16/10/2007
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
 |
When Max Mosley first stood for the Presidency of the FIA he said that he would serve no more than two terms. He reckoned that it was a mistake to stay in a position of power for too long. It seems to me that some of his behaviour of late proves he was right.
Max has been in place for sixteen years and the only regular politicians who beat that tend to be the Beloved Father of some dire Third World Country. The President of the USA may serve no more than two terms. President Putin has to stand down next year though he could stand again in 2012. Democratic limitation has even reached Russia for the first time in its history.
In the UK there is no limitation though Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair served continuous terms of 13 and to years respectively. In both cases most people would reckon they outstayed their welcome.
Max was right all those years ago, being too long in the job can cloud one's judgement.
Take the appointment of an 'Equality Tsar' to oversee McLaren in Brazil. I bet there were times when Rubens Barrichello dreamed of such a person when he drove for Ferrari. Remember, it was Ferrari's use of team orders which led to their banning.
There was a time, when everything was made by hand, where two cars could be unequal though nominally made to the same specification. McLaren has made equal cars for more than twenty years.
When Team Lotus signed Ayrton Senna in 1985, the plan was to run Derek Warwick as Joint Number One. Senna vetoed that and it was not because he feared Warwick could challenge him, but because he knew that Lotus could not prepare a second car to top standard without losing something from his car.
Ayrton was happy to drive alongside Alain Prost at McLaren in 1988 because he knew they would have equal treatment. He wanted to measure himself against the best of his day and who actually was is still a great pub debate.
Given modern manufacturing techniques it is hard to see how McLaren could favour either driver. You would have to write a computer program, incorporating minute differences, and then run off a special batch of components. Even more difficult would be to keep that secret.
There have been very few cases of cars being sabotaged in motor racing. It has never been proven to be sabotage, but the brake pedal on Stirling Moss's Maserati broke after four miles in the 1957 Mille Miglia and Moss was pre-race favourite.
The white powder on a Ferrari at Monaco, which led to Nigel Stepney being accused of sabotage, sounds risible to me. White powder on a red car is a bit obvious especially since it could be wiped off with a Kleenex.
Short of sending a helicopter to spray water in front of a car, the only technical way I can think of is a subtle change in tyre pressure in the middle stint. Alonso accused McLaren of doing that after Hamilton pipped him for pole in Shanghai. He cried, "Nobody takes half a second from me," while kicking down a door in the motor home and throwing his helmet around.
The best way would be to nobble a driver. Prior to the 1957 Monaco GP, a glamorous actress tried to pass Fangio the key to her hotel room. Under different circumstances, he might have considered it, but he believed that she had been set up by a rival team so he would arrive on the grid red of eye and yawning.
Naturally he did not say which team, but Fangio was driving for Maserati, just like Moss had been in the Mille Miglia a week before. Nobody has ever pointed a finger at a possible culprit, because there is no proof. Only two teams, however, took part in both races.
Laxative on a driver's corn flakes is no longer an option, medical science being what it is. Besides, teams take very special care with everything ingested in some countries. There had been cases of 'Montezuma's Revenge' in Mexico.
It seems that the 'Equality Tsar' is a bit of window dressing by the governing body. I cannot think what he is going to do. Possibly he is going to count the number of words Ronzo exchanges with each man, but Alonso has stopped speaking to his team boss since his clumsy attempt at blackmail failed.
Alonso started the season on equal terms and had no complaints until Hamilton proved that, sometimes, he was quicker. Alonso then made himself less equal by making mistakes.
McLaren has provided equal opportunity to both its drivers for years and I think it is an unjustified slur on a great team. I have been searching the memory bank for major fallings out between drivers and teams. Nothing compares with Mercedes-Benz, 1934-39, but in more recent times there was the shambles which was March in 1977, when it ran Ian Scheckter and Alex Ribeiro. The man running the team was Max Mosley who left direct involvement in F1 at the end of the year.
The WMSC did not call Nigel Stepney who has since made a public announcement that, when employed at Ferrari, he received information from within McLaren.
Luca di Montezemolo has shot his mouth off about a World Championship win by either driver being 'tainted' and has suggested that a lot of Ferrari design has gone into McLaren. This is arrant nonsense, the basic concept was finished and tested before a Ferrari employee handed over a huge dossier.
Let us not forget that Michael Coughlan could not have received the dossier unless Nigel Stepney had handed it over. McLaren gets hammered for having a 'rogue employee', but Ferrari does not.
Luca di Montezemolo says outrageous thing, but it is Sir Jackie Stewart who is the subject of a petulant diatribe delivered by a man eight years after what he himself reckoned would be his 'best before' date.
Sir Jackie has consulted legal opinion. It is only a guess, I am not a lawyer, but I think that Max made a fundamental mistake in calling Stewart a 'certified half-wit' and then saying in an interview with a serious newspaper that he stood by every word.
In Britain, all adult citizens have a vote save for royalty and peers, serving convicts, and certified lunatics. Mosley said that Sir Jackie is certified.
Had he said, 'certifiable', that would be insulting. It would be a playground taunt, childish and undignified. Damon Hill has said that Mosley brought the sport into disrepute, that is Damon's opinion and I could not possibly comment. It is, however, fairly rare to hear from Damon.
Mosley's diatribe extended to mocking Jackie's tartan trews. This is a brave thing to do over lunch with journos. I suggest that if anyone said, in the Sergeants' Mess of a Highland Regiment, that they looked like a 1930s music hall turn in their trews, they would laugh, admire his wit, and pour him a large draught of the local wine, and then another, and another.
As he regained consciousness next morning, with his mouth tasting like a wrestler's jock-strap, he might wonder what he was doing stark naked in the middle of nowhere with a thistle planted in his crack.
In my opinion, the fact that Max delivered such a tirade undermines any claim he has made not to conduct vendettas. His rant against Stewart sounded pretty personal to me.
In the 1966 Belgian GP there was a sudden downpour and Jackie was one of the victims. He was trapped upside-down in his BRM and a ruptured fuel tank was leaking. It took ages for marshals to reach him and he could have been cremated alive.
Stewart started a safety campaign and, it is hard to believe today, but he got a lot of stick for it from some quarters. Some people compared things like Armco with a tightrope walker working with a safety net, it took away the sense of danger.
What these people failed to understand is that a tightrope walker performs an act and is in control of their environment. They can spice up their act and, in the last analysis, tightrope walking is a narrow skill, it is not neurosurgery, it is not a qualification which fits you for anything else.
A racing driver does not have the same control over his environment, as that downpour at Spa proved, and has since been proved by many a burst tyre or broken wishbone. Jackie accepted there was risk in motor racing, but argued that there should not be unnecessary risk. Jim Clark crashed into a tree at Hockenheim and the tree had no place being there.
Denis Jenkinson called Jackie, the 'squinty-eyed little Scot', but Jackie conducted his campaign. It was the one thing on which Jenks and I had a fundamental disagreement, though he may have mellowed since, every time I raised the issue, he would change the subject.
Sir Jackie is one of the greatest of all drivers. He won three World Championships, 27 Grands Prix from 99 starts, six non-Championship F1 races and six in the Tasman series. He started in only ten F2 races, but took three wins and five second places, and few remember him in Formula Two.
He conducted campaigns for safer driving, supported a charity of former racing mechanics in need of assistance, and ran events for Sean Connery's Education Trust. He had had a miserable time at school because he was dyslexic and nobody understood the condition until relatively recently. In 1982, I was Head of English in a Comprehensive School and had received no guidance at all. Ten years later, it was a fairly common opinion in education that dyslexia was an excuse middle-class parents gave for their kids not being bright. It was used as an excuse, but it is also a condition.
Sir Jackie did not flinch, he came out and supported the dyslexic. For years he had had the wit and the money to hide his condition. As with his campaign against unnecessary risk in motor racing, he showed moral fibre.
As President of the FIA, Max Mosley has done a power of good for improving safety in both motor racing and road cars. He can see a little further because he stands on Sir Jackie Stewart's shoulders.
Stewart was the first to campaign for sensible measures and he received a lot of flak. Thanks to him, drivers no longer need dark suits and black ties in their wardrobes.
One of the things that Mosley said was that Stewart was not in possession of all the facts. I bet that Jackie's sources are pretty good, far better than that of any journalist. There is a simple solution which is that the WMSC does not hold its hearings in camera while releasing only what it wants the rest of us to know.
It is also clear from Nigel Stepney's recent public statements that the WMSC (Worshipful Maranello Suck-up Club?) was not in full possession of the facts.
The Italian and English legal systems work in different ways. In Italy, as in France, there is the prosecuting magistrate who examines evidence prepared by the police and who can act with a degree of independence. Fernando Alonso has been interviewed by an Italian prosecuting magistrate, which does not imply what it might in some countries.
In England (Scotland has a slightly different legal system), the case is prepared by the police and then goes to the Department of Public prosecutions. Two countries, two ways of trying to reach the same end.
If certain cases come to trial in an English court, more may be revealed than is permitted under some judicial systems. Evidence may come to light which could cast doubts over the competence of the WMSC and the FIA. Lurking in the background is all the EU legislation. A few years ago, when there were squabbles over tobacco sponsorship, the FIA decamped from Paris and moved to Geneva because Switzerland is not a member of the European Union.
Mr. Mosley once thought that eight years was long enough for anyone to be El Presidendo (Viva! Viva!). He has now served twice that term and I think that it is beginning to show. The man has reached the level of lambasting one of the great luminaries of our sport for his choice of trousers.
Mike Lawrence
mike@pitpass.com
To check out previous features from Mike, click here