Street Fighting Men

Normally, a race at a circuit where overtaking is all but impossible is hardly a mouth-watering prospect. I wasn’t exactly eagerly awaiting the Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona last weekend. Yes, I was hoping that the new rules – the introduction of KERS, for example, might make it a little less processional. But not expecting much. Which was for the best, as it would appear that the main effect of KERS is to prevent overtaking (see Massa and Vettel or Hamilton and Vettel in Bahrain) rather than to promote it. Writing ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend, I already know that, barring an act of god, on track passes are out of the question, at least after the cars have rounded the Mirabeau on lap one. Yet, in spite of that, it’s a race I look forward to, one I’d be sad to see leave the calendar, no matter how much of an anachronism it may now be.

Why? In part it’s simply the novelty of seeing brutally powerful racing cars being threaded along the narrow roads that wind through the immensely built-up Principality. In 25 years of following the sport, it’s still not entirely worn off. It’s no longer exactly picturesque. Yes, the harbour looks a little more impressive on TV than the docks at the Valencia street circuit which F1 visited for the first time last year, but densely packed tower blocks, whose sole purpose appears to be to maximise the ratio of tax exiles to square feet hve long ago replaced most of the Belle Époque French architecture which provided the charming backdrop to the races which took place there in the 50s and 60s.

More important than that, though, is that it’s a circuit where the driver can make more of a difference than perhaps anywhere else on the calendar. As Mark Hughes put it in Autosport last week, it’s a place where the art of driving a racing car on the limit can still count for more than the science of aerodynamics. Nelson Piquet might have compared it to riding a bicycle in your living room, but still, threading an 800BHP racing car round Casino Square and the Massanet is a stern test of a driver’s feel and nerve.

Partly because the races can be so processional, Saturday afternoon qualifying is never more crucial – the ability to wring a single lap on the absolute limit without going over it never counts for more.

It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that the race has been dominated by the acknowledged greats of their era. When I first started following the sport in the mid 1980s, Alain Prost was the generally acknowledged master of Monaco.

Already though, a young Brazilian by the name of Ayrton Senna was serving notice of his talents, coming remarkably close to winning the rain-shorted 1984 race in a Toleman Hart. Not, in all truth, a car which normally troubled the podium. Senna would go on to make the place his own, winning 6 times between 1987 and 1993 – the only gap in that record being the 1988 race, which he had absolutely dominated. He lapped nearly two seconds quicker than his team mate Prost in qualifying, and talked of experiencing something approaching a transcendental experience that year – of no longer consciously driving the car. Then he went off into the wall 12 laps from the end as a result of a trivial lapse of concentration, while leading by nearly a minute. Monaco is a harsh mistress that way.

Michael Schumacher, in turn, made the world stand up and pay attention when he outpaced Senna in the 1993 race before his Benetton expired around mid-distance, enabling Senna to beat Graham Hill’s all time record of 5 wins around the streets. Schumacher would go on to win the race 5 times himself and while, like Senna, he threw away wins through silly errors (crashing on the formation lap in the rain in 1998 for example…) the truth is that Schumacher was a devastating combination of the particular talents of Senna and Prost, it’s only a shame that Senna’s death in 1994 robbed us of further contests between the two men around the streets of Monaco. For many, it was Lewis Hamilton’s sheer pace at Monaco in 2007 and 2008 which confirmed the arrival of another of the sport’s outstanding talents. Writing on Friday afternoon, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see him on the podium come Sunday, and no matter how uncompetitive the Mclaren may be right now, I wouldn’t be completely taken aback if he’s spraying the champagne from the top step. Not the way I’d bet, but not beyond the bounds of possibility…

In some ways more fascinating is the way in which certain drivers not generally considered to be from the very top drawer have shown themselves capable of incredible feats at there. Alex Caffi is not a name which would figure prominently in any history of the sport, and yet in sundry Dallaras and Footworks, and even the awful 1987 Osella, the Italian driver could be relied upon to perform well round the streets of the Principality. In 1987, he got the Osella as high as 15^th on the grid and would go on to score points there both in the 1989 Dallara and the 1990 Footwork. A sign of a sadly overlooked, under-rated talent? On balance, probably not, although it’s always very hard to know for sure. If that were the case, he ought to have been quicker relative to his team mates elsewhere. More likely, his driving style just happened to gel with the tight, low-speed confines of the circuit – he ran very quickly at Phoenix in 1989 too, only to be run off the road by his (lapped) team mate. Perhaps the absolute requirement for concentration forced him to focus in a way that other circuits did not.

The same was surely even truer of his compatriot Stefano Modena. The wealthy Italian had starred in F3000 in 1987, but never entirely succeeded in convincing the F1 world of his talents. In his first race, for Brabham in Australia that year, he retired before half distance, suffering from exhaustion. As Keke Rosberg observed at the time, a driver who gave up so easily was unlikely ever to make it to the top of a sport as fiercely competitive as F1.

And yet, the man always starred at Monaco, a circuit as demanding as they come. He scored his only podium finish there with the temporarily reanimated Brabham team in 1989, and stuck his unwieldy Tyrrell Honda on the front row two years later. The 1990 Tyrrell 019 might have been a fantastically balanced car, but the consensus is that it’s successor, the 020 was ruined by the overweight Honda V10 engine it ran, and the results seem to bear this out –other than at Monaco, the car was never near the front. A possible career-best 2^nd place slipped through his hands when the Honda engine went bang at around half distance.

Modena, I think, was a classic example of a driver who had the natural talent, the fundamental car control to be a great Grand Prix driver, but who lacked something, perhaps the motivation, perhaps the discipline, perhaps the ability to consistently unlock that talent. You could argue that he simply never got himself into a top car, but to my mind, he never quite did enough to suggest he was deserving of a ride in one of the top teams. As Martina Navratilova once observed after one of her countless Wimbledon victories, “What matters”, she said, “isn’t how well you play when you’re playing well. What matters is how well you play when you’re playing badly.” When Modena was good, he was very good indeed, but when he was bad....

In recent years, perhaps the standout ‘Monaco specialist’ has been another Italian, Jarno Trulli. The comparison is not entirely apt, Trulli is a much more consistent front-running driver than either Modena or Caffi ever were, and, I think, not only because he has more often had the car with which to do the job. Nonetheless, his standout performances have come at Monte Carlo – most notably his sole win, in 2004, in a car that was not truly the equal of, say, the Ferraris or perhaps even the Williams and against no less a team mate than Fernando Alonso. Why? It’s hard to say – his qualifying pace is certainly a help.

Again, though, I wonder if it comes down to the fact that the circuit rewards concentration and precision – something which Trulli’s one lap abilities indicate he has in spades when the occasion requires.

So, anachronism it may be, and certainly it never produces much in the way of racing - in the wheel-to-wheel sense, as opposed to Max Mosley's favoured "high speed chess", but as a test of a driver's art, there's nothing and nowhere quite like it.

Green shoots of recovery?

In the early 1990s, there was an economic recession in Britain.  The
people, as they are wont to do when things go wrong, blamed the government. Stuck for any more sensible answer, the government of the time chose at first simply to deny that there was a recession at all. When this line became
untenable in the face of overwhelming evidence, they instead began to
tell us that the corner had been turned, and that we were now enjoying the "green shoots of recovery". Spring, one might
say, was a long time coming, and the phrase became something of a
running joke.

It was a strangely comic little episode that came back to me with the
beginning of the 2007 World Rally Championship this weekend. ISC, who
own the rights to the series, have spent a lot of time denying that
there is anything wrong whatsoever with the World Rally Championship.
After a season in which 15 of the 16 wins were shared between just 2
drivers, and only 2 full works teams were involved, that has become a
rather hard line to maintain. So now we are hearing that the worst is
over, and that the 2007 season will be an altogether more close fought
affair.

Well, maybe... There are, however, still only three full manufacturer
teams this year. Citroen are back as a full works team, with their new
C4. In a sense, they were never really away, as there was little doubt
that they were pulling a lot of the strings for Kronos last year, in an
effort to keep Sebastien Loeb from heading off elsewhere in search of a
competitive ride. Ford, and Subaru, of course, are still around.
However, just as last year, each of those three teams has only one
really established star driver. Sebastien Loeb, with his three straight
titles, needs no introduction. The same can be said of former champions,
Marcus Gronholm and Petter Solberg. But their number two
drivers? Of those, only Mikko Hirvonen has ever actually won a round of
the championship - and even then only because Loeb missed Rally
Australia last year, and Gronholm crashed out. Dani Sordo, over at
Citroen, is to my mind ultimately a more promising prospect than
Hirvonen, having won
the Junior WRC two years ago, but has only ever really impressed on
tarmac. Chris Atkinson strikes me as a rather eccentric choice for
Subaru, but the team have stuck with him for another year. He's proved
quick from time to time, but has been crash-prone to an extent that even

a young Colin McRae would have struggled to match.

Having said that, on the evidence of the Monte this year, perhaps the
understudies will be a little closer to their illustrious team mates
this year. I've never been especially enthusiastic about Mikko Hirvonen,

and have heard stories that he only got the drive at Ford because he
came with a truckload of cash, but he seemed nearer to Gronholm's pace
than was the case last year. Dani Sordo appeared to give an
admittedly below-par Loeb a run for his money at the front, although
whether either driver was really being allowed to fight is an open
question. Such was Citroen's margin of superiority in the Ardeche last
weekend, it is hard to know whether we saw anything more than a
demonstration run from the two drivers. In the end, it was Atkinson who
did best of the
trio, beating Petter Solberg fair and square, and mixing it with the
faster Ford of
Hirvonen into the bargain. For once, he didn't fall off the road and
finished a very creditable 4th, equalling his best finish of last year.

All the same, there are an awful lot of young, seemingly talented rally
drivers who might be more obvious candidates for the number 2 drives.
Its a
shame that third cars have become so uncommon over the last couple of
seasons, thanks to changes in the way manufacturer points are scored.
Were they not, surely somebody would be tempted to give Gigi Galli a
drive, for example. Its nice to see Jari-Matti Latvala getting a
full-time ride in the second-string Stobart Ford team, but, having seen
him in
action in the British championship from time to time, I can't help
feeling he's worthy of a full works seat. Jan Kopecky did a good job of
hustling the two year old Skoda Fabia into the points last weekend, and
is perhaps worthy of better equipment. All the same, the most striking
thing about
the Monte Carlo entry list is the number of really promising drivers
absent from it. Such is the lack of full works teams that there was no
place on it, for instance, for Francois Duval, Daniel Carlson and Janne
Tuohino. And that's to say nothing of the guys who have impressed in the
JWRC over the pastcouple of years, like Kris Meeke, Per-Gunnar Anderson,
Guy Wilks and Patrick Sandell. The trouble these drivers have is that,
to a much greater extent than is the case in circuit racing, it takes
time to become competitive at the top level in rally driving. Even the
supernaturally talented - the likes of Sebastien Loeb
and Petter Solberg, took a few seasons to find their feet before
launching a championship bid. Loeb was instantly quick on tarmac, but
took time to find real pace on tarmac. To some extent, the reverse was
true of Petter Solberg, though it is fair to say he took longer to make
an impact anyway. Currently, the big works teams (Citroen aside) seem
happier to run a reasonably experienced journeyman in their number two
seat than to take their chances with a less-than-mature talent.

So is the World Championship in any better state than last year? Well, I

suppose Jari-Matti Latvala's place at Stobart is worth something, and
Sordo will be more of a threat now he has a season's experience to draw
on, but overall, it still looks pretty weak. On one crude measure things
have improved. Last year, under the old SupeRally rules,
Loeb dropped five minutes and still finished second. Add a five minute
penalty to his winning time this year, and he wouldn't even have made
the points.

Overall, though, the lack of strength in depth in the series
is at its worst since the late eighties, after the abolition of Group B,

when Lancia basically had the sport to themselves for a few years. That
time round, it was understandable. Group B had been cancelled suddenly,
and its proposed replacement, Group S, had gone the same way, with the
formula that replaced it - Group A, looking decidedly unexciting by
comparison. It was not surprising that manufacturers were reluctant to
commit to the sport with such uncertainty about the future rules. This
time round, there is no such easy explanation.

The WRC rules have been around for the best part of a decade, there is
no need to go to the trouble of producing 5000 road cars, as used to be
the case, and yet still the manufacturers stay away.  Other than the
anticipated entry of Suzuki into the series later in the year, there is
little sign that any of this is going to change in the immediate future
either.  Green shoots of recovery?  I suspect we could be a long time
waiting for the flowers to bloom.