09/03/2002
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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Last year I was in Indianapolis for the Grand Prix and one night who did I see in a bar, but Turk Thrust, fabled Hollywood script-doctor and sometime consultant to FOSU. He was alone, sipping what a appeared to be a fruit salad in a sea of crême de menthe, Pernod and Pusser's Rum, with just the slightest hint of egg-nog, no more than two measures. It was surmounted by a plastic mermaid holding an umbrella - very tasteful and so Turk. I introduced myself.
"Love your work, Mark," said Turk graciously, "especially that one with the gamekeeper and all the words."
We got talking, I bought him another Turk's Tingletang, "Cocktail I invented," he said, "so far as I know it's exclusive to the places I drink. I like exclusive, select. Barman, go easy on the lychees, allow the mango space to breath."
Turned out that Turk and Marcia White, celebrity lawyer, were no longer an item. "Great girl," he conceded, "and a very great lawyer, but she kinda fell apart when she realised how much the law firm representing Tom Walkinshaw was making. Nothing was the same after that. Who can blame her?
"Marcia, if you're still there, if you haven't been rubbed out by very naughty people, I want you to know that I miss you." Turk turned to me, wiped a manly tear from his eye and whispered, "I think I have just established an alibi. Continue talking."
We talked. Turk had spent the afternoon discussing sun-beds with Flavio and talking man-management with Niki. He wouldn't give surnames, but he tapped his nose and winked. I am not suggesting that Turk has had facial surgery but, when he winked, his nipples moved to his cheeks.
The big question was whether he'd recently had an input to FOSU. "Does it look like it?" He snapped, biting the head off his mermaid. "Do you think that Michael would have the Championship sewn up by now if I'd had my way?
"Look at last year. Mika comes here two points in the lead of the Championship, and is in second place in the race. I'd done my job, while Mika is second, Michael is just two points ahead, and only two races to go. Then Mika's engine goes. I can't stop that happening. I can make that happen, but I can't stop it happening."
After another Turk's Tingletang, the great man opened up. "The big problem is how to control the time between Suzuka and Melbourne. How do you keep interest going? I'll tell you how. You start by having a driver with a secure contract suddenly dropped."
"Like Michael Schumacher?" I ventured.
Turk's eyes glazed over. "That would be the three-minute mile of the game," he said, "but that's Mission Impossible. Ferrari once laid off Prost, though. Come to think of it, so did Renault. And didn't he move from France to Switzerland because of all the hate mail? Isn't Michael getting stick from the future neighbours in Switzerland?" Turk scribbled a note on a bar mat, and ate the beer mat.
"Who was the first to have his drive confirmed? Jos Verstappen, back in June. We'll drop Jos. Shame, great charger, but that's a good move - plenty of public sympathy. Holland is not a big country, so no huge outrage. Besides, the Dutch all ride bicycles and most of them are too stoned to notice."
Turk warmed to his theme. "We'd have a financial crisis. Formula One isn't fuelled by gas, it's fuelled by money. Money always grabs people's interest. Nobody actually needs motor racing, but we all need clam shells. We'd add sponsorship worries and the attacks on New York and Washington make that inevitable.
"What is the biggest pot of gold? SLEC and the sale of the TV rights. We'd run with that. Kirch faces bankruptcy, Bernie buys back the rights for a fraction of what he sold them for and then he brings the manufacturers on his side by cutting them in. It's Dynasty without the padded shoulders.
"Meanwhile, we'd run an on-off story about the immediate collapse of a team. Any team will do but, to be realistic, it's got to be Prost. We can't do it to Minardi, because they are Good Guys. Everyone loves Minardi.
"Renault's bought Benetton, so the French are represented to the hilt. Where is Alain going to get money in France? His USP, unique selling point, has gone.
"There's Jaguar, of course, owned by Ford. Ford is in deep trouble over all the deaths in its Explorer model, one of those great lumps of four-wheel-drive lard beloved by daft tarts on the school run. Do you realise how many billions are going to be lost through that? More than Ford paid for Jaguar in the first place.
"It's hard to justify Formula One when the whole empire is under attack. Why, it would be like Adolf Hitler diverting resources from the Panzer generals just to murder people he didn't like.
"Niki Lauda, there's one crazy guy. Mr Cuddly, or what? Jaguar had a crap car this year, think they'll have a brilliant one in 2002? Hey, I'm not needed on that story, it will take care of itself. Lauda and Irvine will make sure of that, Mr Diplomacy and Mr Reticence in the same team. I love it.
"Here's a thought. Niki won more Grands Prix than the entire 2002 field, not counting Michael. Could we get him in a car again? That could be an opening for me. Naw, he'd never do it, or would he?"
Turk went on. Peter Sauber would discover another complete unknown, he mused. "Who?" I asked.
"The whole point about being a complete unknown is that the guy will be so obscure that you've never heard of him unless you follow some series nobody's heard of. Preferably, he will be aged twelve."
According to Turk, Max Mosley would be persuaded to issue more controversial statements which would kick open the door of speculation, "Not that Max needs much persuasion," Turk said, "he just needs the right bananas fed to his cage."
Minardi, now owned by an Australian, could do with an Oz driver, said Turk. He made a note to call Jack Brabham. "Alan Jones is over the hill," he confided, "Brabham is the coming man. There are loads of Brabhams. Why there are Brabhams who were winning World Championship before Eddie first opened his mouth and he came into the world with a quote fully formed. He said, "Waaaaaaa! Brilliant, he's never improved on that."
Technical Directors would have to be shifted around, Turk opined. "Gardening Leave makes life really exciting, except for the weeds. Remember what happened when Adrian Newey left Williams to go to McLaren? Of course, people forget the Mercedes/Ilmor input. People respond to people, not to multinationals.
"People just loved the idea of little, slap-head, Adrian spending his time rooting out the dandelions when he could have been thinking of the next McLaren. Not that he ever did. He was on Gardening Leave.
"Who is any driver's main rival? His team-mate, the guy who, he claims at the pre-season press launch he loves as though he were his long-lost identical twin. Which team is Jaguar's greatest rival? Arrows ? because it will go into 2002 with the same engines as Jaguar. Who is Jordan's main enemy? BAR, that's who, because both teams use Honda engines.
"Craig Pollock has to be dumped by BAR," said Turk, firmly. "I've nothing against the guy, he's very able, but he has to go because of all the rumours we can fix to his next move. He's a mover and shaker. We could tie him into everything.
"Craig gets ditched and we can have Jacques agonising, so we can run 'Will he? Won't he?' stories. Let's not forget that Jacques is the only guy on the grid, apart from Michael, who has won a World Championship. Jacques set pole, and led, his first Grand Prix. He even controls the colour of his hair, and that is something I really admire in a man.
"Tell you what. Inside the industry, the biggest story would be if Rick Gorne left Reynard again and this time....no, it would be like Ferrari sacking Michael...but imagine if Rick went to work for..." at this point, Turk took a deep breath. "Imagine if Rick went to work for Lola."
Turk was so overcome by his own audacity that he fell off his bar stool. From his horizontal position on the floor, between laughter, Turk said, "No, not even I, but hey, what a challenge. Why do I mark myself down? I am invincible."
"What about next season?" I asked.
Turk wiped a chunk of fruit from his chin, was it papya? "Australia is the key," Turk said, regaining his stool, "got to get all the excitement going there. Disaster in qualifying would be good. A driver fails to make the 107% rule, but is allowed in. Got to be someone from the Pacific Rim to get the real-time television audience.
"Alex Yoong would surprise nobody, though he is surely the most talented driver ever to appear with a large bag of gold from Malaysia, I hasten to add. Imagine young Sato in that position, but you can't, because he is in a Jordan. Jordan Grand Prix is not a bunch of tossers. How could Jordan fail to give a huge asset a car in which he can qualify? I'll have to think through that one nearer to day. Get back to you on that one.
"Wet-dry qualifying is always good, but there's only one person who can arrange that and he and I are not talking right now. I'm yesterday's man. Last year, Michael was allowed to win nine Formula One races. If he keeps going at this rate, he might even catch Jim Clark's twelve F1 wins in 1963.
"True, only seven of them were World Championship races, but even seven from ten is better than nine from seventeen or did my teach of Math waste her time? She did not, but a brainless headline beats history every time.
"Since you put it to me, wet-dry qualifying is good. Throws everything into the blender. Imagine, if Toyota scored a point on its debut, but it can't and that's that. Toyota cannot win a point first time out, not unless steps are taken, it just ain't natural.
"Minardi scoring a point, two points, would be good, everyone loves a plucky trier, but that's never going to happen. An Australian driver scoring points in Australia while driving a Minardi...even I cannot allow myself to dream of such a thing, unless, unless, there was a major shunt at the start which wiped out half the field.
"How to do that? Put two team-mates on the front row. The weaker one sets pole and therefore weaves all over the place to prove that he has testosterone. Juan Pablo and Ralf would be good, or DC and Kimi. Rubens and Michael? Don't be silly, Rubens is never going to out-qualify Michael.
"We need a really good pre-race scandal. What if a team did go bust and it had a slice of the TV money? Can you imagine the ferocity of the bees over the honey pot?
"Tell you something else. A change in the rules which has not received a lot of attention is that which controls pit-to-car telemetry. We speak here of computer communication and therefore we may also speak of hackers. What if a team employed a hacker who could get into the software of a team which had really upset it?
"I have reason to believe that it happened at least once in the 1980s.
"Today, you don't need mechanics to start a car, you need scientists. What if, for the first time in Formula One history, there was a team on the grid which couldn't get its cars even started?
"Silly of me to even raise the subject, it could never happen, except for the fact that if you can imagine a possibility, you can be sure that it has occurred to someone else. Imagine the most bizarre sex scenario you can, the one involving the goat, the honey and the chains. You can imagine it? Someone has already paid money to do it, and passed on tips to their friends.
"Imagine that if one team had really pissed-off another team and it was hobbled to such an extent that it could not even start its cars?"
At that point Turk's cellphone rang. It gave a tinny rendition of 'Greensleeves', like an ice cream van. Turk answered, and said, "Yes sir. I have a few ideas, sir. Just been running some of them through my head, sir." He covered his hand over the phone and hissed: "Get out at once, through the back. Go through the kitchen. Now. Now, damn you, now!"
As I ran out, I heard tyres as cars screeched to a halt. I was over the nearest wall out the back. Was that noise the sound of a gun, or merely the back-fire of an old Ford?
I did not turn back to find out, I kept running. I hope the bartender made it, but has forgotten the recipe for Turk's Tingletang. I hear that Turk is okay and has employment. Story on the street is that Turk is nursing a script for a movie starring Russell Crowe in which Crowe is not a sad bastard incapable of a smile.
Russell Crowe smiles on film? Turk has his work cut out if he is to achieve that. Formula One must be easy by comparison, not that Turk will ever again be employed in Formula One.
Who knows? I keep running.