24/07/2007
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
When I was in my late teens, I had a next door neighbour who was not much older than me, but he was tied down by a wife and baby, and with a career that had about as much potential as a chocolate kettle. We'll call him Clive, because his parents did. Clive would brag about all his marvellous exploits to impress the kid, me.
Clive claimed that he'd done some work for a guy who refused to pay him. This slight had to be addressed so Clive devised a cunning plan: he poured some sugar on the ground by the guy's car directly under the petrol filler.
The guy came out of his house, saw the sugar, had the car towed to a garage and everything stripped down. More than cash, he suffered inconvenience, and there was no evidence that anyone had even touched his car. Clive had his revenge, or so he claimed.
That story was told me nearly fifty years ago yet recently I recalled it for some reason. I cannot comment on a story involving white powder near a Ferrari prior to Monaco, but I can comment on a story told to me in 1959.
Clive hadn't actually done it, the story was an Urban Myth. The one thing that Clive was too dim to realise was that his story did not have a proper punch line. The guy should somehow have learned that some sugar was spilled on the ground and there was no actual sabotage to the car. Unless Clive had got in the punch line, all he had done was to be an irritant, he had not actually achieved revenge.
The line of white powder prior to Monaco seems to have slipped into the background in what some people insist on calling Stepneygate. We now have claim and counter-claim.
I have nothing to say about any of the claims, save for one thing and that is that the rumourmill has not been turning. This is the first big story I have encountered where everything is quiet. A usually reliable source (we will call him 'Crompo', I cannot give his actual name) rightly says, 'The silence is deafening.'
I was at the F1 test at Silverstone last month, I did not get a whiff of Stepneygate. Then it was the Goodwood Festival of Speed, hundreds of journos, and nobody was talking about it. On 18th July I was at the Press Day for the Goodwood Revival and nobody had a clue.
Normally you will hear theories. Most of those theories will prove to be wrong, but even those will make some sort of sense, at the time. What puzzles me in this case is the absence of any theory, but maybe that it is because it is hard to detect a motive.
Angelo Santini and Mauro Iaccoca, former employees of Ferrari, both convicted of industrial espionage, had a clear financial motive in selling Ferrari data to Toyota Motorsport. Their (suspended) gaol sentences may weaken the defence of former senior employees of Toyota Motorsport accused of buying and using the data. It is possible to imagine a motive for them to buy such data even if one's speculation proves to be wide of the mark.
In the present instance it is hard to even imagine a motive, you cannot build a theory on metaphorical quicksand. The really odd thing about Stepneygate is that the grapevine is silent.
When Toyota Motorsport was implicated in the theft of Ferrari data, there was a raid, carried out by German police on the instigation of an Italian prosecuting magistrate. It was a criminal offence. Individuals have been found guilty of crimes, yet I am not aware that the FIA has felt any need to be involved.
With Stepneygate, all action so far has been civil action which has yet to be resolved. The FIA has moved in even though there has been no conclusion to on-going civil disputes while Nigel Stepney himself has threatened action against Ferrari which might involve criminal charges. I am confused, I can say no more.
Max Mosley will never acknowledge the part he has played in all recent F1 scandals. Under his influence, the FIA has made it impossible for a really bright young engineer make his mark. The last one to follow the path trodden by Colin Chapman, John Cooper and Eric Broadley, was Adrian Reynard.
Adrian built an FF1600 car for his own use in 1973. He was able to build a substantial business and enter any formula he liked. Today he could not do that, most formulae below F1 are controlled and it was Max who did that.
The result is that most engineers are now employees. There was a time when you had a handful of designers whose names were linked to their cars and the performance of those cars. At Brabham, there was Ron Tauranac and then Gordon Murray. Colin Chapman shouldered the reputation of Lotus and even though he cheated in many aspects of his life there was never a hint of Chapman cheating in motor racing. There was Eric Broadley at Lola and Patrick Head at Williams. There were names and reputations associated with cars.
Even twenty years ago, there were rarely more than two or three designers per Formula One team and many had built cars for themselves. At a conservative estimate, there are 2,500 people involved in F1 design today and hardly any of them began by building a special with which to go racing.
Instead of the dedicated few, we have thousands of engineers tied to a pay cheque, not to anything they can achieve as individuals. If only one in a hundred of them can have their loyalty swayed by a better package, that means that there are two dozen of them where, once, there were none.
It was Max Mosley who decided that latter-day Adrian Reynards, Colin Chapmans and Eric Broadleys had no place in motor racing. Bernie changed the way Formula One did business, but it was the FIA which lost the plot.
At the Goodwood Revival Press Day (Wednesday, 18th July) I spoke to the Greatest Driver There Has Been. I said, 'Does Friday mean anything to you?' Sir God said that it did not, he would be at home, but why did I ask.
Friday, I said, was the 50th anniversary of the first British win in the World Championship, when Stirling took over the Vanwall of Tony Brooks and won.
Tony had not fully recovered from a shunt at Le Mans, few of us would like to be buried in sand with an Aston Martin on top of us. He had started the British GP (from the front row) knowing that he was not fit enough to be competitive over race distance. His aim was to keep a car circulating in case either Stirling or Stuart Lewis-Evans needed it.
It was the last time that there was a shared win in the World Championship and, I believe, it was the only time in the history of Grand Prix racing when a driver began with the intention of circulating a spare car. Tony Brooks, incidentally, was the last graduate to win a Grand Prix, which is a thought to bear in mind.
We had a good chat, Sir Stirling, John Pearson, and I. It will form the basis of my next piece which should coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Fangio's win at the Nurburgring which secured his fifth World Championship (24 wins from 51 starts).
I said to Stirling, 'ITV had you, fifty years on, to within a few days of that milestone win and all they could think about is what you think about Lewis Hamilton?' The great man shrugged, he's been there before.
The same witless bunch had Sir Jackie, three times a World Champion and founder of a Formula One team and could only think of the same question. Stewart GP became Jaguar, became Red Bull, I can think of a few questions to ask. It was announced that David Coulthard, a Stewart pupil, had signed with Red Bull for another year. Just in case anyone has forgotten, David is a Grand Prix winner and some of his drives this year have been very impressive.
Steve Rider, who is the ITV Anchor said that Grand Prix racing began at Silverstone. No, Anchor, the third RAC British Grand Prix held at Silverstone was the first event in the inaugural World Championship of 1950. There is no significance in that apart from the fact that it got the cross-channel crossing out of the way when cars had to be winched on to ships by crane.
Think of another of your favourite sports and imagine that an Anchor ignored most of its history. Our Anchor appears not to have heard of Birkin, Campari, Caracciola, Fagioli, Lang, Nuvolari, Rosemeyer and a raft of other heroes. You would not want to use a dentist who knows as little about teeth as Steve Rider knows about motor racing.
Mark Blundell, who seems to be a token representative of those with special needs, said that Lewis was bringing in younger viewers. Naturally, I would not expect someone like Blundell to be able to substantiate the claim, but I think that that every viable sport attracts young enthusiasts every year. If not, it dies. We in the trade call this, 'logic'. Even an old fart like me was once a young enthusiast.
These people are patronising you and me and the greatest sin in journalism is to patronise the reader/viewer/listener. I am one of many who hung on every word of the late Denis Jenkinson. His knowledge was amazing, but never once did he patronise us.
I do not think that most of the ITV team are employable, save in a supermarket car park, collecting trolleys. I cannot think of any other sport which employs people of this level. If you employed people of the level of James Allen, Mark Blundell, Louise Goodman, Steve Rider, and the producers, as the mainstay in any other business, you would be bust within a week.
I predicted that the media was building expectations about Lewis to impossible levels. I think that he is wonderful, I cannot recall the last time I saw a driver make a car dance like he does in the dry. When it rained, Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Michael Schumacher and Jean Alesi showed their class. Alesi ended his career with a single GP win, but all knew his quality.
On the day of the British GP, The Mail On Sunday, an influential national newspaper, showed just what depths the British media can plumb. Lewis had set pole, a strap-line called him 'The Silver Bullet'. A hack picked up on a throwaway remark. Someone had asked Lewis about his talent and he had said that he guessed it was 'God-given'. It's a common colloquial phrase which even I, hard-core Atheist, could use.
It's a throwaway statement save when it gets into the hands of a determined hack when it becomes an expression of deeply-held religious faith and this can lead to a headline of such crassness that you will find it hard to believe.
I dare you to believe this about a throwaway remark. Take the idea that God has given Lewis his talent. Ignore the fact that if God gives out the talent, then my talent for classical ballet must also come from on High and I must have really pissed off the Almighty. Imagine the most ridiculous headline you can, then discard it because it is not daft enough.
You have been given the information. Can you really dare to frame the most stupid headline in history?
The headline was, 'The Chosen One'.
Note: This was written some days before the Nurburgring weekend, I'd say that Lewis has now ticked all the boxes.
To check out previous features from Mike, click here