03/03/2003
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
I have just been reading the FIA's new rules on the parc ferme and all I can say is: 'Phew!' President Max and The FIA Technical Delegate, Charlie Whiting, appear to have every angle covered.
When I look at the regulations for the parc ferme, know what I think? These rules were drawn up by cheats. You and I would not have drawn them up in such fine detail. But then our idea of cheating is to park our cars in a restricted zone for a couple of minutes and take a gamble that we can get away with it.
Just about the only thing that the new rules do not insist on is that the mechanics allowed near the car are subjected to a body search by a doctor and wear only thongs. Even that would not stop a determined cheat.
One of my great heroes is Harry Houdini and when he was building his reputation in the days when newsprint was the only mass medium, he would arrive in a country and challenge the governor of a prison to lock him in a cell. Houdini underwent a body search was locked in the cell stark naked. He had at least three methods of smuggling in the picks which he used on the locks.
If you really want to cheat, you will find a way.
Why are heist movies so popular? Who among us would not like to beat the system? Every major heist involves someone working against the best defence that the brightest brains in security can offer. Laser beams? Palm print identification? Fart and you set off an alarm?
Why do we like heist movies? We all have a sneaking regard for anyone who can buck the system. That is why Houdini became the most popular 'live' performer that the world has ever known.
From 1970 to 1977, Max Mosley ran the March Formula One team, which was effectively bankrupt from the end of 1970. He managed to do that without ever facing the harsh comments that various judges have made against Poor, Poor, Wee Tam. Max was also chief salesman for March production racing cars. What Max does not know about bagging is not worth knowing.
In 1977, Frank Williams bought a brand new March 761 from Max. Frank had just split from Walter Wolf, taking with him Patrick Head. While Patrick worked on what became the Williams FW06, the best of the pre?ground effect cars, Frank ran the March in selected F1 events for a pay driver. A March, a pay driver, a selection of races, Frank had gone back to the very bottom of the Formula One ladder.
One day Frank's car had a prang and the tub was dented. There, visible to all was bright orange paint, the orange of Beta Tools, sponsor of Vittorio Brambilla, aka, 'The Monza Gorilla', who had last raced for March in 1975. Frank's brand new car, as sold to him by Max, was two years old.
At the 1975 Swedish GP, Vittorio took pole. Nobody could believe it. Everyone had a theory about the car's new found speed, but nobody could work out how the Monza Gorilla could get pole.
Robin Herd, however, can solve the puzzle, "The organisers were timing the cars with a light beam and when one saw this, it occurred to one that if one could station one's pits by the start line it opened up all kinds of possibilities for lateral thought. I was given the very important job of holding out the pit board and the trick was to swing the board in front of the timing beam when one of our cars was about fifty yards away! That's how March achieved one of its greatest moments of glory."
It goes without saying that Max was involved in the scam. This is what makes him so dangerous to his former customers. There is no gamekeeper like a former poacher.
In the 1975 Austrian GP, Vittorio gave the works March team its first World Championship win. The race itself began in heavy rain but there was the possibility of a change for the better. With Vittorio eighth on the grid, Max decided to go for broke and had his car given full wet settings while most teams more cautiously opted for intermediate settings. As it happened, conditions went from bad to worse and Brambilla found his car handling perfectly. He hauled himself up the leader board, dived past James Hunt's Hesketh and into the lead. With a clear road in front of him, he pulled out two seconds a lap.
Max told me, "Denny Hulme was the adviser to the Clerk of the Course and there was some discussion as to whether the race should be stopped. He said to me, 'Do you want to quit while you're ahead?' I certainly did, we needed the points and who knows what might have happened if the race had gone full distance?"
Just before half distance Brambilla passed the start/finish line to see the chequered flag held out. Vittorio raised both arms in salute, braked, and promptly crashed. He completed his victory lap with his arm raised and his nosecone hanging off. As the weather started to ease some teams wheeled out their cars for a restart but Max, rule book in hand, pointed out that since the chequered flag had not been shown with a black flag, the race was over, it could not be restarted.
Max and the rulebook ensured that Brambilla's win stood. You cannot get by Max with a rulebook unless you are Ferrari, and a down?to?the?wire World Championship is in the balance.
To be fair to Max, he must be the only team manager to have protested his own team. In 1973, his duties included running the March Formula Three team which was using Ford engines prepared by Holbay, the tuner which had built the best engines in the one?litre F3 'streamer' era. Holbay found a way of by?passing the air restrictor and was daft enough to build in a huge increment of power whereas the accomplished cheat builds in a small, but decisive, edge, which could be put down to a better car or a better driver.
As it happened, March had the best car and, in Brian Henton, the best driver. Max slapped in a protest with the RAC both as a pre?emptive move and, I believe, because he was genuinely horrified at what Holbay had done.
In motor racing there is a fuzzy line between a clever scam and downright cheating. It may be fuzzy, but it may not be crossed. What decides whether the line has been crossed is basically the cynicism of the ploy.
When Toyota was found to be downright cheating with its rally cars (in essence, the ploy was similar to that used by Holbay, a very clever method of allowing more air into an induction system with an air restrictor) Toyota was kicked out of the World Rally Championship. That was painful since the FIA was promoting the WRC, and Toyota is one of the worlds' Big Three car makers, but Max had no hesitation.
As I have often said before, it was Max and Bernie who guided Formula One into the mess that it has become. When I hear the word 'cheat' bandied about, why do I think of Bernie's Brabhams running underweight in qualifying in the early 1980s? This is not gossip; I have had it first?hand from two former Brabham team managers, Alistair Caldwell and Herbie Blash.
Do I not also recall that Piquet won the 1983 World Championship at the final race, the South African Grand Prix amid allegations, not proven, that Bernie's car was using illegal fuel?
When F1 teams which used the Cosworth DFV engine were threatened by those with turbo engines, they turned to an imaginative interpretation of the rules. It was not difficult for the better teams to build cars under the weight limit and they sent underweight cars out for qualifying.
The problem arouse when cars were required to be weighed. Williams simply slapped on a new set of tyres - filled with water. Brabham built heavyweight components which were added to the cars when the weighing machine beckoned. Herbie Blash told me, while we were both in the waiting room of Max's office in London, each waiting to see him, "We were entertaining David Yorke, who had been Vanwall's team manager in the Fifties. He saw a couple of our men struggling with a rear wing assembly and commented how heavy it seemed to be. We couldn't give the game away, even to a guest, so I said, 'We're having traction problems, coming out of corners, so we need extra weight at the back.'"
The best of the underweight scams was told me by Alistair Caldwell: "Like other teams, we had been running underweight during qualifying and it had become an open secret. We arrived for the 1981 Argentine GP and the organisers told us that every car would be weighed every time it came into the pits. Any car which stopped out on the circuit would be impounded by marshals and, afterwards, would be escorted back to the pits to be weighed.
"We sent Nelson Piquet out, underweight. Nelson set pole and then his brakes failed. That was part of the script and the place for brake failure was prearranged. I got into a van with some of the mechanics and drove out to him. Sure enough, marshals were guarding the car. We got chatting, then it occurred to me that maybe we could sort out the problem by bleeding the brakes. That way, Nelson could get back to the pits, be weighed, and perhaps go out again.
"We asked the marshals politely if we could try that. They said it was no problem so off came the front and rear bodywork and a mechanic pumped the brake pedal while pouring in brake fluid. He went too far and we heard the sound of air being pumped - all according to plan.
"I threw a wobbler at the guy who was only a youngster. He was so surprised at the extent of my fury, even though he'd been expecting it, that he burst into tears. The marshals and the other mechanics were shocked and started to remonstrate with me. 'Hey, the kid doesn't deserve that', that sort of thing. I had all the marshals and mechanics at me, except for the guy disappearing over the barrier with the rear bodywork.
"At the end of the session, the car came in to be weighed when I noticed the rear bodywork was missing. With the new rear bodywork in place, two mechanics struggled under the weight, the car was suddenly legal."
Who was the owner of Brabham at the time? Bernie Ecclestone. Who was Brabham's Chief Mechanic? Charlie Whiting.
I say no more.
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