Burning Rubber: The Extraordinary Story of Formula One

by Charles Jennings

  Could it get worse? Yes, it could. By the start of ’96, it was obvious that Frank Williams was only hanging on to Hill because his contract had another year to run. And just to emphasise his thinking on the matter, Williams had also got rid of Coulthard and signed up a new driver, a living reproach to the increasingly pained Hill, a real gunslinger in fact: Jacques Villeneuve.

  Villeneuve was a bit of an exotic, even by the standards of Formula One. Not only was he French-Canadian, pointedly off-beat in his clothing and his personal manner, and a complete newcomer to F1, he was also Gilles Villeneuve’s son and, as such, bathed in something of Villeneuve Senior’s mystical aura.

  Obviously, this could go both ways, given the well-attested nervous anxieties that Gilles had caused Jacques in his time. ‘There wasn’t much of a relationship,’ Jacques confessed. ‘I looked up to him because he was my father, but the few times I saw him we were on holiday or in the mountains for Christmas, stuff like that.’ Or again, ‘What exactly do they want me to do? Burst into tears at the thought of his memory every time I see the chequered flag?’ Still, the inextinguishable glamour of the Villeneuve name – plus the fact that Jacques had managed some distinguished drives in North America, including a win at the Indy 500, which helped him to the 1995 Indy Car Championship – were unquestionably in his favour. Hill, of course, not only had to make endless apologies for his own shortcomings, he was still having to defend his father’s reputation: ‘It’s a big mistake to assume that dad was a bit of a buffoon,’ he said in ’96. ‘Anyone who could win five times at Monaco must have had some sort of instinct.’ But for Villeneuve, eleven years Hill’s junior and bursting with self-confidence, it was all jam.

  And he helped himself to it. He described his new F1 car, in comparison with the simpler fare available in the States, as a ‘big, powerful, very fast go-kart’. He also announced that he wanted to ‘fight with the leaders’ and that he didn’t want to ‘sit here and relax and just learn my trade’. To Hill’s horror and his delight, young Villeneuve took pole position at the first race, Melbourne, March 1996. What’s more, he led the race, set the fastest lap and would have won, but for an oil leak. And that pretty much set the tone. It only took another three races for Villeneuve to win his first GP, at the new, flavourless, purpose-built Nürburgring. As his racing career went on, and he took to wearing spectacles and doing odd things with his hair, Villeneuve began to resemble more and more an extremely powerfully built, wacky, Richard Dreyfuss. But on the podium in April ’96, he just looks like a big kid whose birthdays have all come at once.

  The only possible good news for Hill was that Schumacher, having moved to Ferrari for a king’s ransom, hadn’t quite got the F310 working properly and so wouldn’t challenge, yet, for the title. The season played out: the scions of two legendary motor-racing families, driving for the same team, both in contention for the World Championship. Well, it reads like a Jackie Collins novel in précis, except for the fact that Villeneuve was a grinning outsider and Hill was a frowning, monobrowed father-of-three, who was officially and humiliatingly dropped by Williams before the season was over (at Monza, even) and who found himself snapping impotently at Villeneuve and Schumacher, who were being snotty behind his back at a press conference at the Japanese GP. ‘Pay attention boys,’ he said, brittle and angry. ‘You might learn something.’

  Schumacher and Villeneuve, young Turks together, had actually bonded at the penultimate race of the season, in Portugal, where Villeneuve, in the manner of his father, had pulled off a fantastic overtaking stunt on Schumacher on the parabolic curve leading into the main straight by clinging to the outside line, squeezing past a backmarker and breezing off into the lead. This bravura move went down fantastically well with just about everybody except Hill, who found himself driving carefully home in second place, with the Championship one point out of reach and his reputation as a bread-and-butter toiler in a great car mournfully reemphasised.

  There was, though, a happy ending, in true airport-fiction style. Hill showed what he was made of at Suzuka, last race of the season, by winning it, and the Championship, when Villeneuve’s wheel fell off. A few spoilsports (Niki Lauda among them) reckoned that Hill should have done the job a lot more efficiently, on account of having far and away the best car from the start. But in modern motor racing, the best car is a prerequisite for the title. You have to have it – unless you’re Denny Hulme in 1967, or Alain Prost in 1986. Hill had made a superhuman effort, was vindicated and validated, and his relief was absolute: ‘I’d described it as like being let out of a room that you’ve been locked up in.’ Frank Williams, having mercilessly shafted him in September, could afford to be generous in October. ‘He controlled the Championship,’ he said, judiciously. Then, with an access of something that might almost have been sentiment, he described Hill as ‘a rare breed as a gentleman. I’ve hardly ever seen him angry and I’ve never seen him come out with any invective at all. Damon has climbed a mountain for four years and he thoroughly deserves to be at the top.’

  On paper, Hill had done nothing less than dominate the season. He won half the races, took nine pole positions and set five fastest laps. More profoundly, though, his title had become a triumph of dignified resistance, a refusal to let his humanity become corrupted by the need to win. It was, in its way, a success every bit as dogged and deserved as any of those enjoyed by his father.

  Then, to keep the Son Also Rises theme going, Villeneuve took the Championship in ’97, in the Williams FW19, while Schumacher, having very nearly got the Ferrari to his liking, was disqualified from the entire Championship for deliberately trying to punt Villeneuve off the track at Jerez, the last race.

  After which the whole Villeneuve project went into a decline.

  In his first couple of years in F1 he had been cried up as a Gilles Villeneuve with sense, a ‘tough little nut’, who even impressed Stirling Moss. ‘I think Jacques has got his father’s skill – when he was dicing with Damon, he didn’t give an inch,’ observed the great man, ‘but he’s got an older head on his shoulders.’ Trouble was, after his triumphs in 1997, he never won another Grand Prix. Williams went off the boil. Villeneuve then signed to BAR for the money (£13 million), but the team wasn’t a McLaren or a Ferrari, nor was likely to be. Nor was it even a Jordan, where Damon Hill joyfully managed their debut Grand Prix victory.

  Was Villeneuve possessed of an inordinate talent that went astray as the result of some dud career moves? Or was it a gift that was oversold in the first instance by being shown off in an unbeatable car? He certainly trumped his father, by winning a World Championship. But much of the rest of his time seems to have gone on squabbling with colleagues (he reduced Heinz-Harald Frentzen to ‘a wreck’; Jenson Button was ‘a weak team-mate’), making duff music albums (Private Paradise, 2007) and free-associating about fine wines (‘You drink it and right away you know what is going in your mouth’).

  As a consequence – and despite Villeneuve Junior’s consistently high profile – it’s the fabulous Gilles, not the sometimes extremely good Jacques, who still claims ownership of the Villeneuve reputation. And it makes one wonder why, now, the offspring of famous names of the past choose to put themselves through it all. There’s Nico Rosberg, son of Keke; Michael, son of Mario Andretti, and Marco, Mario’s grandson; Nelson Piquet Junior (of whom more later); Geoff, Gary and David, sons of Jack Brabham, plus Matthew, a grandson; Christian Fittipaldi, nephew of Emerson; Markus Winkelhock, son of the late Manfred Winkelhock; Tomas Scheckter, Jody’s son; Jean-Louis Schlesser, nephew of Jo Schlesser; Nicolas Prost; even Leo and Greg Mansell. Some of these have got as far as Formula One and made it stick; others, not. But since when did motor racing become a career option, mandated from one generation to the next? Since the cars got safer? Since the money got more appealing? Since sponsors became more likely to give you a hearing if your dad could put a word in for you?

  And, given the relentless scrutiny, cheap nit-picking and quickfire opprobrium that encumbers
most racing drivers, why would anyone want to give an extra hostage to fortune in the form of a famous antecedent, whose past glories you are extremely unlikely ever to match, let alone surpass? Michael Schumacher actually said, quite sagaciously, that if his son, Mick, ever wanted to go into motor racing, ‘I would prefer to steer him away from a racing track on to some golf course because I have seen with Jacques Villeneuve or Damon Hill, or even with my brother Ralf, what a burden a name can be, and I would not want him to be constantly compared with me or to not be able to establish his own name.’ And yet, they still come. The burning Oedipal need to defeat the Father must be stronger than one would have thought possible.

  26

  THE GLOBAL SPORT

  By its very nature, motor sport is a tricky thing to participate in. You probably need a driving licence (unless karting), plus a competition licence, plus a car, plus petrol and oil and tyres to keep the car going, plus spare parts, plus maybe a spare engine, plus a man (or men) to work on the car, plus a way to transport the car and its peripherals to the sporting venues, plus an expensive crash helmet and driver’s overalls … For tennis, on the other hand, you need a tennis court and a racquet. For football, you can get by with just a ball and a piece of level ground.

  This may account for the fact that maybe a quarter of a billion people worldwide participate in the Beautiful Game. Perhaps a billion will play volleyball (volleyball?), and half a billion basketball, but these are heavily skewed towards some countries and away from others; their appeal is dense but patchy. Football, on the other hand, has genuinely global reach (apart from in the States, home of something called soccer), and if you do a loose, fairly unreliable calculation, you may determine that the sport attracts 3½ billion fans worldwide. Which is about half the total world population.

  And Formula One? This senselessly overpriced, overcomplicated, elitist technosport, where they change the rules on a weekly basis, where you can’t even see who’s in the cockpit, the races are processions, and the whole thing is a racket, anyway? Another figure, take it or leave it: the Grand Prix season will garner, on average, an annual cumulative TV audience of 50 billion. It will also be shown in over sixty countries. Total annual team expenditure, 2006–7: nearly $3 billion. World’s highest-paid sportsman, including wages, product endorsements, merchandising and other emoluments? Michael Schumacher at his peak: around $80 million a year.

  Does any of it make sense? No. Not really.

  27

  SCHUMACHER, SENNA AND THE ART OF TAKING NO PRISONERS

  Say what you like about Michael Schumacher, whatever he did, he did 110 per cent. He got the most Championship titles; the most Grand Prix wins; the most poles; the most fastest laps; the most races won in a single season; the most money. And, just to round off this cavalcade of attainment, he was the most ethically problematic champion in the history of an already ethically challenged sport.

  How do you solve a problem like Michael Schumacher?

  Schumacher himself has never gone out of his way to clarify things for the benefit of others, prefering to compile, instead, a Schumacher Dictionary of Dullness with which to deaden future generations. Some random entries: Having punted Damon Hill out of the Australian GP in 1994 (and thus secured himself the Championship), he noted that ‘It took me a long time to realise I have become World Champion.’ Having attempted to do the same thing to Jacques Villeneuve at the European GP in 1997 (which led to his being retroactively disqualified from the entire season), he mused that ‘It was a mistake.’ When he won his first title with Ferrari, ‘It was a real explosion of emotion.’ When he took his fifth title in a row, coming second at Spa, 2004: ‘You can’t always be the winner, but in my eyes I also emerged a winner today by taking the World Championship.’ After coming second to Jacques Villeneuve at the Nürburgring in 1996: ‘It has to be said that, if Damon Hill hadn’t experienced problems, I would have finished not second but third.’ In an interview, 2003: ‘I’m just like everyone else, I just happen to be able to drive fast.’

  At times of deep emotion, he might go a bit further. On winning the 2001 Championship for Ferrari, he radioed to his team, ‘It’s so lovely to work with you guys. I love you all, I love you all, thank you.’ And, on contemplating the fact that he had equalled Senna’s tally of Grand Prix wins (at Monza, 2000) he burst into tears at the post-race press conference and couldn’t speak at all. But the rest is a toneless non-commentary, a compulsive shrinkage of events, as though he were an airline pilot talking you through a spot of turbulence. ‘This season,’ as he sagely remarked, when he joined Ferrari, ‘I think we have to concentrate on developing reliability.’ And who would disagree with that?

  Of course, it’s the facts that do the talking. When Ferrari agreed to pay Schumacher $50 million (or 15 per cent of the entire team budget) over two years, they were acting perfectly rationally. Schumacher was outstanding, back in 1996, not just for his speed on the track, but for the incredible energy and commitment he brought to the job as a whole, and which he made his business to transmit to everyone else around him. Jean Todt, brought in to head the team, started to describe Schumacher as a ‘reference point’: the person whose remorseless work ethic, whose focus and whose relative unflappability (by the standards of F1) became a benchmark for the most junior mechanic, the most senior engine technician, for Todt himself.

  You could see this even when Schumacher was starting out in karts at the start of the 1980s. Video footage reveals Michael not only winning, over and over again, but tirelessly urging on his younger brother Ralf, who was also out on the kart track. It wasn’t enough for Michael to win; Ralf had to, as well, or what was the point? The image is persistent and unshakeable: Michael with stonewashed jeans, mullet and chin, willing achievement out of somebody else, out of the ether.

  Thus, the supercompetitive young Michael Schumacher thrashed the opposition in karting, moved up to Formula 3, thrashed the opposition again in 1990, jinked slightly to one side by going sports car racing, but then, at the age of twenty-two, got into a Jordan at the ’91 Belgian Grand Prix and took things from there. Benetton promptly snaffled him up; he won his first GP in 1992 (Belgium, again), managed another win in ’93, and then got what he most wanted in the 1994 season, taking eight wins and the title, by one point, from Damon Hill.

  His relationship with success was, however, already beginning to seem curiously Faustian, as if darker forces might be involved. He managed to be disqualified from not one but two races in his first Championship year – a surprising tally, even for the modern age. The first disqualification came at the British GP, for being cheeky on the parade lap and overtaking pole sitter Damon Hill. The other, more sinister, was for excessive wear on the skid block underneath his car, indicating possible malpractice in the ride height settings. This was then followed by a two-race ban given as punishment for appealing against the first disqualification. At the same time, the Benetton team as a whole was befogged by rumours that it was using a form of traction control: comprehensively outlawed, but a lot harder for race officials to put their fingers on than, say, the lead shot pouring out of the hapless Martin Brundle’s Tyrrell, back in ’84. So the rumours went on, and no one could prove anything. And then the season was wrapped up with Schumacher driving Hill off the track at Adelaide, and driving himself into his first Championship. Yes, Schumacher was very, very good: but did he have to seem so, well, iffy into the bargain?

  He didn’t care, either way. One Championship down, and another scooped up in 1995 – keeping a fairly clean sheet this time, with the nice, reliable Benetton B195, and Hill screwing up his own chances on the way. And then he went to Ferrari.

  This was a move so bold, so pregnant with the twin possibilities of triumph and disaster, it was almost statesmanlike. Ferrari were locked in a world of despair. Their last Drivers’ Championship had been in 1979; the last Constructors’ Championship in 1983. Whole seasons had gone by without a single win. Gerhard Berger had won in Germany, 1994; Jean Alesi in Canada,
1995. The rest was terribly slim pickings, and the team, despite a few recent improvements, had slumped into a condition in which they more or less expected not to succeed.

  Fortunately, at the start of the 1990s, the FIAT board had put international business hotshot and expediter Luca di Montezemolo in charge of the Ferrari team. Montezemolo, being something of an organisational genius, could see the wood for the trees. He set about dismantling the old pasta-and-politics Scuderia, creating a new, thoroughly pan-cultural Ferrari team, embracing designer John Barnard, manager Jean Todt and engineers Gustav Brunner and Osamu Gotu. English became the lingua franca. He killed off the sentimental Ferrari dependency on V12s and stuck a modern, professional, soulless, V10 at the back of the new F310. And he got Schumacher.

  To this refreshingly meritocratic pick ‘n’ mix, Schumacher himself added his old Benetton friends, designer Rory Byrne and technical director Ross Brawn, just to make sure that everything was as right as it could be. And then – the reference point – he compelled them, all of them, from Montezemolo down to the last cleaner, the last office gofer, to work and work again for glory. As Jackie Stewart averred after one of Schumacher’s Championship triumphs, ‘No matter how good Jean Todt is, no matter how brilliant Ross Brawn, no matter how clever Rory Byrne is, the one thing that has brought this to pass is that they all want to work for Schumacher and they know that, given what they can provide, he will deliver.’