The Mechanic’s Tale

by Steve Matchett

  This can easily be the case at a Grand Prix as well, of course, but a test is booked to last for much longer than the duration of a race weekend. It is also quite possible for the test to be extended, not just by half an hour, but by an additional day, or two, or three – even a whole week if you’re really lucky! There’s never any reason to be bored when working in Formula One, there’s always something happening to keep you occupied. Carlos Nuñes (the hero of the Portuguese Grand Prix) was the chief mechanic at the time I worked with the test team, and I found him a pleasure to work for. We got on well as work-mates, and as my immediate boss I couldn’t have wished for better; in our two years together we never had so much as a single cross word.

  However, despite the relaxed atmosphere, my entente cordiale with Carlos and a little extra money from the company (£27,326), I was still looking for a way out. It soon became apparent that I wasn’t the only member of staff who was contemplating a career move either; over the following months many key personnel took stock of the situation and decided that the best course of action was to call it a day. It turned into quite an exodus.

  After umpteen years’ service, Flavio parted from the Benetton family and after spending a few contemplative months in the sun he began looking into a new project, forming his own company and marketing Renault’s rebadged (Mecachrome) engines. Super Performance Competition Engineering he called his firm – and although I’m sure Flavio knows what’s best for his business, Super Performance Competition Engineering always struck me as being quite unnecessarily long for a company name (I think it has now been reduced to just Supertec Sports).

  My favourite memory of Flavio is of sitting next to him at the dinner table in Japan on the Sunday night that Michael won his second Championship. We were celebrating the win in the rather courtly restaurant of the Aida circuit hotel, with more champagne flowing than I’d ever seen before. There were people chasing one another up and down the dining room spraying bottle after bottle over each other; the girls from our press office were dancing on the tables, Jamiroquai’s Space Cowboy booming from the CD, the girls revelling in the fun of it all, relieved to shirk their responsibilities for a while and forget about team image and having to pander to the needs of the media. While all this was happening Flavio drank and laughed and chatted. ‘Steve, I’ve read your book,’ he said, turning to me. ‘You write good books and you should write more of them, but remember this, remember what I tell you now, you write good books, but you are terrible at ordering champagne. I have never seen anyone worse! Quite terrible!’ I took the hint (unsubtle as it was) and went to get him another bottle – kept firmly under lock and key in the manager’s special reserve. While everyone else was busy spraying Moët & Chandon around the room, Flav was quietly sipping vintage Krug. You have to hand it to him, he might not understand how to strip and rebuild a Grand Prix car, but Flavio Briatore has Formula One figured out to complete perfection. Actually, I seem to remember that by the time we left the restaurant, well after three in the morning, we had made such a mess of the restaurant’s plush white carpet that Flavio agreed to buy the owner a new one.

  Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne were among the others to go, both following Michael Schumacher to Ferrari. Willem Toet – a work-mate of Rory’s and the team’s other aerodynamics specialist – and Tad Czapski, one of our electronics specialists, had also moved to join Ferrari. Patrizia Spinelli, who had done such an excellent job of publicizing and finding new sponsorship for the team in the early days, had gone to work at Prost Grand Prix, joining the former World Champion at his new factory in Paris. John Postlethwaite, who headed the marketing department, also left Benetton to start his own company.

  Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger, the two ex-Ferrari drivers drafted in to replace Schumacher and Herbert for 1996, were both out by the end of 1997 – with only one race win to the pair’s credit (Berger winning the ’97 Hockenheim Grand Prix). They were replaced by Alex Wurz, Benetton’s test driver, and Giancarlo Fisichella, the young Italian who had previously been with Jordan.

  From the all-conquering Benetton Formula of 1995, the team had now lost its World Champion driver, the commercial director, the technical director, the chief designer, the chief aerodynamicist, the marketing manager and the PR manager. These people were all replaced, of course, but they certainly weren’t the last members of staff to leave, and Benetton Formula was fast becoming a team I no longer recognized. The replacement staff all wore Benetton race shirts at the circuits, but other than sharing the same insignia as me, many of these people remained total strangers. Of course, in any business, people come and go all the time, that is the way of things, but the key changes that Benetton had undergone in such a brief spell were quite unprecedented in the team’s history.

  I suppose I was also witnessing the end of my own time with the team too; a major era of my life was rapidly drawing to a close and I was acutely aware of feeling the new tide gently lapping at my feet. Times they were a-changing at Benetton. Nearly time to set sail.

  The penultimate flight of my Benetton career was in September 1997, a trip to Italy for the Monza test. We had booked the circuit for four days, all of which were hot and sunny; too hot, and we had been plagued with vicious mosquitoes every night. The humidity was intense and there was no air, the sweat began to drip at ten in the morning and was still pouring from us twelve hours later; midnight was as hot as midday. September in northern Italy is always unpredictable: beautiful late summer sunshine and gentle breezes or sweltering heat and torrid rain. The weather cycles can change every few days, and over the four days the atmosphere grew progressively thicker and heavier; a storm, a huge storm, was building. I longed for it to break; the fresh air a storm brings would be blissfully welcome. However, the rain held off until the very last day, the initial rumble of thunder arriving about six in the evening, and the first big, ripe drops of water followed an hour later. Then, with the sun lost behind thick, pitch-black clouds, the storm finally got going, before long whipping itself into a violent fury. I found the size and strength of the storm fascinating, and while most people stayed in the garages I preferred to shelter just outside and watch it lash uncontrollably at the pits and the track.

  Sheets of rain raced down the pit-lane and main straight as wave after wave of torrential water slapped the tarmac and headed off in pursuit of the one before, showing complete contempt for the chicane in its rage and wildly slamming into the trees as it whirled amongst them. Vast streaks of stroboscopic lightning arced across the sky, showing up flickering views of the deserted grandstand on the other side of the track; moments later the lightning forks were followed by great explosions of thunder, one chaotic salvo after another, the blasts of noise and light cannoned around the town. It was as if Monza were under siege by some powerful advancing army.

  I remember a close friend of my dad’s, Ron Tivey, telling me a story many years ago about the time he served in the Monza region during the closing stages of World War Two. The fighting, he said, was terribly fierce, with the retreating German army most reluctant to pull back any further, and when the allies finally gained entry to the town, he described seeing it in almost total ruin, with many of the buildings either completely gone or reduced to burning rubble. On my first visit, in 1990, I noticed that although much of Monza’s original architecture had survived – at least in a state to allow it to be rebuilt – many of the buildings did look relatively new. With the ear-splitting noise of battle, the death, the carnage and the suffering of the aftermath, Monza must have been a terrible place to behold in the war.

  Every time I’ve visited Monza I’ve thought of Ron’s experiences there, and although the immense ferocity of the storm I was watching could be nothing in comparison to the noise of war, I felt I could imagine him and his fellow soldiers slowly moving into position around Monza; instead of lightning there would have been tracer bullets; instead of thunder, artillery shells; but the blackness and the sheets of rain, they would be the same. My own memories of time spent
in Monza are of winning the Grand Prix there in 1995, an infinitely more pleasant memory, and one which would have been impossible for me to have if it weren’t for Ron’s bravery and that of hundreds of thousands just like him.

  My final flight with the team was the British Airways morning run from Milan to Heathrow, the day after the great storm. It sticks in my mind not merely because it punctuates my career with Benetton, but because of an incident that occurred during the in-flight breakfast. The early morning flights are usually quiet and this one was no exception: just us and a few sharply dressed Italian businessmen on their way to London for the day’s round of essential meetings; the girl at the check-in counter had been kind enough to dot us about the Club cabin so that we might have as much space as possible to stretch and relax. We normally travelled Club, simply because it made it easier for the tickets to be changed if the test was extended at the last minute.

  On European flights there is little difference between Club and Economy seats, but the one little extra that I do enjoy is the complimentary champagne served with breakfast. The week before we left England I’d bought a copy of Dirk Bogarde’s autobiography A Short Walk from Harrods. The book had really held me; it also came with the added appeal that much of it describes the years he lived in rural France in the hills of Provence. I was reading the closing pages over my breakfast, a glass of champagne held in one hand, as we soared high above the snowcapped Alps. In these final paragraphs Dirk had been talking about the making of his last film, shot in the south of France, and what a wonderful restorative the work had been in lifting him from his depression. Then he went on to talk of his early morning flight back to England once the filming was finished, describing how he drank a glass of champagne with his breakfast as the plane cruised over the Alps above Grenoble. He was describing exactly the same time of day and place in the world and describing the very same glass of champagne that I was enjoying at that very moment! It was the first time I’d read his book so I had no idea what was coming and I have to admit that it gave me quite a shock. I wonder what the odds are of such a coincidence? I suppose an even more unlikely occurrence would be if someone found themselves reading the closing paragraphs of this book while drinking a glass of champagne on an early morning flight over the Alps.

  I left Benetton at exactly 5:35 pm on Friday, 13 February 1998.

  Epilogue

  Alice remarked thoughtfully: ‘And what are “toves”?’

  ‘Well, toves are something like badgers – they’re something like lizards – and they’re something like corkscrews.’

  ‘They must be very curious-looking creatures.’

  ‘That they are,’ said Humpty Dumpty: ‘also they make their nests under sundials – also they live on cheese.’

  ‘And what’s to “gyre” and to “gimble”?’

  ‘To “gyre” is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To “gimble” is to make holes like a gimblet.’

  ‘And “the wabe” is the grass-plot round a sundial, I suppose,’ said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.

  ‘Of course it is. It’s called “wabe” you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it.’

  ‘And a long way beyond it on each side,’ Alice added.

  Formula One has been very good to me. I have visited more places, seen more sights and met more fascinating people than I could possibly have dreamed of. Travelling with Benetton has taken me to more than twenty countries, including parts of Africa, America, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Japan and Mexico. I have dived the waters of the Great Barrier Reef and flown the skies above Ayers Rock. I’ve driven across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and climbed to the top of New York’s Statue of Liberty. I’ve visited the Salvador Dali Museum in Florida and Salvador Dali’s museum in Spain. I’ve ridden the Bullet train past the natural brilliance of Mount Fuji and through the neon brilliance of Tokyo. I worked with some truly fascinating people, and along the way we won the most coveted engineering trophy in the world. All in all I feel I have been incredibly lucky.

  So, a year after setting sail across the Channel, do I now regret my decision to leave Benetton and start a new life in France, with the puzzles of a new language, the problems of restoring a wreck of a farmhouse without any building experience and the nagging question of how to keep the wolf from the door? Not a bit of it; every problem has an answer, you just have to be patient and adaptable – ask Alice.

  The two cars cross the finish line at Monza, 1988, to record an historic one-two finish for Ferrari.

  Unable to believe the end result, the Tifosi stream towards the podium in celebration at the end of the race at Monza.

  Gerhard Berger at Imola in 1989 prior to the massive shunt at Tamburello on the following Sunday.

  Despite Berger’s dramatic accident at Imola that year, Ferrari made the brave descision to restart.

  Engineer Andy Le Flemming (Alf) and Roberto Moreno discuss progress at Suzuka in 1990. Prior to firing the engine on the B190 the battery drill behind Moreno’s helmet was used to obtain initial fiel pressure.

  The author sporting the useless headphones of the equally useless pit-wall intercom system at Suzuka.

  Briatore and Moreno. The Brazilian is so overcome with emotion at Suzuka he is barely able to walk and talk.

  My first Grand Prix victory, and what a feeling of pure elation the result brought at Suzuka in 1990.

  Flavio drenched with champagne after accepting Benetton’s trophy at Suzuka.

  The Foster’s girls rehearse their routines prior to the race day parades in Adelaide, 1990.

  Piquet driving the Benetton B190 at Adelaide.

  Nelson with his victor’s trophy In Adelaide. It was Benetton’s second race win in my first season with them.

  A Grand Prix novice, a young German called Michael Schumacher, is given his race debut in a Jordan at Spa, 1991. Benetton is so Impressed…

  … that they immediately set about signing him to drive a B191 in the next race at Monza.

  The deal is done, the ink on the contract has dried. Flavio has secured the future services of Michael Schumacher for and on behalf of Benetton Formula Ltd.

  One of the first, hastily arranged publicity shots at Monza – so hasty, in fact, that Michael is sitting in Nelson’s car.

  With Moreno gone, Alf meets his new driver and talks him through the initial settings of the B191 at Monza.

  Then down to business. Although this was his first race with Benetton, Schumacher already has the determined look of a future World Champion.

  Regardless that the event was Nelson’s 200th Grand Prix, the entire focus of the picture centres on the chap standing behind Flavio: Mr Bill Harris, a man for whom champagne was invented.

  While delving through the LAT archives, I came across this beautiful forgotten picture of Ayrton Senna in the McLaren in Canada, 1991, which I had to cut out of a long strip of other miscellaneous transparencies.

  The author helping Schumacher into the car prior to the shortest Grand Prix in history at Adelaide in 1991.

  Standing on the grid in the pouring rain in Adelaide.

  Flavio congratulated Nelson immediately after the race in Canada in 1991. Notice how simple and uncluttered the steering wheels were before the explosion of instrumentation in the mid-nineties.

  The shortest race gets under way…

  … and is shortly stopped. The McLaren mechanics try to shield one of their cars from the driving rain while they inspect the engines prior to the restart, which never came.

  Martin Brundle at the Montreal 1992 race that he so nearly won.

  The author helping Brundle out of the car at Spa in what turned into another wet weekend in 1992.

  Martin Brundle explains to his bright, talented and patient engineer, Pat Fry, that the B192 feels ‘a bit pointy’ or ‘wishy-washy’, even ‘a bit speedboaty’. They usually managed to sort the problems out.

  Exactly one year after his Grand Prix debut, Michael
Schumacher took his maiden victory at Spa, 1992.

  Martin Brundle was replaced by Riccardo Patrese at the conclusion of the 1992 season. Both men have now retired from Formula One.

  Schumacher’s expression says it all at Estoril, 1993, his second career win.

  Nigel Stepney in the Ferrari pits talking to Gerhard Berger at Estoril 1993. Nigel is the first English chief mechanic to work for the legendary Italian team.