In 1958 this team rivalry – albeit polite and gentlemanly – was so recognized that a trophy was awarded to the sport’s most successful team: the Formula One Constructors’ Championship was born. In 1988, when McLaren International claimed its magnificent fifteen out of sixteen races, it did so because it had the best, most reliable car in the pit-lane, driven by two of the best drivers in history. I doubt that Prost and Senna would ever have been able to win the same number of races in any other car. And I agree, when Mansell finally won his Championship crown he was helped (enormously) by the quality of the Williams, but producing the best car in the world is what constructors try to do and have always tried to do.
However, if the world really wants to see Formula One played out as a drivers’ championship – removing any significant team input – then a possible solution would be to convert Grand Prix racing into a single-make formula. For example: at the start of the year the teams would all be issued with a number of cars, produced by ABC Chassis-U-Like, with engines built by XYZ Motors-N-Go, with the FIA then declaring it against the regulations to alter the car in any way. If this idea was not acceptable because the governing body still wanted the teams to remain ‘constructors’ and the engine manufacturers still wished to compete, then each year the teams and engine builders could be issued with identical sets of drawings from which they could independently produce a clone chassis and engine. After production, the engines and cars could be inspected for regulation compliance and fitted with identification markers (as they are now, in fact, after passing the FIA crash test). In this way each team would still be able to manufacture its own cars, and each team’s cars would be identical. Equal equipment for all.
If the equipment we had at the start of the year was what we were forced to use for the duration of the season – with any modifications only introduced by the FIA on the grounds of reliability and driver safety – the teams could have the cars ready to run and the mechanics back at their hotel by six o’clock every night. Unable to alter the fixed design, there would be no need for the teams to organize individual research programmes; for example, the introduction and development of a new aero-package (such as the small X wings which began to appear on the cars at the start of 1998) which the other teams are forced to copy and which the FIA then decided to ban. Having no beneficial reason to develop the cars, the teams’ production and yearly running costs would plummet. Jordan Grand Prix claimed to have spent tens of thousands of pounds developing and producing their version of the X wing, and was miffed when the device was subsequently banned. Masses of money spent for nothing. Taking all the teams’ design budgets into consideration, not allowing the constructors to develop their cars would potentially save millions of pounds each year.
Some people may argue with this idea, pointing out that Formula One’s design regulations decree that the cars are already identical, with each built to the same recipe; after all, every car on the grid is a Formula One car. True, but only to a limited degree. Yes, they are all built to the same guidelines but they are most definitely not all identical. When Aldo Costa designed the Minardi M192 he was subject to exactly the same technical restrictions that were imposed on Patrick Head when he penned the FW14B, but the performance and reliability of the ’92 Williams was leagues ahead of the Minardi – and everything else for that matter.
I’m afraid I had to look up the Minardi designer’s name in Autocourse as I had no idea whatsoever who drew their car. It strikes me as the sort of third question you’d get asked before being allowed to cross the Bridge of Doom in Python’s Holy Grail:
‘What is your name?’
‘What is your favourite colour?’
‘What is the name of the man who oversaw the initial design, first-build and further development of the 1992 Minardi M192 Formula One Grand Prix car?’
The current situation is that innovative design is first researched, then built, then developed and only then banned. If the world would rather see the drivers in equal equipment then it would be an awful lot less effort (and infinitely cheaper) if the teams didn’t have to go through the laborious process of pioneering and building these advantages in the first place, only to have them outlawed later on. For example: rather than have the regulations merely specifying an area of the car where a wing can or cannot be, why not take the pen out of the designer’s hand and simply issue his team’s composite department with a drawing of the only allowable wing?
Such a policy would certainly make the mechanics’ lives easier: no more constant messing about on the flat-patch with the new MK15 suspension geometry; no new diffuser designs fronting up that haven’t any intention of fitting anywhere near anything; no new gearbox selector mechanism being flown out on the Friday night, which if all goes well should arrive at about two in the morning. All you need to do is slip the box off the engine for a bit of a rebuild and a couple of mods, then quickly slide it back on so we can fire the engine and look at the data to see if we want to run the new mechanism during tomorrow’s practice. If the data doesn’t look good, then we’ll just whip the box off again, remove the new selector and all its gubbins and put everything back as it was.
The bottom line is that there is no easy solution to Formula One’s problem. Banning technical advancement takes away the constructors’ competitive spirit, as would converting the sport into a single-make formula. Giving the teams free rein to do as they wish would result in the top four teams developing the most incredibly advanced and ferociously expensive cars, while the rest of the field plodded along behind, fifteen or more seconds a lap slower than the leaders. Yet the current situation is clearly not working either. Perhaps what the sport needs is a freezing of the technical regulations: what the teams have now is what the teams have in five years’ time. I really don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that the reduction of technology has severely dimmed the limelight in which state-of-the-art Grand Prix racing used to bask. There was a time when people used to say that Formula One technology fed the road car industry, that the innovative designs included on a Grand Prix car one year would be utilized by the mass-market vehicle manufacturers within the next few years. I don’t hear people saying that anymore. Formula One has been left behind. It is now the road cars which have complex traction-control and ABS assemblies; it is the road cars which have four-wheel steering and hydraulically adjustable suspension. Of course they also have refinements which wouldn’t be of use to a race car, such as ingenious climate-control systems, perfect-fidelity sound and satellite-assisted guidance, but even without these little luxuries, the current flagship BMW or Mercedes sports saloons are making post-technology-ban Grand Prix cars, limited to using their four clonky springs and dampers, look pretty dowdy by comparison.
I’ve always thought that good music means one is never really alone and in times of greatest need my favourite albums have become firm and faithful friends. Years ago I remember listening to a late-night phone-in on the radio, with people discussing the various merits of different composers. One chap, based in the studio and apparently an authority on such matters, dismissed Mozart’s work as ‘frivolous, a man who is capable of amusing but nevertheless a man who failed to take his work seriously; he entertains in the same way as a circus clown. He made music, yet never understood how.’ Didn’t understand how? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! A man whose every written note bulges with talent didn’t understand how? Well, without doubt, the voice on the radio was on some hideous ego trip, and although I would never describe myself as being expert in anything, I’m certain that this particular ‘authority’ had utterly confused the real point he was trying to make. What Mozart did was to make it look easy, too easy. It was all just pure effortless fun, that was the difference. He could scribble down a masterpiece for the clarinet in the afternoon, get drunk as a lord in the evening and the next morning – still nursing a delicate head – he would compose a series of elaborate choral works for inclusion in a grand mass. And later that night he would be out on the tiles again.
Schumacher is an example of a man who shares a similar genius to Mozart. Recently I watched a video of the 1998 Canadian Grand Prix, which Michael won (partly helped, of course, by the swift demise of both McLarens). After the race Michael climbed from his Ferrari and removed his helmet looking as bright and fresh as if he had driven but a single lap. There wasn’t a hair out of place or a bead of sweat in sight, just a big beaming smile of success – but no visible signs of the skill, the determination or the complex talents that were required to win the race. It was all effortless fun.
Salvador Dali was the same. His sense of light and shade and depth is fabulous. His ability to conjure up more than one image from within a single work and to allow the alternative picture to rise through the colours of the first – for example, the painting of Gala looking out to sea, which changes into a portrait of Abraham Lincoln’s head – is nothing short of magnificent. Yet, when some people observed Dali at play, simply gluing a plaster lobster atop an old telephone and declaring the work finished, they instantly dismissed him as talentless, a frivolous fool. He was making it look too easy. Mind you, it’s also worth bearing in mind that Dali tried to kill himself through a slow process of self-dehydration. He thought that if he lay preserved in this utterly dry state, future generations could one day sprinkle him with water and his celebrated talents would be reborn like the budding of a springtime flower. Obviously, this made it patently clear that the great man was also barking mad. The fact remains, either you’ve got a God-given gift or you haven’t. But the man on the radio couldn’t see that; he thought that stern meant skilful, that grumpy meant dedicated. He was wrong.
Each year there is a plethora of books written about motor-racing, the majority of which are devoted to Formula One. I would suggest that about ninety-five percent of those books are driver biographies, the remaining five percent split between end-of-season reviews and the occasional book taking an inside look at this or that particular team. The reason that there is such an array of driver-dedicated books, I suppose, is that on the whole they are a much easier topic to research. Most are written by Grand Prix journalists, people who are interviewing drivers as a matter of course, and the drivers will (fairly) willingly give the journalists much of the information they need to write their books.
However, on the flip-side of Formula One’s coin, being granted sufficient freedom of information to be able to write a worthwhile account of a constructor’s operation is an infinitely more difficult prospect. The very nature of the sport means that the teams tend to be most furtive and secretive when dealing with the press.
At Benetton we were under instructions not to so much as speak to the press; if anyone wanted any team information we were to politely direct them and their enquiries to the press-officer. At the conclusion of every running session, be it a test, a practice, qualifying or the race itself, the teams’ press-officers write and distribute a press release. This is the official party line; what is printed on that sheet is all they really want the world to hear about the team’s operations. Each team produces its own press releases: Benetton, Ferrari, Jordan, McLaren, Minardi, the tyre manufacturers, the engine manufacturers, the entire pit-lane in fact; but on the whole, other than the bare facts and figures – grid positions, lap-times, chassis numbers – these press releases are about as much use as a chocolate fire-guard. However, it’s important to stress that this lack of substance isn’t the fault of the press-officers. Their job is to deal with the media, and one of their tasks in dealing with the media is to produce a press release; but much of the time their hands are tied, and they can only reveal to the world what the team managers and their technical directors allow. Their job is made even more difficult by the fact that they are constantly trying to convey that a calm and serene atmosphere surrounds their team.
‘Everything’s fine, no problems that can’t be fixed [nice smile], both drivers are suffering from a little understeer but the team will be working on that during the evening and we should be able to produce much quicker lap-times tomorrow [nice smile]. Peter Perfect lost a little time with a small gearbox problem, but we confidently predict that both our cars will be in the top six on the grid, and all being well, a podium finish is not out of the question [nice smile].’
What this actually means is that the car is totally undrivable and regardless of the fact that the mechanics have been throwing springs and roll bars at it all morning, no amount of set-up change is making the slightest bit of difference to a chassis which has proved completely useless at every circuit since it was originally bashed together at midnight in the first-builds of January. The gearbox has utterly destroyed itself because of a bearing failure which was reported as being a latent problem over four races ago – yet nothing whatsoever has been done to solve it – and now the gearbox mechanics are threatening to burn their race shirts, drive back to the hotel, get unfeasibly drunk and fly home two days early. The drivers and their engineers have spent the entire morning’s session squaring up to each other over the radio, one accusing the other of being clearly far too talentless to drive a Formula One race car, the other retorting that his colleague is blatantly unable to engineer anything more complex than a lawnmower entered in the local village Run-What-You-Brung Open Challenge; and the team’s major sponsors are sick and tired of the total lack of results and are on the verge of pulling out.
A journalist who is intent on trying to produce a written record of how a Grand Prix team functions is subjecting himself to all kinds of problems. The first obstacle to overcome is obtaining the initial credentials required to breach the team’s ambitious security gates. The next difficulty is receiving a receptive response from the staff and being treated as a work colleague – not merely ignored by the mechanics and looked upon as just another prying ‘journo’ – and then, once comfortably able to mingle amongst the employees, the final problem (and the biggest) is being able to write an inside account of life spent working there without the press-officer wanting to check and approve every written paragraph. Indeed, the very word ‘inside’ would have both the press-officer and the team’s entire marketing department squirming with unease; used in the right context its very existence implies skulduggery, embarrassing disclosure, a kiss-and-tell scandal.
‘Inside story! What are you trying to imply? All above board in this team, nothing underhand would ever go on here, oh no, no, no, no, no.’
Like every other position in the pit-lane, there are good press-officers and there are bad ones – perhaps this means that they are either boring or not boring – and although I don’t know many of them (as a mechanic I only occasionally came into contact with rival teams’ press-officers) I think that Jordan’s Giselle Davies must rank as being one of the best. Her press releases are always informative and quite frank, and possibly helped by her boss’s relaxed attitude, she seems able to give more than some. If Eddie tells her that he has had a thoroughly dismal weekend and everything’s been a complete disaster, then she will report exactly that. Giselle used to work with Benetton, which is where I first met her, but she left us to join Eddie Jordan when his previous press-officer, Louise Goodman, parted from them to work for Mach 1, the TV company currently producing the ITV Formula One coverage.
Even with all the potential pitfalls, there have still been some good books published on the subject of teams; Race Without End by Maurice Hamilton is a fine example of the genre (although after what I’ve just said about Eddie Jordan’s approach to the job it’s perhaps not a complete coincidence that Hamilton’s book covers a racing season with Jordan Grand Prix). Nevertheless, the fact still remains that, by comparison, the writer’s task is far more daunting when he attempts to explore a Grand Prix team, compared with the ease of researching and writing an account of a driver’s career.
In December 1993 I decided that I would like to write a book on Formula One, but something a little different with a new approach. I was nurturing the vague notion of writing an account of my professional life, my time spe
nt working as a race mechanic with what by this stage had become an established and reasonably successful Formula One team. I remember reading a book by Peter Lewis, a journalist for the Observer newspaper. The book, entitled Alf Francis – Racing Mechanic, told the story of Alf when he worked as a mechanic with Sterling Moss in the 1950s. It was a wonderful read and I thought I’d try to do something similar by writing an update to the story of a mechanic’s lot more than forty years after Lewis had transcribed Alf’s anecdotes. However, one thing would definitely be different; I was determined not to give the task of writing the book to anyone else. If I was going to undertake the project then I would do all the work myself. Other than a few letters and the annual bundle of Christmas cards I hadn’t really written anything substantial before, certainly nothing of such magnitude as a book, but I thought I’d have a go all the same. After all, I’d never ridden a push-bike until I climbed on one as a kid and started to pedal; I’d never stripped and rebuilt a Ferrari Testarossa engine until I was asked to do so; and, likewise, I’d never worked on a Grand Prix car before Nigel Stepney offered me the chance. The three keys to undertaking any task in life are: desire, guidelines and common sense. Bear in mind those three factors and almost anything is achievable. This philosophy, based on logic and optimism, will never be a substitute for thorough training in a particular discipline but providing one is sensible and feels confident enough to try, then all manner of things are possible. On 1 January 1994 I began Just Another Day at the Office – The Working Life of a Formula One Mechanic.
The Mechanic’s Tale Page 17