The Mechanic’s Tale

by Steve Matchett

  In the event of hydraulic fluid loss the rear steering-rack was designed to fail-safe in the straight-ahead position (again, like a solid link) – so there was no danger to the safety aspect of the car – but a loss of fluid would put the car’s hydraulics out of operation, effectively finishing its race. I was dead set against the four-wheel steering being included on the three race cars, but the decision was made to include it on the Japan/Australia race car specification. I think it was a wrong decision, and I think it was a decision driven more by ego than by any principle of mechanical engineering.

  I remember that for these last two races, and in recognition of this additional system, the cars were redesignated as B193C, but I don’t think anybody took any notice of the new suffix. Auto-course, the Formula One end-of-season review, still referred to the Benetton as being the B193B, so either nobody told the book’s compilers of the change or they chose to ignore it. In the practice sessions, both at Suzuka and Adelaide, the drivers did a number of practice laps using the four-wheel steering but both drivers elected not to have the system activated during the races. As it transpired, we did fail to get either car to finish in the last two Grands Prix, but I also have to say that the rear steering system ran trouble-free throughout the Japanese and Australian weekends. However, to me, that gives scant justification for including something on the car that didn’t need to be there.

  Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

  The frumious Bandersnatch!

  One of the most memorable events of the year occurred at the Grand Prix at Spa. Unlike 1992 we didn’t win the race, though we did finish second and sixth, which was a far better result than we could ever have hoped for, considering the quite atrocious start we made. Half an hour prior to the start, as the cars left the pits to form up on the grid, both drivers were asked to try the cars’ start-control at some point on the circuit – as a systems check – before arriving at their respective grid positions. Michael confirmed that all was well, but Riccardo said it didn’t feel right to him – the engine seemed to bog down – he couldn’t define exactly what the fault was, but he advised not to use it. Better, he said, to switch the device off and make a conventional start selecting the gears manually (the start-control software would allow the clutch and the gears to be worked automatically, matching gear changes with peak engine revs for optimum performance, the system interlinked with the car’s traction-control software to avoid any wheel spin as the car shot from the grid). While the mechanics fussed over the engine, gearbox and suspension, making their last checks that all was well, the engineers checked the streams of data stored in the onboard controllers. Finding no apparent fault with the start-control electronics the decision was taken to overrule Riccardo’s advice and to use the system as planned.

  If you ever have the chance to watch the start of that race on video you’ll notice that as the rest of the field scream off towards the first corner, both Benettons make the most appalling start, chugging and spluttering off the grid as the other cars dash and weave their way around them. We had qualified third and sixth but by the first lap we had dropped to ninth and seventeenth, so getting Michael on to the second step of the rostrum in those circumstances was a pretty impressive result. However, it was neither the start of the race nor its result which made the Spa Grand Prix so memorable for me; it was one of the pit-stops, Patrese’s stop on lap seventeen to be more exact.

  I’d now changed my role within the organization of our pit-stop crew. In 1991, Nigel Stepney had set me to work on the left-rear corner of the car, but since the start of the 1992 season I had been in charge of operating the rear jack. I’ve said before that I didn’t enjoy this aspect of the job, but carrying out the pit-stops is all part and parcel of the profession. You either accept it or you leave; there doesn’t seem to be a third alternative. There is a small advantage in using the rear jack as opposed to working in any other position on the team. To allow the car to drive into position you have to stand well clear as it speeds down the pit-lane towards the other mechanics (the disadvantage of using the front jack is that the driver is aiming the car straight at you).

  The split second after the car had sped past me, I’d dash in from behind, throwing the jack forward, and engaging the lift-bar on to the two hooks – known as jacking plates – which are located at the base of the rear wing. For increased speed and efficiency, it is best to have the operation completed while the car is still moving forward (the air-guns should also be in position at this stage). As soon as the car stopped I would then lift the rear, allowing the mechanics to finish removing the wheels. The same thing happens at the front of the car, of course. I would then watch and wait until the gun-men had raised their arms, signifying that they had finished fitting the new tyres, and then glance towards Kenny Handkammer on the front jack, just to confirm that we were both happy. If all was okay, the car would then be dropped back to the ground.

  Throughout all of this the mechanic with the BRAKES ON board – known as the lollipop – is in total control of the car; it is a position of great accountability and one usually undertaken by the team’s chief mechanic. When, and only when, he lifts that board away will the driver be allowed to speed off. The man holding the lollipop has sole responsibility for ensuring that all work has finished on the car and to check that the pit-lane is clear of traffic before giving control of the car back to the driver. 1993 was to be the last year before the reintroduction of the stupidity of refuelling, the act of which has slowed even a perfect pit-stop by over seven seconds. So, in Spa that year all we had to worry about was successfully changing the four wheels, and when Riccardo pitted for fresh tyres we managed to service the car in just 3.2 seconds. That remarkable time was a world record, the quickest pit-stop in history. To this day it has never been bettered, and now that the cars have to refuel, the chance of that record being beaten are terribly slim. It is, of course, entirely possible to pit just for tyres – it isn’t compulsory to refuel – but in reality all teams do refuel, so Benetton’s 1993 record looks safe, at least for the foreseeable future.

  For me, the world record we set in Spa was the season’s high point, while that winter test in Estoril was, undoubtedly, the season’s low point, but I also remember Estoril for a much happier reason: we won the Grand Prix. Michael’s second career victory and my fifth since I joined the team.

  Because of a glitch with the software settings on his race car’s active suspension – a problem caused by ‘finger trouble’ when the electrician was keying information into the car’s controller – Michael drove the spare car in the race. The major significance of this win by the spare car went largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. One of our test team mechanics, Carlos Nuñes, had temporarily joined the race team, just for this race, standing in for Paul Howard, the car’s number-one mechanic who had been unable to attend. Carlos had been in Formula One for years, working with the struggling March team, and had only joined Benetton after March had finally ceased their Formula One programme.

  Here was Carlos, a Portuguese, a man who had never won a single race, running the Benetton spare car in Portugal. Now, a Portuguese Formula One mechanic is an extreme rarity and the local press were already demanding interviews and photographs of him working in the Benetton garage. After all, just to be a part of Grand Prix racing had made him a minor celebrity, but now, to be working with a leading team, a genuine contender for the race, had made him extremely newsworthy. However, immediately before the start of the Grand Prix, when word broke out that Schumacher was to be racing the spare car – with Carlos in charge of it – the local media became very excited. This had now become a guaranteed sports page headline. But when Michael crossed the line to win the race, the Portuguese media went wild! ‘Hold the front page! Carlos has won! Carlos Nuñes has won the Grand Prix!’

  Local Boy Makes Good

  Schumacher and Nuñes Storm Estoril

  King Carlos – The Hero of the Portuguese Grand Prix

  Joan Villadelprat and the ve
ry top of the Benetton management were thrilled too. Before long Carlos found himself promoted to chief mechanic, and before much longer he was promoted again, this time to become the test team manager. He is a steady, easy-going chap, a man who enjoys the work of Grand Prix racing, but one who will always look after the people under him. When Joan asks him to work he will willingly do so, but when there is a chance to get back home to his wife, his kids and his prize-winning Koi carp, he will make sure that everybody gets home as soon as possible. Simple man-management skills and common courtesy, some people have got them, some people haven’t. Carlos has these qualities in abundance and I’m sure he’ll continue to prosper. He still enjoys the job and that makes an enormous difference to his outlook, his staff’s perception of him and Benetton’s appreciation of him.

  The Estoril Grand Prix was also the race which saw Alain Prost secure his fourth Drivers’ World Championship, making him the second most successful driver in Formula One history, just one championship behind the legendary Juan Manuel Fangio. It’s a fair bet that if Prost had stayed with Williams in 1994 he could have equalled that record too. He should have stayed in order to defend his title, and it would certainly have made for an exciting season, but he didn’t. Perhaps Mansell quit at the end of 1992 because he didn’t want to race against Prost in equal equipment? Perhaps Prost quit at the end of 1993 because he didn’t want to face Senna on the same terms? We will never know but if that is the case, it’s a great shame on both accounts.

  Once again Benetton decided not to retain the services of Michael Schumacher’s team-mate, and after a total of 256 Grand Prix starts (a massive figure and another world record which looks set to stand for many years) Riccardo Patrese decided to call it a day and retired from Formula One. Like the years I spent with Nelson Piquet and Martin Brundle before him, I really enjoyed my time working with Riccardo. Benetton didn’t win any Championships that year; with seventy-two points we finished the year in third place. Williams continued to dominate the sport, winning ten races and another Constructors’ Championship. With 168 points in the bag they scored exactly double that of second-place McLaren; and all bar eleven of those eighty-four points were scored by Ayrton Senna. As it turned out, 1993 was Ayrton’s last season with McLaren and he managed to win five races throughout the course of the year. In Adelaide, on 7 November, he won his last race for them. It was a fine finish to the season and an admirable way for two such great names to part company. The win in Australia was also destined to be Ayrton’s very last Grand Prix victory; in Imola just six months later, he would be killed.

  What more is there to say?

  1994 – Chapter Seven

  The end of sophistication – A single-make formula? – The genius

  of Wolfgang, Michael and Salvador – Writing books on

  Grand Prix teams – Formula One press-officers – Life’s three

  keys – 1994: a brief summary – A dog’s life, but . . .

  I firmly believe that continuous advancement in technical engineering is what Formula One is all about. At one time the sport took great pride in being at the very cutting edge of vehicle technology, with many of its engineering principles taken straight from the world of aeronautics: the extensive use of exotic, composite materials; the preference for measuring fuel consumption by weight as opposed to volume; the detailed application of aerodynamics; even the electrical harnesses constructed by using aircraft-specification, ultra-lightweight cable. The harness’s multi-pin connections are also to special order, built to military aircraft specification and arriving from the supplier painted in drab olive green (truly!).

  To me, speaking purely in my role as a mechanic, Formula One’s appeal is the challenge to produce and constantly improve the fastest, most reliable Grand Prix car in the world. My interest has always been in the engineering, never the actual racing. But don’t misunderstand me, the skill and the competition between the drivers is all very exciting: the thrill of the chase, the ducking, the diving, the derring-do, but to an extent the drivers’ involvement is only a by-product of what we, the manufacturers, do. In reality, of course, the team/driver relationship is mutually beneficial for both parties: the teams need to compete, so the teams need drivers; the drivers wish to compete, so the drivers need teams. Fair exchange, no robbery.

  Nevertheless, despite this current cosy situation of reciprocal back-scratching I would be quite happy to see the level of science and technology increase to the point where the cars could be entirely controlled by an intricate network of sensors and processors, negating any further need for driver input. A competition of pure mechanical performance and reliability, played out against other constructors and the omnipotent laws of physics. No more whingeing that the seat needs extra padding, or that the rear-view mirrors have moved again; no more last-minute driver changes before the cars leave for the grid. No more need to put our drivers’ safety at risk; no more need for drivers at all, in fact! The idea is not without certain merits, I think.

  As far as mechanical interest is concerned, 1993 was Formula One’s zenith. By the conclusion of that year we had reached our ultimate stage of technical progress. With active suspension, semi-auto transmissions, traction-control, start-control, antilock brakes and four-wheel steering, the sport was at full stretch. We had expanded to the maximum, and from 1994 we were forced to contract. Formula One will never again see that level of sophistication. As far as I was concerned, one stroke of the rule-maker’s pen took away much of Formula One’s reason for being.

  We didn’t need to stop, we could have continued to learn and to research and to advance the technology of our Grand Prix machinery forever – but the FIA didn’t want us to. The position of superiority enjoyed by the top four teams was considered unfair. The argument was that it had become impossible for the smaller teams, such as Minardi, to compete with the likes of Williams, McLaren, Ferrari and now Benetton, because they could never raise sufficient funds to build a car of similar finesse. They had a point, and, to a degree, I agreed with them. I don’t know exactly how much the other teams had invested in their cars, but I remember a figure of $30 million being bandied around as Benetton’s active car budget. $30 million! Quite obviously a ludicrous amount of money to have to spend merely to remain competitive. If we assume that Williams, McLaren and Ferrari were subject to similar costs, that makes an expenditure of $120 million just for the first eight cars on the grid; there are another eighteen lining up behind them.

  The vast bulk of that money was spent in the teams’ original research and development programmes and initial manufacturing costs of producing the system components; so although it’s true to say that the teams wouldn’t incur such huge costs every year, it’s still very difficult to justify. Let’s suppose that the teams could reduce their active budgets by fifty percent in the second year and by seventy-five percent in their third year, that still means an outlay of $52,500,000 per team over a mere thirty-six months. And that’s just one element of the car, there’s still everything else to take into account: the chassis, brakes, transmission, etc.

  Personally, I’m of two minds about this. I wholeheartedly agree that the amount of money being spent was quite loopy, and it was perfectly true that people like Minardi and Larrousse and Scuderia Italia could never hope to build similar competitive systems. But, did anybody, for a split second, really think that if all the high-tech systems were banned from the cars and we all used manual transmissions and passive suspensions that Larrousse would be dicing with Williams or McLaren for the lead of a Grand Prix? Of course not; that particular justification for banning active technology is daft and should instantly be dismissed.

  It makes little sense to my way of thinking, but from what I understand, the general consensus within the governing body is that Formula One should be portrayed as a drivers’ championship, a demonstration of talent behind the wheel. This is another reason why such driver aids as traction control and ABS were banned at the end of 1993. According to some, the leading cars
had become too driver-friendly; winning races was just a matter of pressing the throttle and occasionally turning the steering wheel in order to avoid the back-markers as the top cars sailed along, lapping the field within minutes of the start. Winning had become effortless. More equal machinery was desired, a levelling of the playing field.

  Conversation overheard in a pub: ‘Let’s face it, when they were working for Ron Dennis, Prost and Senna won six Drivers’ World Championships, because of the McLaren-Honda; the car was quite unbeatable! Look at Mansell in ’92, the Championship was his because he was driving a Williams, what did you expect! Exactly the same thing happened when Prost returned in ’93. Reduce the teams’ technology, bring them all to the same level, then we can have real racing.’ Piffle perhaps, but that was the sort of mumbling I was hearing; presumably the sport picked up on similar noises, and reduce the teams’ technology is exactly what the FIA did. And this is apparently how they want to keep it.

  Look at McLaren in 1998: they pioneered the use of tractor-brakes in Formula One, making it possible to apply more pressure to one rear wheel than the other, thus helping reduce unladen wheel slip on corner exit. The two McLarens were blisteringly quick at the start of the season and their tractor-brakes were seen as being an ‘unfair advantage’. The system was quickly banned. But what some people are forgetting is that the teams are constructors, they design and build their own cars. Since 1950, when the Formula One championship began, vehicle manufacturers have been producing and entering their cars into competition against each other. Alfa-Romeo, Ferrari, Honda, Lotus, Maserati, Mercedes – in the field of automotive engineering these are colossal names, all individual motor companies who compete with one another. Their race cars were all built to a given set of rules or formula – Formula One – and off to race they would go. And, providing that the teams remained within the rules of the formula, if any team then produced a technical advantage over their competition then good luck to them.