Pironi

by David Sedgwick

  Seventeen

  In Villeneuve’s shadow

  On the eve of the 1981 Formula 1 season there was reason to be optimistic. Ferrari had arguably the strongest driver line-up in the whole field – perhaps the squad’s strongest ever – added to which the V6 engine was producing power readings at least the equal, if not better than those of the turbocharging kings Renault.

  When racing began however, the 126C’s teething problems became all too apparent. After his fabulous 1980 performance, Brazil proved to be a race to forget for Didier and his new team. Plagued by poor handling, both cars went off the road in practice. Didier went off road again on Saturday, forcing him to use the down-on-power spare car. The Ferraris lined up in seventh and 17th places on the grid, Didier a second off the pace of his team-mate. His race would end in a collision with Prost. Unstable, unpredictable, the 126C t-boned the Renault as it came up to put a lap on the Ferrari. 1981 in a nutshell: power to spare, but bolted to a chassis sometimes described as ‘evil’.

  Didier never would manage to tame this awful machine. With a background in racing snowmobiles – machines that require bending to the will – Gilles would fare much better in his attempts to tame the unwieldy Ferrari.

  ‘That 126C really was a truly rubbish car,’ recalls Ferrari assistant team manager Dario Calzavara. ‘Only Gilles could have succeeded with that car. It was terrible. Didier was a different type of driver, used to more finesse while Gilles would simply drive through a problem.’ Calzavara, who joined the Scuderia in January 1981, has fond memories of the daredevil pairing. ‘Although they had different temperaments, they got on very well together, at least initially. I might be alone in this opinion, but for me, Didier and Gilles were evenly matched in terms of ability as well. Didier was a very quick guy. He just happened to have all of the bad luck in the team during 1981.’

  Fortunes briefly improved at San Marino, a home race for Ferrari. Taking advantage of increased turbo boost, Villeneuve took a clear pole position, but not without cost. As Ferrari number 27 streaked over the line, the V6 engine was already smoking, unable almost to cope with its own power. ‘I hate to think how much that lap cost,’ drily remarked Alan Jones. Didier meanwhile qualified sixth. Ferrari were cautiously optimistic.

  On a bleak afternoon in Emilia-Romagna, Didier made a lightning start to the race, slotting into second place behind Villeneuve. Ferrari were running 1-2! An entire nation held its breath. For the first dozen or so laps, the two red cars edged away from the field, Gilles sliding his 126C into the corners in his own inimitable style. Less spectacular, Didier duly followed, chipping away into his team-mate’s lead by a few tenths each lap. Indeed, when the leading Ferrari dived into the pits for slicks on lap 15, the number 28 Ferrari had closed to within a couple of seconds of the French Canadian ace. Didier now led his first race in red. However, there was a problem: Brabham, Arrows and Williams. As the race settled down, rival cars started to handle much better than the Ferrari. Didier clung on for 30 laps. Ultimately, bereft of grip, he was powerless to stop first Piquet, then Patrese, Reutemann and Rebaque getting past. Reaction to his fifth-place finish in the Italian media was, however, positive. The turbocharged 126C had shown potential.

  Back to back wins by Villeneuve in Monaco and Spain seemed to suggest that Ferrari were indeed back in play, but looks can be deceptive. Ferrari had in fact stolen both wins. Monte Carlo had been inherited after Jones and Piquet had clashed. While Gilles was earning the praise of the paddock for his heroics – and rightly so – Didier was forced to take a back seat. Fighting against the 126C, he had crashed three times in practice at Monte Carlo. While Gilles had grabbed a place on the front row – a crucial factor in his subsequent victory – Didier had been unable to set a representative time, lining up way back in 17th place on the grid, as good as the kiss of death at Monaco. Under the circumstances, a fourth-place finish round the streets of the Principality was a decent result.

  At the Spanish race, Gilles had used the fearsome power of the turbo engine to keep a queue of cars behind him for virtually the whole race. Never had track position counted for so much. Didier, meanwhile, had suffered no fewer than three turbo failures. A desultory weekend culminated in a lowly 15th-place finish, some four laps behind the winner. Tough times for the young Parisian.

  If Didier envied his team-mate his success, he never showed it. Besides, Villeneuve was a motor racing phenomenon. Competing against the great French Canadian was clearly going to test his abilities, a challenge he professed to relish: ‘We will each make our own races,’ Didier had said prior to joining the team. ‘Racing with a fast driver like Gilles will be a further incentive for me to go faster.’

  During the Monaco weekend, Didier had agreed to take part in an experiment conducted by Henri Mondor University Hospital. Doctors found some wild, though not unexpected variations in the driver’s heartbeat: a resting rate of 60–70 beats per minute rocketed to over 200 during certain parts of the race, namely at the start and while completing overtaking manoeuvres. The researchers also noted some interesting spikes and falls in between: peaks occurred when the driver changed into gloves and helmet and at the green light signalling the start of the race. Cocooned in the Ferrari cockpit prior to the off, sealed off from the pandemonium around him, Didier’s heart-rate returned to normal, until that is the engine fired up whereupon another peak was recorded. On catching sight of an attractive girl hanging around the pits, yet another spike was recorded!

  If Didier wished himself back at Ligier during these troubling times, he could hardly have been blamed. Laffite’s pole and runner’s-up spot at the Spanish race marked the start of a rich vein of form for his old friends at Vichy. Wins at Austria and Canada would bring Jacques right back into world championship contention. In contrast, Didier’s maiden Ferrari season would yield not a single podium.

  ‘Is it possible,’ asked Didier as much to himself as to anyone else, ‘that I am not able to drive like I used to?’ It was not easy, listening to the plaudits that came the way of his team-mate following these sensational Monaco and Spanish wins. For the first time in his career, the French driver was on the back foot, up against a man imbued with an abundance of natural talent. ‘It is probably a period of bad luck that I will try to overcome and you will see that I will succeed sooner or later to climb the top step of the podium.’

  Didier endured mixed emotions at the French Grand Prix. Fifth place in the race, albeit a lap down on Prost’s victorious Renault, followed an incident on Saturday night when thieves broke into his 308, ripping out the car’s radio necessitating a costly repair bill.

  A welcome diversion from this less than satisfactory season occurred in the run up to July’s British Grand Prix. Some years previous, it transpired, Louis Dolhem had fathered a third child. This incomparable man had subsequently contrived to live two separate lives. As his two sons had been growing up, the gallant’s wanderlust had led him further away from the castle into the arms of Daniele, an attractive younger woman with whom he would conduct a relationship lasting many years. Theirs was a love story however that would not end happily. When Daniele had given birth to a daughter in 1964, Louis had been torn in half. The businessman loved Daniele and dotted upon the young girl they would christen Laurence, but from whose presence he would ultimately be banished. That summer, Didier was astonished to discover the existence of his half-sister and was naturally curious to meet this ‘new’ member of the family. Following Friday practice on the eve of the British Grand Prix, he thus dialled a telephone number, which connected him to a house in Brighton, a seaside town situated on the south coast of England. The call was answered by Laurence, an attractive student staying in the UK with the aim of improving her language skills. Brother and sister spoke into the small hours of the morning.

  ‘We understood one another immediately,’ recalls Laurence. ‘It was just so easy talking to him. We only stopped when we realised how late it was!’ Growing up she had followed her brother’s sporting achie
vements from a distance. No more. Before parting that night, Didier arranged for his sister to come to Silverstone the next day as a guest of Ferrari. It was a nervous but excited French student who set out from Brighton that summer morning. Didier’s personal assistant met her in London, and thence chaperoned her back to the Northamptonshire circuit.

  ‘Just as I feared,’ said Didier, breaking into a wide smile upon the entrance of his sister into the Ferrari trailer. In a scene straight out of Shakespeare, long-lost brother and sister stared at one another. The family resemblance was striking. The young girl and racing driver shared many of the same physical characteristics of the Dolhem clan. Ice broken, it was laughter all the way. Laurence spent a fascinating day at her famous brother’s side that July weekend. At her brother’s invitation she joined him for an extended stay at his Geneva home. There was a lot of catching up to do.

  On the racetrack, Silverstone proved to be the first race weekend that Didier could claim to have had the upper hand over his highly regarded team-mate in 1981. A power circuit, the Ferrari V6 really came into its own on the Northamptonshire track’s long, fast straights, but not enough to trouble the Renaults of Prost and Arnoux, which wrapped up the front row of the grid. With Laurence looking on, Didier’s fourth place on the grid saw him handily placed. When the race got underway, however, both Ferraris were soon going backwards, unable to hold back the Brabhams, Williamses and even the McLarens. Brute speed it seemed was not enough in itself to conquer the British track. It was the story of a season: the fast-starting Ferrari a sitting duck as the better-balanced cars of Piquet, Jones, Reutemann and co, hit their stride. Didier’s race ended before halfway with a smoking turbo. Another blank.

  Undeniably, Ferrari had a very powerful car on their hands. The problem was handling; the 126C handled like a shopping trolley. Thanks to their turbo power, lightning starts often propelled Didier and Gilles to the front of the field, but as the races wore on, the red cars would invariably fall into the clutches of the less powerful, but better-balanced British cars.

  Ferrari’s season hit a plateau at Zeltweg, venue for the Austrian Grand Prix. Didier and Gilles were way off the pace. Mauro Forghieri, chief designer and the architect responsible for Niki Lauda’s huge success just a few years earlier, was philosophical: ‘We have chosen a difficult road, that of the turbo, and now we are paying the consequences as always when you enter in unknown fields. I am convinced, however, we will have better times already by the end of the season.’

  After pulling a muscle in his back frolicking in the powerboat, Didier spent an uncomfortable couple of hours in Austria en route to a ninth-place finish. As ever, the Frenchman spent most of his race fending off quicker cars. And as ever with Didier, there was no quarter given on track: ‘Someone accused me of defending with too much aggression, but I am a Ferrari driver and I cannot give in without a fight.’ In agony throughout the 53-lap race, Didier refused to give up his place easily, be it first or tenth place. Driving on pure adrenaline in the early laps, he clung to third place with tenacity, holding back a train of cars comprising eventual winner Laffite as well as Piquet, Jones and Reutemann. ‘He is a born winner,’ Catherine Bleynie had told her Italian interviewer earlier in the year. ‘He just will not accept defeat.’ The lady knew her man.

  Later in the race, Ferrari number 28 even came under attack from Nigel Mansell’s Lotus, Watson’s McLaren and others. ‘Every time we see a Ferrari,’ remarked James Hunt in his role as television pundit, ‘there’s a huge queue behind it.’

  When the acclaimed aerodynamicist Dr Harvey Postlethwaite joined the team in late summer, the overriding feeling at Ferrari was one of enormous relief. Didier had played his part in the Englishman’s appointment, urging Enzo Ferrari to allow a ‘foreigner’ to enter the inner sanctum. Too late to affect the current car, Postlethwaite’s appointment augured well for 1982.

  As much as the team from Maranello might have wished it, 1981 was not yet over. The Italian Grand Prix followed a race to forget in Holland. If Ferrari were going to pull out something special, what better place than here on the Autodromo Monza, spiritual home of Italian motor racing?

  In qualifying, a huge shunt left Didier unhurt and seemingly unmoved: ‘I entered the second Lesmo curve in fourth gear, travelling between 220 and 240 kilometres per hour,’ recalled the driver. ‘Suddenly the car veered off on a tangent and ended up against a guardrail.’ This characteristically cool description did not tell half the tale. The impact crushed the left side of the car. His 126C a write-off, only by a miracle had Didier escaped serious injury. Human or mechanical error? The jury was out.

  Two seconds short of Arnoux’s qualifying pace, the Ferraris lined up eighth and ninth on the grid. Despite making a customary rocket start into second place at the end of the first lap, on current form, it would be only a matter of time before Didier started to go backwards. A mobile chicane, Reutemann, Laffite and Arnoux quickly stacked up behind the number 28 car. Only the awesome power of the V6 kept the Frenchman ahead; 1981 in a nutshell. Renault, Ligier, Williams, Brabham – the team from Maranello would never quite get on terms with F1’s leaders in 1981. At times, the red cars struggled to keep pace with Lotus, Alfa Romeo and McLaren. Indeed, Didier’s fifth place at the flag arguably flattered the team’s true performance. The rather sobering fact was that his 126C had finished over 90 seconds down on the winning turbocharged Renault.

  1982 could not come quickly enough. When quizzed about the team’s very visible woes, Didier’s resolve never once wavered. Ferrari, he insisted, were on the right track. ‘I am super happy with my personal situation,’ he told Auto Hebdo halfway through the year. ‘Technically, I have no concerns for the team. She will be world champion very soon.’ He also praised the team’s V6 turbo, labelling it ‘the best engine in F1’.

  Just days after the Italian Grand Prix, Ferrari called a press conference. Piqued by what it called ‘recurring’ and ‘unsubstantiated’ rumours which had suggested Didier was on the move to Williams, his place in the team to be taken by Elio de Angelis, the team officially confirmed Pironi and Villenueve as its drivers for 1982.

  It had been a difficult year. Though he had somehow managed to get the unwieldy 126C in the lead at Belgium and San Marino, Villeneuve’s sensational Monte Carlo and Jarama wins had put those efforts somewhat in the shade. After establishing himself as one of the world’s fastest drivers with Ligier in 1980, this first year with Ferrari – though not without promise – had been a disappointment. Imola, Zolder, Silverstone, Hockenheim and Monza provided enough evidence to suggest that if things went his way, Didier could indeed compete with the incomparable Canadian. The key word was if. Significantly, the Parisian had endured the lion’s share of Ferrari’s misfortune, especially with the turbo engine, which demonstrated such worrying fragility in Didier’s hands that the driver had sought the advice of the team’s technicians in the hope of adapting his style. Verdict: plain bad luck.

  However, Didier’s detractors had ammunition. With a haul of 25 points compared to the nine of his team-mate, Gilles had won the internal Ferrari battle, at least statistically. Even so, the long-term future of the team’s senior driver had not been entirely concluded. Villeneuve was growing frustrated. Although he had re-signed for the Scuderia in May, Ron Dennis and Frank Williams had not given up hope of one day securing the services of arguably the sport’s biggest superstar. Would Gilles be driving a Ferrari beyond 1982? There had even been talk of an F1 venture of his own – Team Villeneuve.

  Didier, on the other hand, had no such concerns as regards his own future: ‘I will not drive for a team other than Ferrari, world champion or not,’ he declared. ‘If I survive F1, I will probably finish within three years, like [James] Hunt.’27 He also revealed his admiration for Enzo Ferrari, whom he referred to as a ‘grand gentleman’, a man in whose presence he confessed to sometimes finding himself ‘lost for words’. In Ferrari, he had found his spiritual and material home. Working with Forghieri had been a re
velation too. As for Gilles, predictions of friction between the two ‘peacocks’ had been wide of the mark. The white-knuckle Nice–Modena rides continued throughout the year and would do so into the new year.

  Yes, 1981 had been difficult, but Didier felt very much at home in the Italian squad. With Harvey Postlethwaite now on board and the fearsome V6 turbo arguably the most powerful power plant in the sport, 1982, he instinctively felt, would see the team take its rightful place at the top of the F1 summit.

  If he could win the 1982 world title, might he not quit in the manner of Stewart or Hunt, while at the very peak of his powers? It seemed more than likely.

  Eighteen

  President Pironi

  Enzo Ferrari leaned forwards on his desk: ‘Madam, do not think I want to take your son away from you, I do not.’ Imelda Pironi smiled. It would take quite a lot to take Didier away from her. ‘I wanted to assure you of this. My own son Dino was taken away from me by disease. Fate, you see. It can strike any time!’ Ferrari raised his hands upwards towards the heavens. Imelda felt a pang of sorrow for the old man.