So, for whatever reason, Williams lost one and we won one, the team’s fifth ever victory and my third. Sadly, that lone fortuitous win in Canada would be our first and last of the year, and it was a great pity to have parted with John Barnard when we did. Given sufficient development time I’m convinced that the B191 would have proved its full potential and perhaps we could have squeezed more than just a single victory out of it. However, the problem that Barnard was forced to accept was that there is no spare time in Formula One. The life of a successful Grand Prix car is glittering but brief: it is drawn, born, lives a glorious life of eight or nine months, and as soon as the last flag falls it instantly becomes a pile of ageing scrap.
The B191 was scheduled to be introduced for the third race, the team sticking with the B190 for Phoenix and São Paulo. Nevertheless, despite the added comfort that this two-race buffer provided, the 1991 car arrived late and its first build turned into a series of all-nighters. When it left the factory for its initial shakedown we didn’t even have a starter for it, we couldn’t get fuel pressure and we had to resort to towing it along the road to try and fire the engine into life. We were slipping behind schedule and needed more time, but try telling that to the FIA. The races will happen when they’re planned, and no one is going to put the San Marino Grand Prix back a couple of weeks because Benetton isn’t quite ready. We had problems with the gearbox, problems with the engine’s cooling system and constant problems with fuel pressure. The knock-on effect of all this was that the Imola race was much worse than 1990. There was not so much as an hour’s sleep for anybody throughout the duration of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We flew back to England on Monday morning, which meant that we finally got to bed at nine o’clock Sunday night.
Monaco, the following race, was another massive epic. On Friday, at five in the afternoon, on a day curiously known as ‘the day off’ (as the cars run on Thursday instead), we started building a jig to try and set the gearbox selectors. Not building the gearbox itself, you understand, but building a jig to try and help us build the gearboxes. At midnight the gearbox mechanics were still down at Riva Boat Services on the harbour front, borrowing mills and lathes, trying to machine the jig into submission. We barely managed to finish the cars in time for Saturday’s practice and qualifying sessions. Saturday drifted on, melting at some point into Sunday, and we were struggling to get the cars back on the track for the morning warm-up. And come the race, after all that extraordinary effort, Nelson’s car was clipped from behind, forcing him to retire from the race, halfway through lap one!
Normally this sort of news would have been soul-destroying, leaving us utterly deflated, but we were so tired I don’t think anyone even bothered to comment on what had happened. It just meant there were fewer pit-stops to do. However, Moreno was still pounding round so we were still on duty, although one of the gearbox mechanics was so exhausted he fell asleep while standing in the pit-lane, coming very close to hitting the floor like a dropped sack of potatoes, a procession of cars constantly screaming just inches away from where we stood. After the race was finished, while we were loading everything into the race trucks, I remember a chap with a thick American accent telling us how lucky we were to be working in Formula One and how he’d give his right arm to able to join us. ‘Gee,’ he said, smiling at the cars, ‘you guys have got it all!’
Nigel Stepney was the next to go. Again, there were perhaps several contributing factors in his decision to leave, but I think the main cause was the departure of John Barnard. One of the chief reasons he had moved from Lotus was to work with John, and he would have been more than happy to follow him to Guildford too. However, it wouldn’t be the last that Formula One would see of a Barnard/Stepney partnership, for in 1993 when John was reunited with Ferrari, Nigel soon joined him in the role of chief mechanic. Nigel has pushed and fought his way forward from the very first day of his career, and with the arrival of the press release from Maranello announcing that he was to be the first English chief mechanic appointed to the legendary Italian marque, Nigel Stepney made Grand Prix history.
The departures of Barnard and Stepney were followed by two arrivals. First on the scene was Tom Walkinshaw, a big, stocky-looking Scot. Walkinshaw had been in racing for years, although never in Formula One. A one-time driver, he had gradually built an enormous motor-racing empire, Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR), and secured a huge personal fortune too. I have memories of him driving Mazda RX7s when I was an apprentice at Terry Howlett’s back in the 1970s; I never imagined then, as I fitted the extra-zoomy TWR spoilers to the RX7 sales cars, that we’d end up working together! He’s progressed a little since then. Touring cars; Group C cars; Le Mans GT1 cars; a string of prestigious dealerships; Walkinshaw is a real motor engineering entrepreneur. He and Benetton had made an agreement to consolidate the loss of Barnard and to increase the technical skills of Benetton by bringing in key members of TWR’s engineering staff. I seem to remember that he was given the title of engineering director.
Walkinshaw’s first priority was to locate suitable sites for a new Benetton factory. If the team wanted to grow it needed to ditch its decrepit old rabbit warren and move into a purpose-designed building, although any proposed site would certainly be in Oxfordshire and not two or more hours’ drive away from Witney.
The next person to arrive on the scene was another driver, a young German chap new into Formula One, from a career with Mercedes driving for their Group C sportscar team. The fresh-faced young upstart was called Michael Schumacher. At first, the news of his appointment caused little interest with the mechanics (just another damn seat to have to make) but at least Jorg seemed relatively pleased, as Schumacher’s arrival would give him someone to converse with in his own language.
Schumacher had only driven in one Grand Prix before, a couple of weeks earlier at Spa, for the brand-new Jordan team. However, his debut outing lasted less than a tenth of a lap before the Jordan’s clutch gave up. Regardless, Walkinshaw knew of the German’s potential from the years that the TWR Group C Jaguars had raced against Mercedes in the World Sportscar Championships. Walkinshaw’s advice to Flavio was simple: that he should sign him and sign him really, really quickly. If this driver was allowed to get away, Benetton Formula would regret it for the rest of its existence.
I first met Michael in the Benetton pit garage at Monza after he had just signed a contract with Flavio. Somehow, Eddie Jordan had taken his eye off the Formula One ball just for a split second, but that was sufficient time for Flavio to introduce himself to Schumacher and his manager. Eddie in that first year was perhaps still a little green to the way some things work in Grand Prix racing, but after all the political dust had settled, the upshot was that he had let Schumacher slip through his fingers. And he must have been seething too, for without doubt, if he had kept Michael in one of his cars, Jordan Grand Prix Ltd would be Formula One World Champions two or even three times over by now. In that one slip Eddie saw untold millions in lost revenue escape through his fingers. Good job it’s only a sport and we can all shake hands and have a drink together on the flight home.
The brief Benetton/Schumacher courtship was shrouded in secrecy, and the press release was withheld until the very last minute. However, prior to the team flying out to Italy, Michael had already been to our Witney factory for a seat fitting, and we had taken this seat with us as hand baggage on the plane from Heathrow. It was even marked with a large MS in white paint-pen on the back – all seats are marked with the relevant driver’s initials – but as the teams are constantly sending all sorts of last-minute components out with their mechanics everyone seemed oblivious to this rather blatant clue as to what we were about to announce to the world.
As it transpired, Walkinshaw was perfectly correct in his predictions and the Schumacher signature on a Benetton contract was a tremendous scoop. The ground-work was all carried out somewhat furtively and involved the rotten deed of firing dear old Roberto Moreno halfway through the season. At a hastily arranged meeting
at Nice airport he was informed of Benetton’s desire that he should pursue a possible career change (Roberto later told us that this wasn’t the first time he had been summoned to Nice airport for such a meeting and that he suspected bad news). He was more than a little miffed about it too but his performances during the first half of the season were nowhere near as impressive as that stand-in job he did for us in Japan. He’s a slight chap and he just didn’t seem to have the stamina to run at a competitive pace for the duration of a race. Great shame, but Formula One is a tough game. Presumably Benetton paid him handsomely for his trouble, and he probably made more from that one golden handshake than we’ll earn throughout our entire working lives.
As I said, the first time I met Michael was in the Monza garage, and when he introduced himself he went amongst us making a special point of shaking everybody’s hand. He stood back, leaning forward to proffer his right hand, his left remaining securely in his back pocket; a sign I took to mean that he was feeling a little shy, a touch unsure of himself in these new and strange surroundings. I knew nothing of him and, of course, he didn’t know me from Adam. On that, our first meeting, I had no idea that he would soon develop and mature to become the greatest Formula One driver of his generation, and a few years later I would be writing my first book, describing the unprecedented sequence of events which would eventually lead to his first Drivers’ World Championship (and he had no idea that he would volunteer to write the foreword for it either!).
As Benetton team-mates we worked side by side for four and a half years. Our relationship culminated in securing both the Drivers’ and the Constructors’ Championships in 1995, and as far as my career as a mechanic is concerned, those times were the best years of my life. Indeed, I feel as though all the years of training and mechanical work I did prior to that zenith lead inexplicably towards that goal. It is the ultimate achievement for any mechanic, the final rung of a very high and sometimes unstable ladder: secure the Formula One Constructors’ trophy and there is no more to secure. Cross ‘mechanic’ off the list and decide what to try next. And now, the paths of Michael and I have once again separated; he, still pursuing his Formula One career, searching for further glories by driving for Scuderia Ferrari; me, a retired mechanic, scribbling my books in France. I wish I had a photograph of that handshake in Monza, two strangers meeting for the first time, a fleeting moment frozen in time. That morning as we drank coffee and chatted, none of us had any idea exactly what was about to be unleashed into the world of Grand Prix racing.
In the same year that we welcomed our future World Champion driver, we were preparing to bid farewell to a previous one; 1991 would be Nelson Piquet’s last year in Formula One. In Adelaide, the last race of his long and highly distinguished career, I had the unforgettable privilege of being with him on the very last occasion he climbed from a Formula One car.
For me, the 1991 Australian Grand Prix was special for three reasons. It was Nelson’s last race; my mother had flown out to Adelaide to visit friends and watch the race from the grand-stands; and the temperamental coastal weather turned it into another historic event, as the deluge of rain which fell, literally a few minutes prior to the start, would mark the race as the shortest Grand Prix ever run in Formula One’s history.
After the warm-up Schumacher wasn’t happy with his own race car and the decision had been taken to put him into the spare car. In fact, when I was scouring through the LAT archives digging out relevant photographs for this book, I came across one of Schumacher just climbing aboard our car as I held the belts clear of the seat (you can easily tell it’s the spare car because it has both Michael’s and Nelson’s names on the side). In the next photo, where Michael is holding the umbrella, you can see our gearbox mechanic Paul James standing near the rear wing; his expression sums up the mood of the occasion! Actually, it was an exhausted Paul who fell asleep in the Monaco pit-lane a few months earlier. Formula One, it’s a glamorous life!
It was a bit daft to have started the race in such aquatic conditions, and if the officials had delayed it for just an hour, the storm would have passed and we would once again have been bathed in bright South Australian sunshine. But I suppose global TV times are all prearranged and to delay the start would have proved catastrophic for screening the race; this, I’m sure, is the only reason why the Grand Prix was sent under way at the scheduled time. However, appeasing global scheduling or not, it soon proved quite farcical to continue racing Formula One cars in these adverse conditions, and the whole show lasted a mere fourteen laps before the chaos of cars aqua-planing into each other every few seconds forced the officials to bring the red flag out and stop the race.
For a while, with a grey blanket of clouds hanging overhead and torrents of thick rain still gushing upon us, it was assumed that the race would be restarted. The cars were pushed back on to the grid and the teams of mechanics re-formed around them, most holding nylon covers over the exposed engines and gearboxes in an attempt to stave off the water. The spare car had been damaged and so, out of a job, I helped the mechanics preparing Nelson’s car, mopping out the chassis with masses of blue-roll. Nelson’s race boots were sodden and I’d run back to the garage to fetch new ones. With these the first job was to cut the toe off the right-hand boot, something he insisted on to avoid his boot touching the steering column as he flicked his foot between the throttle and brake pedals. Next they needed the soles scuffing, to increase the grip on the pedal pads. He handed me his old wet boots, complaining that his socks were wet too.
‘What do you want me to do about it?’ I asked. ‘You’re all wet, your overalls are soaking, everything’s wet. You’ve just been driving in a major bloody rain storm!’
‘I don’t think we can do anything about it,’ he laughed, ‘I’m just telling you that my socks are wet, that’s all! My last race and I’ve got cold feet!’
We finally got Nelson back in the car and waited for news of the restart. Of course, it didn’t come. There was a lot of bustling from the officials, several pieces of damp paper exchanged hands, teeth were thoughtfully sucked, but eventually the Grand Prix was declared abandoned; the results from the first race would stand.
Giorgio Ascanelli was engineering Nelson that day, and he stood at the front of the car as he explained to Nelson that the race was over. Nelson looked back at him, his deep, expressive eyes betraying the realization that his Formula One career was also over. He beckoned for his engineer to come nearer, and when he did he quietly asked Giorgio to allow the mechanics to fire the car up and let him drive off round the circuit for one last lap, a final slow tour to wave goodbye to the world of Formula One. Of course, with the race now abandoned, the circuit was officially closed to traffic and to have let Nelson go would have broken all sorts of sporting regulations. Giorgio considered the situation and slowly shook his head as he explained to Nelson that he couldn’t let him drive off; to allow such a thing would be a grave failing.
‘Come on Giorgio,’ he said, ‘let’s go, one last time!’ but already I could sense that Nelson had resigned himself to the impossibility of the request. Giorgio’s position was one of great responsibility, he simply couldn’t allow it.
‘No, Nelson, the track is closed; we can’t let you go, you know we can’t. There’s nothing we can do. The flags are out, Nelson, let’s go home.’
Nothing happened for a moment or two, then I heard the click of the belt buckle and he gently pulled the steering wheel from the column. Two hundred and four Grand Prix starts (the third highest in history), twenty-four pole positions, twenty-three race victories, 485.5 points (the third highest in history) and three Drivers’ World Championships. It was finished. It was all finished. The shortest race in Formula One history; Ayrton Senna’s final World Championship-winning season; Nelson Piquet’s Grand Prix career. All over.
And for us, despite Nelson’s lucky win in Montreal, we only scored a total of 38.5 points throughout the year, the odd-looking score a result of half points being awarded in Adelaide (Nel
son was running in fourth place when the race was stopped). The final standings in the 1991 Constructors’ Championship saw us drop back a place from the previous year, finishing the season in fourth position. With a magnificent score of 139, McLaren International claimed their fourth consecutive Constructors’ trophy. Their dominance over Formula One had been incredible, and as I walked over to their garage to congratulate the mechanics on securing another McLaren plaque to the winners’ cup, the team looked as strong and professional as ever. I have to admit I felt a little deflated as I shook hands and chatted with them; it seemed certain that their winning form would continue for many more years to come too. With the power of the fabulous Honda engine, Senna’s brilliance behind the wheel and Dennis calmly controlling the engineering, I could see no reason why they shouldn’t continue holding the trophy for another ten years or more. In fact, I couldn’t have been more wrong and 1991 would be the last year they would clinch the title during my career as a Formula One mechanic! How quickly the balance of power can shift in this sport.
Ferrari had finished the year in third place – seventeen points ahead of us – but notwithstanding the fact that Alain Prost was driving for them, they had failed to win a single race, the first time such a thing had happened to them since 1986. Throughout the course of the season the great Italian team seemed completely disorganized and as the season drew to a close it seemed to be in out-and-out panic mode. The team manager was fired and then Prost was fired too. Alain Prost fired by Ferrari! A three-times World Champion driver sacked by an eight-times Constructors’ World Champion. What a sad, shambolic end to the season and unfortunately it would only get worse for Ferrari in 1992.
The Mechanic’s Tale Page 10
