The Mechanic’s Tale

by Steve Matchett

  Mike Coughlan was Nelson’s race engineer. After leaving Lotus he was recruited to Benetton thanks to his former working relationship with John Barnard. Mike is enormously self-confident and nothing appears to faze him. He is a big, tall chap and radiates great presence. He can walk into a pub a complete stranger and within minutes the landlord and the four locals at the bar will be chatting with him like they’ve known him for years. Throughout the race Mike and I were in contact (or not in contact, as the case may be) via an antiquated intercom system; any attempt at verbal communication was strictly a one-way affair: Mike was able to speak to me (or shout over the constant screaming of twenty-six racing engines) through the ageing CB-style microphone, I could hear (nothing) through the old headphones. The communications system was fantastically inefficient, and after a couple of laps we both gave up and reverted to good old sign language. I managed to pick up the use of the pit-board pretty quickly, and within a few laps of watching the ever-changing lap-times flicker away on Mike’s TV monitor I was setting the pit-board with any relevant info myself. The top line was used for Nelson’s position in the race, displayed as: P5 or P3, or whatever the case may be. The second and third lines displayed the time difference and the name of the driver who was directly ahead of Nelson in the race, shown as a negative figure, for example: -1.6 Warwick. The fourth and fifth lines represented the difference between Nelson and the car behind him, this time represented as a positive figure: +2.3 Nannini. Finally, the bottom line would show the number of laps to the end of the race, and this would simply be reduced by one number every time Nelson drove past. So, an example of a set pit-board might look like this:

  P3

  -1.6

  Warwick

  +2.3

  Nannini

  L32

  The only real difficulty I encountered using the pit-board came with being able to reset all the information before Nelson came back past the pits. At that time a racing lap of Imola took about 1 minute 27 seconds, an amount of time which sounds easily sufficient to reset the board, but when you have to change everything – and one of the drivers’ names seems to have vanished from the box – believe me, it was quite possible to finish setting the board and swiftly swing it over the pit-wall only to find I was just in time to see the rear wing of Piquet’s Benetton at the end of the straight, as it shot left towards Tamburello.

  Fatigued and overtired as I was, the constant attention that operating the pit-board demanded, combined with the adrenaline and excitement of the occasion, kept me going. I’m sure if I had just sat down and watched the race on the garage monitors I would have been fast asleep from lap two onwards. However, this way, working with Mike Coughlan on the pit-wall the sixty-odd laps of the race seemed to flash past in a matter of minutes. Nevertheless, as soon as the chequered flag came out I started to wilt. We finished the race third and fifth, but notwithstanding this impressive result I was simply too worn out to walk to the podium and watch Sandro receive his trophy. I slept in the minibus on the way to the airport and I slept in the departure lounge too. I wasn’t aware of any of the flight to Heathrow and I slept during the coach trip to Witney.

  Obviously, I didn’t leave Benetton after that first race, though I freely admit to contemplating the idea. What a blow to the senses that first Grand Prix was! However, the thing that really prevented me taking the idea any further was the constant pressure of time. Before I knew what was happening the race trucks had returned from Imola and everyone was back at work preparing the cars for Monaco. (Now, that race really did see my feet and Timberlands having the most enormous falling out.) Then we flew to Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix, stopped over in America for a couple of days, and then flew down to Mexico. Back to England and straight off to France, followed by Silverstone, Hockenheim in Budapest and Spa and on and on. Build, race, build, race, build, race. There was no opportunity to try and organize an escape route; sometimes we would work at the factory until midnight or one in the morning (sometimes later). I can’t imagine any service manager from the road car industry in his right mind consenting to an interview at 2 am.

  The other thing that was preventing me trying to leave was the fact that by the third or fourth race, certainly by the time we went to France, I was actually beginning to enjoy myself. I was adjusting to the stupid hours, getting to know the other mechanics better and, at last, my feet had finally made friends with my heavily battered shoes. And on 31 May, shortly after the Monaco race, I received a letter from Gordon in which he praised the commitment and effort I had shown (he also increased my salary by £3000, upping it to £18,000 per year).

  As the season progressed we constantly picked up Championship points, and when Nannini secured another podium position by taking third place in Jerez, it made a running total of five rostrum finishes for the team (although, as yet, none was on the top step). This meant that we would finish no lower than fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship. In fifth place, Ken Tyrrell’s team was trailing Benetton by thirty-two points, so even if some bizarre twist of fate resulted in Tyrrell finishing the final two races of the year with consecutive one-two results, and we failed to score anything at all, they would still be two points behind us (remembering that in 1990 a race win was only worth nine points). However, the battle for first place in the Championship was well beyond us and it was left to the might of Ferrari and McLaren to fight for the final honours. But we were only two points behind Williams, and if our drivers continued to show their current form – and the B190 remained reliable – it was possible that we could snatch third place by the end of the season.

  At that point in Benetton’s short history, to beat Williams with all its widely acknowledged technical expertise would be a tremendous result. Back in Witney, as we made the final preparations to transport the cars and equipment to Suzuka, the whole team seemed in buoyant mood. On a purely personal note, I was thrilled at the idea of visiting Japan. I never imagined I’d be able to see such exotic cultures; I had romantic images of huge mountains enveloped in a gentle dawn breeze of light mist and save for the delicate ring of a lone wind-chime everywhere would be silent. As it turned out I didn’t see any mist-covered mountains and jingling wind-chimes on that particular trip, though I could give you lucid accounts of vast bustling crowds and talking vending machines and multi-tiered golf ranges and trucks draped with a billion flashing lightbulbs.

  A couple of days before we were due to fly out the team had some devastating news. Sandro Nannini had been involved in a terrible helicopter accident. He was alive but he was, nevertheless, in a serious condition, his right hand severed by a shattered rotor blade. Tragic, awful news. The magic of micro-surgery had managed to reattach his hand and there was optimism that he would retain some use of it too. However, his Formula One career was over. I didn’t know him very well (and I don’t know him any better now), but we had chatted from time to time as we stood around the coffee machine and I liked what little I knew of him. Throughout the years I worked in Formula One he is the only driver I have ever known to smoke – and not try to hide the fact too. When he worked with Benetton he was addicted to espresso coffee (presumably he still is) and I blame a certain amount of my own craving for espresso on him; whenever he poured himself a coffee, which was often, and he saw me preparing the brakes in the back of the truck he would always pour one for me too. An all-round decent chap. How many other drivers would do that? Two? three perhaps? The vast majority of today’s ‘up and coming great talents’ would willingly fling themselves from the top of Beachy Head rather than waste any precious PR time chatting to their mechanics. ‘Pour one of the mechanics a coffee! Have you lost all sense of profitable time management? I’ve just spent an hour with them getting their damn car to fifteenth place on the grid! I’m feeling weak just at the thought of the idea, where are my personal Post Qualifying Stress Assistants? Fetch them to me now. Interview over!’ There are exceptions, of course. A few.

  The Brazilian driver Roberto Moreno was brough
t in to replace Nannini for the last two rounds of 1990, and as history shows, the team went on to win both the Japanese and the Australian races. Moreno finished second in Japan, about ten seconds behind his old friend and mentor Nelson Piquet, making the result Benetton’s first one-two finish. Moreno couldn’t believe what had happened to him: he had been plucked from total obscurity to become an instant hero. With his old team, the struggling Eurobrun outfit, he had failed to even pre-qualify for the Spanish race, and then the team collapsed and folded for good. Talk about clouds and silver linings!

  It was a fabulous result for everyone: for the team, for Moreno, for Piquet and certainly for me personally. My first Grand Prix win. What a wonderful feeling of achievement. I couldn’t imagine myself working in any other industry, this was the ultimate in job satisfaction. We had come to Japan under a dark cloud and ended the weekend in total jubilation. After the podium celebrations Roberto was so overcome with emotion that he was unable to speak; he walked into the garage and burst into tears. Standing amongst us, warmly hugging every one of us, it was all he could do to stammer out just two words, and he kept repeating them over and over: ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’ The drivers brought their half-sprayed bottles of champagne back to the garage and we passed them between us, each savouring the sweet taste of a Grand Prix victory, a one-two victory at that. It was strange to think that we, Benetton Formula Ltd, a relatively small concern of about a hundred people operating from a handful of old units in a Witney industrial estate, had beaten the full might of the established Grand Prix élite of Ferrari, McLaren and Williams.

  The dominating result of the Japanese race had pulled us ahead of Williams too. We proudly stood in third place in the Championship and two weeks later, in Adelaide, when Nelson yet again took the first place chequered flag, our position in the 1990 Championship was sealed. Once more the victory champagne was handed round, and as I slowly lifted the weight of the bottle and felt the sparkle of the wine touch my lips I knew that I wouldn’t leave Benetton – indeed, couldn’t leave – until we had finally secured our team colours to the bright silver of the Constructors’ trophy. I didn’t know how many years it would take but I knew I would stay until we became World Champions.

  1991 – Chapter Four

  Three men in a balloon – Another promotion –

  Pit stops – John and Luciano part company – Victory in

  Canada – Senseless hours in Imola and Monaco –

  Stepney leaves – Walkinshaw arrives – Moreno leaves –

  Schumacher arrives – Piquet leaves

  It is impossible to take any holidays during the Formula One season, there is just no spare time to fit them in. This means that by the end of the year everyone is as keen as mustard to take time off and enjoy themselves. Because the last race of the 1990 season was in Adelaide I thought it made sense to see a little more of the country I was already in. One of the great perks of the job is the chance to travel. My return flight had been paid by Benetton, so all I had to do was delay my flight home by a couple of weeks. The life of a Formula One mechanic isn’t all work – at least one percent of it is non-stop play. I teamed up with two other Benetton mechanics, Bill Harris and Jorg Russ, and together we set off to explore.

  Queensland, Australia, eight o’clock in the morning, the sun was just peeking through the branches of a thick forest clearing while the three of us lazed on the ground munching our breakfast. Close by were two old ladies, whose combined ages we estimated to be about 150 years, giggling like teenage schoolgirls and having the time of their lives. Next to them sat Dave and Phil, our two tanned and muscular hosts. They were all tucking in too. It had been an extremely busy morning for us all.

  ‘And if none of you need to be rushing home,’ invited Phil as he cut up more cheese with an enormous bowie knife, ‘we’ll call into a beaut of a hotel I know on the way down the hill and have a tube or two before lunch.’ It was an invitation we could not refuse. After all, there was little chance of getting out of the rain-forest without his guidance and certainly not without the use of his mate’s van. Besides, I wouldn’t have missed any of their antics for the world; so far that morning we had been driven at high speed through a burning forest; crash-landed a balloon and been pursued across fields by an irate farmer before making a dramatic escape into the depths of a rain-forest. And all this before breakfast.

  In normal circumstances, our two mild-mannered though eccentric Australian hosts dressed in shorts, heavy boots and singlets would be beyond belief but here, in the far north of Australia, they fitted perfectly. Queensland still has a strong flavour of the frontier. When it rains it does so by supplying thick, torrential sheets that last for weeks on end, and when it decides to warm up it does so with such ferocity that it becomes an act of sheer madness to attempt to do anything out of doors. Our two guides were born and bred in this strange, harsh environment, a pair of genuine Crocodile Dundees.

  We had seen a leaflet advertising dawn balloon flights a few days before, and immediately Jorg and I were keen. Jorg is game for any sort of adventure, brimming with enthusiasm for any sporting activity that smacks, even slightly, of potential life-threatening danger: parachuting, abseiling, potholing, white-water rafting. You name it and Jorg’s name will be at the top of the list. Bill, on the other hand, is not keen on dangerous sports, and is one of life’s great connoisseurs, a man for whom the words luxury and extravagance were invented. Don’t misunderstand me, Bill is a true gentleman and would always support his friends faithfully and to the hilt. He would, for example, willingly accompany Jorg if he attempted to sail a small dinghy across the Atlantic, providing, of course, that Bill could watch events unfold from the sun-deck of the QE2. Bill didn’t think that floating in a basket, hundreds of feet in the air, was quite what he had in mind for a holiday treat, but we finally convinced him.

  The day had begun at four in the morning when Dave Dundee collected us in his van. We jumped inside and drove into the pitch-black hills to rendezvous with Phil and the hot air balloon. As Dave drove us further into the depths of the rainforest we could see dim orange flickers in the distance and were surprised to come across small areas of woodland merrily burning away; the van speeded up as Dave attempted to outrun the thick smoke hanging in the trees. When we asked who would come to extinguish the flames, Dave told us that it would probably be left alone and allowed to burn itself out naturally. ‘You put one fire out and another starts, you put that one out and a third starts. They’re natural; best just to let ‘em slowly go.’

  Finally we arrived at the launch site and through the half-gloom of the near sunrise, we saw a figure who turned out to be Phil Dundee. He was busy unrolling the balloon and the gas burners. As the sun lifted itself over the trees and bathed the scene with fresh morning light the balloon lifted upright, the basket held firm with ropes and metal stakes. The light of the new day introduced us to our fellow travellers: two aged women who were enjoying a last burst of excitement and discovery while their health stayed with them. Dressed in thick khaki shirts and skirts and each sporting a broad jungle hat, they looked like early pioneers. While most of their peers were content to sit and watch countless hours of TV soaps, these two brave women were living life to the full. I admired their spirit.

  Dave Dundee would be our pilot today, and he was already in the basket taking charge of the burner controls. Phil Dundee would tail us in the pursuit vehicle (their old van) and collect us when we achieved touch-down. The basket was divided into six separate compartments – like a large wicker milk bottle carrier – so that if the basket fell over we wouldn’t crush each other in the resulting mêlée. Bill was already in, picking what he considered to be the safest spot. Then the first pioneer was heaved aboard. ‘Quick, everyone in the basket,’ called Dave, ‘we’re off!’ I jumped aboard and helped haul the second pioneer inside while Jorg pushed her from behind. The balloon had started to rise before Jorg had scrambled in next to me. The basket lurched from side to side as Phil foug
ht to unleash the final restraining rope. And then it was free, the balloon rising swiftly, lifting the basket into the bright morning sky of north Australia. Up and up we soared, and within minutes we were sailing high above the bright green canopy of the rain-forest. Magnificent views. My first balloon trip, something I had always wanted to do, and what a place to experience it. Phil switched the burner off, the balloon levelled out and we began to drift along the roof of the mighty forest below. How wonderfully silent it was without the roar of the burning gas, just the creak of the wicker basket and Jorg’s laughter as he surveyed Bill’s gaunt expression. Our two pioneering women were full of life. ‘Higher!’ called one. ‘Oh yes, let’s go higher, much, much higher!’ called the other.