Green Races Red. Maurice Hamilton

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СКАЧАТЬ I thought this was pretty good. Jacques Villeneuve was leading, I was second and I knew there was no way Damon would get past Michael until the first pit stops at the very earliest. It was a great way to start.

      Then the red flags came out. The race had been stopped, which was a big disappointment considering I had made such a good start. I didn’t know the exact reason but I assumed there had been an accident somewhere during the first lap. We returned slowly to the starting grid and somewhere along the way I saw pictures of what had happened. Going into the third corner Martin Brundle, who had started from the back of the grid, had piled into a couple of cars which seemed to be involved in their own accident. A chain reaction had been caused by one car moving over on another, which in turn forced David Coulthard to take avoiding action. The McLaren, which may in turn have been touched from behind, swerved into Johnny Herbert’s Sauber just as Brundle arrived on the scene. Brundle hit Herbert and became airborne and rolled a couple of times. It was a big shunt. Martin was lucky because of the way the car had bounced. He was unhurt, but it was ironic that he was driving a Jordan.

      There had been a bit of controversy over the way Jordan and Williams had interpreted new rules concerning the introduction of raised cockpit sides in order to give more protection to the driver’s head. Jordan had been a bit cheeky by bending the rule in such a way that they did not need to raise the cockpit sides as much as everyone else. There was a performance advantage to be had by doing that. It may have been very small but that was not the point. This was all about safety and I felt that Jordan’s decision to do what they did was totally wrong.

      Formula 1 does not need people getting smart when it comes to safety. On this occasion, Jordan were extremely lucky. Martin’s head could have gone over the side of the cockpit. They were fortunate because of the way the car rolled and the fact that there were no G-forces and no heavy impacts with the concrete wall.

      The car had broken in half immediately, the engine coming away from the chassis, which meant there was not a huge amount of weight adding to the car’s momentum as it continued to roll. It was the ‘perfect’ sort of accident – if you can say such a thing – one which looked highly spectacular but, in fact, did not amount to a great deal.

      Had Martin suffered a serious impact to his head, then I would hate to think what the newspapers would have done with the story in the light of some of the comments which other team owners had been coming out with regarding Jordan’s interpretation of the cockpit rules.

      Ron Dennis, the boss of McLaren, was reported in Motoring News to have said (before the accident) that car designers, because of the loophole in the regulations, had to ask themselves a serious question: ‘Are you going to make your car deliberately less safe to achieve a performance advantage, even if that advantage is improved lateral vision?’

      Can you imagine what the tabloids would have done with that had Brundle received a serious head injury?

      At the end of the day, it was the responsibility of the FIA technical delegates and they had passed the Jordan as legal. The fact remained, however, that the designers of the Formula 1 teams had drawn up the rule. What had become clear was that two of the designers knew they were going to find an advantage with the very rule which they were helping to establish. The sport’s governing body had asked the designers for their help. It was totally wrong for two of them to then use a loophole.

      Anyway, the main thing was that Martin was perfectly okay. That’s the first concern when you see another driver have an accident; you just hope he gets out. When he does, you then shut the whole thing from your mind.

      I have to admit, that was much easier to do than usual because of my position near the front of the grid. When you are in the middle, it’s a nightmare. When you are at the front, you’ve got the two guys ahead, and that’s it. Once I had seen Villeneuve and Hill get going, I could take a quick look behind to see who was there, and then get on with the business. Further back, however, it is much more difficult to register exactly what is happening. The basic rule of thumb is that the driver following has to watch the guy in front and try to work out what he is going to do. In effect, you look after your front wheels. That’s the law as I see it.

      At the restart in Melbourne, once again I made a better getaway than Damon but this time he got through the corner without making a mess of it. The Ferrari was definitely lacking in acceleration and straight line speed. Whether it was a question of insufficient power or perhaps too much aerodynamic drag, I’m not sure. All I know is that I was on the clean side of the grid (in effect, on the racing line which had more rubber and less dust and dirt) and twice I beat Hill off the line, and twice he left me way behind.

      While waiting on the grid, I had been thinking about trying to get rid of the understeer. I didn’t want to make too many adjustments as this would take me further away from the original set-up arrived at during practice. It would have been a risk to make further changes because the understeer could have been caused by the tyres not having enough temperature at such an early stage of the race. In the end, we left the car as it was. Maybe, with hindsight, we should have done a bit more because, as soon as the race started, I knew I was still in trouble.

      After the first couple of laps, I felt there was no point in trying to push as the understeer would destroy my front tyres. I had to apply caution and simply try and maintain my position.

      With Villeneuve and Hill in front that meant I was third, with Michael closing on me. We had agreed before the race that, if I was quicker than him, then he would move out of the way and vice versa. It made good sense. The deal was that I could run my own race if I was faster than Michael, but, if we came to the last corner and I was third with Michael fourth, then I would let him through. I had no problem with that. Michael was employed to win the Championship. As far as I was concerned, it would be three points instead of four. Big deal. Who needs statistics?

      We had agreed that if Michael felt he could go quicker than me, he would radio the pits and then my engineer would speak to me and just say ‘Michael’. That would be the signal and I would let him through. Since I was struggling with understeer and Michael was closing on me, it was pretty obvious what was going to happen. But I wanted to allow him though without letting the Benetton of Jean Alesi get by as well.

      I chose the back straight, a place where Alesi might not expect such a move to take place and, even if he did try to come through, there were a couple of twisty corners immediately afterwards which would help me keep him at bay. The trouble was, I think I caught Michael by surprise as well! He ducked out from behind me at the last minute but luckily it worked out. Alesi missed his chance.

      I knew I couldn’t run with Michael; I was just too slow. Whether that was because of the understeer, or whether he was just quicker than me, I don’t know. Interestingly, in the morning warm-up (when we run in race trim in final preparation for the Grand Prix) the two of us had been separated by just a few hundredths of a second, which was quite satisfying.

      In any case, I was also concerned about brake-wear during the race. I knew from experience that I tended to be a lot harder on the brakes during the race than I had been when qualifying. We had measured my wear-rate on the Ferrari and, if the usual percentage increase occurred, I would have great difficult finishing the race. But this was speculation because I had not had the chance to put in a full race distance during testing with Ferrari, so we didn’t know how big the problem might be. I had no choice but to take it easy. To be honest, even if I had pushed hard, I could not have run with Michael. My race was with Alesi and the Benetton. I just tried to be smooth and not make any mistakes. Unfortunately, with Alesi, you never knew what was in his mind.

      Approaching the braking area for a very slow corner – one where I was troubled by the understeer – I took a look in my mirror. I saw Alesi give some thought to coming down the inside, but he was too far behind. I reckoned there was no chance of him coming through from that distance, СКАЧАТЬ