow morning, just to go over a few details: start date, confirmation of salary, etc.?’

  Ten o’clock the next morning I was back in Oxfordshire, and thirty minutes later I left Nigel with another firm handshake and a contract of employment to read, sign and return by post. ‘We’d need you to start as soon as possible, so if you have to give a month’s notice can we say you’ll start here on the first of February at nine o’clock. Is that okay?’

  ‘Of course, yes; February the first, nine o’clock. I’ll see you then Mr Stepney.’

  ‘Nigel,’ he smiled.

  ‘Nigel; okay. Thank you very much. Thanks very much indeed!’ I’d done it. Just like that; right out of the blue. Still want the job? Yes, good, well you’re in then! All those months of letter writing; all that messing about and confusion with Onyx, and that strange chap with his Mars wrappers and his short temper and it finally happened quicker than the blink of an eye. Light, dark; noise, silence; waterfall, millpond; I don’t work in Formula One, I do work in Formula One. The throw of a switch. I didn’t realize it at the time but looking back on that late December day, with that wonderful clarity of vision which hind-sight allows, I now understand that if I could spread out and study the network of roads, loops and cross-roads on life’s map, I had just arrived at a bright and clearly marked fork in the road. My growing interest in Formula One, the letters of application, the resulting telephone calls and interviews were all a series of road-signs, directing the flow of traffic on my own particular motorway.

  Road divides ahead. Left to steady living, via Ferrari, BMW, nine-to-five and wife, dogs and kids all crammed into a small semi on Foxcote Drive. Or right to not-entirely-sure-where-yet, via Woodstock, Chipping Norton, constant fatigue at Benetton Formula, Life in the Fast Lane, F1 Constructors’ Championship and a derelict old farm in France. One day to major decision, get in lane now.

  As I left the Benetton factory with my new offer, everything seemed a little hazy, almost dream-like, my mind a turmoil of emotions: excitement, apprehension, exhilaration, self-doubt, achievement. I parked the car in the centre of Witney and strolled. I needed fresh air, a little time to relax, time to come to terms with what I had just been offered before setting off on the trip back home. And despite my earlier descriptions, as I walked through the town’s old area known as the Butter Cross with its big village-type green and its ancient market building, I discovered that this part of Witney is, in fact, very picturesque. God only knows what happened to the rest of it.

  As I ambled around the shops I was unsure what my next move should be. I had been offered the job, but the factory was too far from home to commute to Oxfordshire every day. If Nigel wanted me to start work at Benetton in just over four weeks it didn’t leave me much time to sift through endless property papers looking for flats; and I could spend months driving up and down looking at houses with rooms to let. I decided to try and find somewhere to live there and then.

  I’d never searched for rented accommodation before and I had no real idea how many rooms I would need or how much anywhere in Oxfordshire would cost. An estate agent’s window was advertising property to let, so I asked the woman inside for advice. She seemed to scrutinize me for a moment, as if weighing up the pros and cons of having to assist me. I told her why I was looking for something and where I would be working, and slowly a faint smile crept on to her otherwise disin
terested face. She had one place coming up for rent from the beginning of February, just one. Very busy time of year for rented property (apparently). A two-bedroom, two-storey apartment above an old shop in Woodstock. Just being decorated now. Did I know Woodstock, she had asked. No, I confessed, but I remember the name from school (though probably more because of the legendary music festival and Snoopy’s yellow bird friend than for any recalled history lessons). ‘Beautiful,’ she enthused, ‘really charming, and very famous too. Oh yes, very, very famous! About fifteen minutes’ drive from here, twenty at tops. The flat is right next door to Blenheim Palace, in fact. Blenheim Palace! All in all, Woodstock is a very correct address; very, very correct. Interested?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows a little. Interested? A palace built next door to an old shop? Not so much interested as intrigued – what on earth did she mean by ‘a very, very correct address’?

  Number 18, Oxford Street, Woodstock. A single black door to the right of Banbury’s, the Gentleman’s Outfitters. Located right in the middle of this historic town (which, in reality, is little bigger than a large village), the flat was directly above the shop, a single, steep flight of stairs leading up from the street below. Standing directly opposite the Crown Inn, and with a small Coop just to the left, the flat’s position seemed ideal, and two weeks later, after a rapid exchange of paperwork, the keys arrived in the post.