The Mechanic’s Tale

by Steve Matchett

  Michael and Johnny are two contrasting personalities, their mental approach to work is different, their achievements in a Grand Prix car are leagues apart. Michael has won two World Championships in less time than it has taken Johnny to win but two races. Perhaps it’s more comfortable not to dwell on such comparisons but when put under the spotlight, those are the bare bones of the matter. Johnny, just like Jos, Riccardo and Martin before him, all had a fair crack at trying to outpace Michael and fight for recognition as the team’s number-one driver. Without a doubt, Benetton would have been delighted if someone had proved to be consistently quicker than Schumacher. If that had been the case we could have had a team stronger than the Senna/Prost partnership at McLaren in the late 1980s. However, the bottom line is that not just Johnny, but all of Michael’s partners have failed to put him under any real pressure. Perhaps these facts of life are a bit depressing for some of the more sensitive souls who stand on the wrong side of the Great Divide, but that is the nature of the beast, I’m afraid; it is a fiercely competitive game.

  Another facet of Michael’s genius lies in his ability to understand the potential effects of differing set-up changes without having to waste valuable track-time in needing to physically try the car with the new configuration. Comparing Schumacher with Herbert again to illustrate this: when things were going well for Johnny he was both cheerful and buoyant, and a quick lap in the practice session would bring a plethora of positive and constructive feedback. However, in the reverse situation, a slow lap could lead to a rather glum and despondent change in mood, and Johnny would grow frustrated with the situation and become quiet, even a little withdrawn. Schumacher, on the other hand, always remained calm, confident and sure of progress, irrespective of whether the previous few laps were slower than he or we expected. (Now, I know I just said ‘always remained calm’ and I am aware that he completely lost his composure following that shunt with Coultard during the 1998 Spa race, but we are talking about his application and his approach to methodical set-up work here.)

  At Benetton, the conversations between Michael and Pat Symonds, his race engineer, were always, always constructive. As the race weekend progressed, Ross Brawn would try and assist both of his drivers, constantly talking with the two men and their engineers, bringing the separate sets of results together, and advising both drivers of the benefits or deficits of the various changes that each car had just tried. However, from what I could see it was always Michael who was more able to focus and make the most use of this continually updated library of information. Remember that during a Grand Prix weekend, track-time is the most valuable thing there is, and regardless of how many multi-million dollars their budgets can boast, it is possibly the only commodity that is impossible to buy more of. When the chequered flag falls to end the practice and qualifying sessions, that’s it, game over; where you are is where you are…

  I borrowed Bat’s computer and by making use of these thoughts and notes, which by now had been scribbled over a dozen sheets of paper, I started to write my first article. I wrote my views on Michael’s career at Benetton and how he is capable of doing what he does. It was my first attempt at writing an article and when the Sunday Times printed an abridged edition of it in December 1995, it became my first published article. I was delighted. Autosport also printed a version of it the following January and I was really thrilled when they used the story as their front page headline.

  ‘You like chilli?’

  The big chap who had joined our barman standing on the opposite side of the thick wooden bar to us had lifted his gaze to look at me, leaning forward and fixing me with his two dark eyes before quietly speaking. It was the first time we had met, his brief question our first communication. There had been no introduction, no handshake, no good evening, how are you tonight? Nothing like that at all, just the three words: ‘You like chilli?’ He spoke English to me, yet I strongly suspected that English wasn’t his mother tongue, even if he’d used nothing else for the last twenty years. His voice carried a heavy but unrecognizable accent, German perhaps? No, much further east, Russian? Impossible to tell. His hair was long, tinged with grey and straggled both in front and behind his broad shoulders; he obviously liked to keep its style liberated and free of artificial influences. He was very much an individual – no one could ever be in the slightest doubt of that – in fact the dark orange and blue sarong he sported was his only concession to fashion (though to exactly which fashion it was that he was granting this concession remained unclear). When he spoke his three words to me, the solid, heavily lined face, half hidden beneath the dark hair, bore no expression; there was no half-raised eyebrow, no smile, there were just the three words, the dark, watchful eyes and nothing else.

  My friends were busy chatting among themselves and I was only half listening, lost in my own thoughts (wondering if I should contact a paper in England to see what they thought of my Schumacher article), and the two seconds it took me to realize that the big man was talking to me and that he was waiting for an answer to his odd question were obviously too long. Before I’d had time to reply he’d gone again. Carrying two strawberries, which he’d just carefully hollowed and filled with liqueur from behind the bar, he walked back into the gloom of the restaurant, the ankle-length hem of his sarong flapping as he went. He stopped at the nearest table to talk to the two couples sitting at it and to pop a now strongly fortified strawberry into each girl’s mouth. Then he returned to the bar and reclaimed the flashlight he’d been carrying when he first appeared, stopped in his tracks for a moment and looked at me (this time saying nothing), then he was gone again, walking deep into the back of the restaurant, shining his torch on to the customers’ plates as he went. Occasionally in life you meet someone who completely enthrals you; this big man, with his few words, bright sarong and careworn looks was just such a chap; he seemed capable of being quite a lot of fun.

  Bat and Kenny were laughing when I turned to them; they had been here before and knew who he was; in fact they were keen that I should meet him.

  ‘That’s Alex,’ Kenny explained, ‘the owner!’

  ‘You’ll like him, Steve, I guarantee it, he’s right up your street!’ added Bat.

  A few minutes later Alex reappeared, this time carrying a sizeable stick in one hand and his torch in the other. Slowly he prowled among his guests, banging on their tables as he walked past, causing some to spring round in surprise; the torch was used to light up dinner plates, a check that his clientele had dined well and that what had been served had been eaten without complaint. From what I could make out they all appeared more than satisfied.

  After our own dinner we too were equally satisfied, the food was quite superb. While we ate our way through two wonderful courses – Kenny had Moreton Bay bugs to start with, followed by a main course of Moreton Bay bugs – we watched Alex look after his guests as only Alex could. He had abandoned his torch and stick in favour of touring the tables with a three-foot jelly snake and a serious-looking pair of tailor’s scissors, and constantly clipped at the air as he walked. The snake would be placed in a willing mouth and a length snipped off. Half an hour later he was back with a bag of chocolate drops. ‘Give me your tongue,’ came the short, nasal request and as a tongue appeared he would carefully place a little treat on it.

  By one o’clock many of Alex’s guests, full to bursting point with fine food, fine drink, jelly snakes and choc-drops, had gone home to sleep it off, but we were in no rush to go anywhere. We sat around our table content just to talk, occasionally ordering more wine. The big man walked over to us carrying a tray of small glasses. ‘Earlier on I asked you if you liked chilli, why didn’t you talk?’ I apologized and told him I loved chilli. He placed a shot-glass full of some misty spirit in front of each of us, the contents so cold they caused the outside of the glass to ice over. ‘If you like chilli then perhaps you should try this, but be careful,’ he warned us, ‘it’s very hot!’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Chilli
vodka from the freezer,’ he said.

  Now, it is well understood that the fiery taste of a red-hot chilli pepper is something that takes a little getting used to but many of the world’s peoples use the unique pungency of this little seed pod to spice up their everyday cuisine as a matter of course. However, when chilli is added to alcohol something quite extraordinary (bordering on the surreal) seems to happen, and the resulting cocktail is nothing short of blisteringly hot, far in excess of any vindaloo or phall curry I’ve ever come across. The effect of that little glass of spirit was similar to an internal incendiary grenade explosion, my throat burned, my eyes dripped and my lips tingled for more than an hour afterwards, it was quite staggering. ‘Another?’ offered Alex a little later; there were no takers but we were back at his restaurant the next night.

  Throughout my time with Benetton I’ve visited many bars and pubs and restaurants, some good, some bad, a few memorable: I’ve chinked Singapore Sling glasses in the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel, and stepped over people at the Mask in São Paulo; I’ve foolishly drunk far too much tequila in Mexico City’s Fiesta Americana, and I’ve eaten the most perfectly prepared chicken wings at New York’s Red Blazer Two. I’ve shared a can of warm beer in Rosie’s Bar in Monte Carlo, and sampled some of the finest beers in England at the Falkland Arms in Great Tew, but I have never visited anywhere quite like Going Bananas in Port Douglas. The only near comparison I can draw on would be Rick’s Café American in Casablanca, where the enigmatic personality of Bogart’s character provided such a magnetic attraction to his bar. However, Alex and Rick are most certainly at opposite ends of the spectrum; I somehow can’t envisage Bogey swapping his white jacket and bow tie for a flowered sarong and cutting up jelly snakes for his bemused customers.

  In many respects Alex is a unique restaurateur, a real character, yet his idiosyncrasies are all genuine. If I was asked to nominate my personal favourite out of all the places I’ve visited throughout the world it would unquestionably be his, and should you ever be within a million-mile radius of Port Douglas I thoroughly recommend taking a trip to see him. On the night before we flew home we all braved a final searing vodka and Alex gave me a cow’s pelvic bone to take back to Chipping Norton. You can’t get much fairer than that, can you?

  With my salary now set at £26,025 per year, the first Grand Prix of 1996 saw us back in Australia again, but this time the venue for the race had shifted from Adelaide to Melbourne. It was also to be the last Grand Prix in which I took part in a race pit-stop. The team had arrived in Australia absolutely exhausted, with several of the mechanics, myself included, suffering from either bronchitis or serious flu, induced by the ludicrous number of hours we had put in over the winter. The work had been relentless, from the moment that we disembarked at Heathrow after our holiday in Queensland to the time we climbed off another 747 and found ourselves back in Australia. The only saving grace of the twenty-four-hour flight was that while the plane was airborne it was impossible for us to work on the cars.

  We had built the new B196, had then flown out to Sicily in order to publicly launch the new car – and our new drivers, Berger and Alesi – and then flown back to Heathrow, changed planes and flown directly to Estoril to carry out three weeks of intensive testing with the new chassis. Then it was straight back to the factory to rebuild the cars after the test, pack everything into boxes for the fly-away and jump on the next Jumbo bound for Melbourne.

  The test team had been called out to help us in Estoril, the idea being that they would sleep during the day and rebuild the cars for us during the night, ready for the following day’s testing session, but the system was only partially successful: there was such a large overlap period caused by one crew explaining to the other what work still had to be done that it inevitably meant that both sets of mechanics were working close to sixteen-hour shifts. I spent three days in bed after the Estoril test, forty-eight hours of which I have no waking memory of whatsoever. On the third day I woke, totally wrecked and three kilos lighter, the bed sheets soaked in the sweat of a heavy fever. I made it into work the next day, feeling weak, though guilty for my absence at such a frantic time – only to discover that nearly half the race mechanics were missing, experiencing a similar illness to my own.

  No one, from any of the teams, should ever be expected to work like that, yet a solution to the problem doesn’t seem difficult to organize. Let’s say that $2 million per year would pay for an additional twenty-five men, in wages, accommodation, travelling costs etc. An awful lot of money without a doubt but it doesn’t seem such a massive amount when compared to the rest of a team’s budget (just remember what everyone was spending on their active cars). Perhaps just throwing more people at the job isn’t the perfect solution, but it would certainly make an enormous difference; the whole travelling staff could be alternated: one race on, two races off.

  The hours in Melbourne were little better; the only time I left the hotel was to drive to the circuit, I never saw anything of the town whatsoever. We landed at six in the morning, dropped our bags at the hotel, then it was circuit, hotel, circuit, hotel, circuit, hotel until the final drive back to the airport on the Monday afternoon. Another twenty-four-hour flight was followed by just enough time in England to wash our pants before we were on a fourteen-hour trip out to Brazil for round two. Utterly bloody miserable. I felt like curling up in a ball and crying. I had seriously considered resigning before the Melbourne race, feeling that I’d achieved what I had set out to do in Formula One and therefore had little reason to remain any longer, but I knew it would be improper not to stay and defend the crown we had just won. A stupid personal ethic perhaps but that was the only reason I stuck it out.

  However, Fate was once again about to play her hand. In Brazil, on the Friday morning of round two of the World Championship, I hurt my back trying to lift the rear of the car during a pre-session pit-stop practice. I felt something give, right in the middle of my lower back. I didn’t think too much of it at the time but five minutes later I could hardly move, my back muscles went into spasm and I was crippled with pain. As the morning session was flagged under way and the cars took to the circuit, all I could do was to lie perfectly still on one of our ‘pack-horse’ boxes. I remember thinking that of all the places in the world for something like this to happen it should be Brazil! I could hardly be further from home. The circuit medical staff arrived, gently loaded me on to their roller-stretcher (which was agonizing), then they wheeled me down the pit-lane (which was agonizing and humiliating) and into the medical centre. The doctors prodded me, left me, prodded me again, tried to inject me (no thanks), rolled me over (excruciating), X-rayed me, rolled me over again (ditto), prodded me once more and told me (in broken English) that there was no serious spinal damage, just torn muscle and aggravated nerves. One chap did a little mime for me, which I took to be him wringing the water out of something. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say until a nurse laughed and told me in her best English that I looked completely washed out.

  I was wheeled into a small, cool and darkened ward; still clothed, I was gingerly helped on to a bed and told to lie still, just relax; their assurance was that once my back muscles had come out of spasm I should be able to get up and walk – albeit with some pretty major discomfort for a while. I was grateful for their help but pleased now just to be left alone. The only light in the room came from small spikes of sunshine stealing through gaps in the blinds. I lay in the gloom listening to the sound of the fan in the air-conditioning unit. The medical centre sits close to the garages, just behind the pit-lane entrance, and through the thickness of the breeze-block walls I could hear the muffled scream of the engines as the cars exited the last corner and thundered down the main straight. The room contained half-a-dozen beds, all covered with starched white sheets. Alongside each stood a tall, polished drip-stand, looking like six regimental guards on parade. Even though I was lying down my feet still ached with fatigue; they had started to complain before the end of the
first week of the Estoril test and continued to nag at me now.

  If there was a bad accident, this is where the injured would be brought; the operating theatre through the adjoining door could provide everything for any emergency work. Presumably, Professor Watkins, the eminent neurosurgeon who travels with us as the FIA’s medical expert, could operate on a severe head injury and fight to save someone’s life a mere six feet away from where I lay – either a marshal or a driver hurt on the circuit, or perhaps a mechanic, engulfed by flame or mown down and hit by flying debris in the pit-lane. It was an odd, chilling thought: sport and potential brain surgery. When dormant, medical centres are clean, calm, peaceful havens – that is how they should always be. I felt so tired. The instant noise and rush and mess that is created when a catastrophe happens alters that serenity out of all recognition. I was thankful that the place was perfectly still and quiet now; I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I listened to the cars in the dark: how strange not to be in the garage watching the timing monitors, preparing another set of springs for the impending set-up change. What happens if I don’t know how quickly we’re going? I folded my arms over my head, covering my ears, and listened to myself breathing. Nothing, I just fell asleep. My days with the Benetton race team were over.

  The nurse woke me about an hour later, asking how I was feeling and telling me that the practice session had finished. ‘If you feel able to stand,’ she said, ‘then the best place for you is back at your hotel, better still go home!’