21/03/2010
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
 |
There are a number of points to catch up on. One is that I was right in saying that Toyota would have known that it was heading for a crisis with quality control. It now turns out that a group of workers submitted a memo to the President of the company four years ago.
This was not me being clever, it comes down to computerised stock control. If you buy anything in a supermarket, a bar code is swiped and this means that you get an accurate and itemised bill and every item is registered on a central computer as being one less at the store.
If this happens with a bunch of carrots, and it does, it's going to happen with things like brake systems. McLaren is building this into servicing dealers handling the MP4-12C so there will always be a spare part for your car.
I suggest that it may have been foreknowledge of a crisis that prompted Toyota's withdrawal from F1.
As Chris Sylt has discovered, Team Steve may be nothing except smoke and mirrors. Formula One has known a fair few chancers and wannabees, and Steve may be there with LIFE and Andrea Moda, except a couple of things bother me.
One is that former McLaren Chief Designer Mike Coughlan was employed by Steve. I assume that he was paid. Perhaps not the GBP 350,000, plus benefits, he received in Woking, but he would have been on a decent wage.
Pat Symonds is currently unemployed. Save for articles for the magazine, RaceTech. Despite a French court overturning the WMSC's five year ban on him, and the lifetime ban on Flavio Briatore, both Pat and Flav have been effectively blacklisted by Formula One.
Coughlan has not been barred from pursuing his trade. Even though job offers must have been thin on the ground, I cannot see him agreeing to work for an outfit unless minimum standards were met. It is one thing to be unemployed, another to lose all dignity.
I cannot see Toyota Motorsport, parting with so much information and hardware to a start-up outfit, and allowing the use of its facilities in Cologne, unless the odd clam shell was passed their way.
The thing is that if you secure a place on the grid, you are then in a position to attract sponsors. Under Jackie Oliver, Arrows existed for years without winning a race, but Oliver became wealthy through making deals.
It is worth making an initial personal investment in order to have space on a car to sell. This may have been the thinking behind Team Steve, US F1 and Campos, as was. Max Mosley knows this better than anyone because it was part of his business plan when setting up March Engineering in 1969 - Max invented the model.
Following my piece on USF1, my mail box has been full of letters from American enthusiasts, many writing to Pitpass for the first time. There are a lot of American followers of F1, they just tend to be spread about. There is no focus for them as there is with, say, a team, a top driver or a race.
It was the American market that made Ferrari and Porsche and where most MGs, Triumphs, Austin-Healeys, Jaguars and Datsun's Z-cars were sold. Their sales were tiny compared to Chevrolet and Ford, but were massive compared to any other market. America has maintained a strong interest in sports car racing, the Sebring 12-Hour race is the second oldest sports car race in the world, and the Daytona 24-Hours has been held every year since 1966.
Magazines such as Road & Track and Car and Driver, which take an international view, an enthusiast driver's view, are still strong and are assiduously wooed by manufacturers.
American enthusiasts have been short-changed by USF1. Windsor and Anderson had previously been employees, not employers. You do not make the leap from one to the other at their time in life. Entrepreneurs are different to the rest of us.
Selling second-hand racing cars was not something that my careers adviser ever suggested, but it was the way Sir Frank began. When he was at school, Bernie was buying pens in bulk and selling them to other kids. Richard Branson made the headlines in his teens when he started a magazine. It failed, but he rode that. These people are different.
USF1 posted a few videos on You Tube and they looked optimistic, but something jarred. We saw a bare space fill. We saw computers and autoclaves, and the machining of billets. We saw the crash test of a nose cone.
One video showed various images from Indianapolis and things being done to NASCAR machines, all to thumping, urgent, music. There was a shot of the 1989 Onyx GP car - Ken Anderson was race engineer to Stefan Johansson. That is an arcane nugget from 21 years ago, but there was no hard information. The videos were all glitz.
The videos did not show even a mock-up of an engine, or the proposed transmission, or even a set of wheels.
While Friday practice was under way in Bahrain, I was in a party of two being conducted around a major motor racing facility, one used by several current F1 teams as well as other customers. A pal of mine happens to fall into the category, 'other customers'.
Our names were on our visitor's passes along with the name of a company, which was Coventry Climax. At this juncture, I will say no more, but merely float Coventry Climax into the ether.
Within the overall factory, another company specialises in composites and runs massive autoclaves.
A start-up operation need not invest its capital in machinery, everything can be subcontracted. By locating in Charlotte, USF1 was not denied access to any subcontractor, anywhere. The carbonfibre monocoque of the McLaren MP4/1 was made by the Hercules Corporation in America, which was credited, but it was still a McLaren.
USF1 was to use an engine by Cosworth, which is English, though owned by an American. Bridgestone tyres are Japanese and you are going nowhere without rubber. Almost certainly, the transmission would come from England and the brakes and steering wheel from Italy.
When it comes to industry, the old national boundaries and identities have largely been eroded. Basing a team in North Carolina, NASCAR country, was a PR stunt along with all the press releases.
I was disturbed by the fact that USF1 was making unnecessary investment. A computer program to machine a part can be sent via the net. All the English subcontractors are close to Heathrow Airport, within two hours of a cargo shipment. The biggest delay would be getting components from a major American airport to a hick town like Charlotte.
Among the clinchers for me were that the videos soon stopped appearing. It is worrying when a team does not maintain its style. Besides, we were shown loads of expensive hi-tech stuff, but no video showed low-key equipment such as spanners and socket sets.
The most exotic engineering, like a NASA space probe, is assembled by human beings using their hands and their hand tools. An F1 car is assembled using nuts and bolts, sockets and spanners. Nowhere in the glitzy videos was anything shown being attached to anything else.
We saw no springs or wishbones, or roll bars or wings, or anything else, not even a steering wheel. There was no suggestion about how the hydraulics would be assembled (you need an enclosed space where the air is sanitised.)
One correspondent offered a conspiracy theory: Bernie so hates America that he allowed USF1's entry in the knowledge that it would fail. It was, however, an FIA sub-committee that decided who would receive the franchises and, as we know, Bernie had no control over such deliberation, especially not when Max was in charge.
We also know that the FIA under Max Mosley was entirely without bias. There would have been excellent reasons for not accepting a bid from Prodrive unrelated to the fact that Prodrive's CEO, Dave Richards, had been co-driver to WRC Champion, Ari Vatanen, who stood against Mosley's favoured candidate, Jean Todt.
It is too early to assess Todt, but it was against the rules for Mosley to nominate a successor. It was also dubious for Todt to be given an official FIA role, which meant that he could wing around in a private jet at the expense of the FIA.
A correspondent has chided me, gently, for always talking about Prodrive and Lola not being invited to the grid. I am English and I know the worth of these outfits and I had only a vague idea about Epsilon Euskadi, which is based in Spain. The CEO is Joan Villadelprat, formerly of McLaren, Tyrrell, Ferrari and Benetton, where he was Managing Director.
Epsilon Euskadi has everything in place, including a wind tunnel. USF1 was going to rent time in a tunnel, but we were never told if they ever did. Access to a wind tunnel is only a first step, you need aerodynamicists to devise programs and you need a team of fabricators to make parts for wind tunnel models.
As long ago as 1989, the 4:10 wind tunnel model used by Onyx GP (by whom Ken Anderson was briefly employed) cost £350,000 because of all the data acquisition equipment on board and Onyx had two model makers and an agreement for occasional use of the tunnel at Imperial College, London.
Epsilon Euskadi has its own tunnel and also had the agreement of both Ferrari and Renault to provide F1 engines, but not Cosworth. I have been told by someone close to the team that things looked fine until, "(they) found that a Cosworth was needed."
While Epsilon Euskadi already had a facility, its Spanish rival Campos Meta, now HRT, commissioned an F1 car from Dallara. That was a sensible move since Dallara knows a thing or two about making racing cars. The thing is, though, Dallara was commissioned in January, 2009, five months before Campos/Hispania was granted a place on the grid.
That could have been seed money, a punt. Dallara is a name that carries weight, though its bills were settled only ten days before Bahrain. Campos/Hispania made it to Bahrain, even if the cars had to start from the pitlane. The FIA has bleated on about safety, so why are cars which have not turned a wheel allowed into a race? What could possibly go wrong with untested cars and novice drivers?
Apparently, a 'white knight' rode to the rescue at the last moment, so allowing Dallara to finish the job. I cannot imagine who that could be. The sidepods of the cars bore the forenames of the drivers and not a sponsor, so no title sponsor, then, the money must have come from another source.
I can remember when 'Tyrrell' was on the side of Tyrrell cars because there was no title sponsor but there was the generosity of a great man, not a tall man, but a great man. After 15 years in F1 and not saying a word, Ken Tyrrell was suddenly the main spokesman on behalf of FOCA and this during the FISA/FOCA 'war'. Tyrrell was the only FOCA team at Imola in 1982, that sort of thing.
I have heard, it may be mere tittle-tattle, that Ken Tyrrell had to sell his operation to BAR because he still owed someone, a great man, though not a tall man, a heap of cash for seeing Tyrrell through some hard times.
Hispania should have been allowed to hire a circuit to carry out systems checks. That would not have offended the spirit behind the FIA's restriction on testing. It would have been simple to impose a rev limit on the engines so that performance testing would be out of the question, but that all the basic systems were in working order, details such as steering and brakes and the drivers being comfortable.
It beggars belief that an untested car should be allowed to start a Grand Prix. Max was always banging on about safety, yet he left the FIA with a set of rules which does not allow a team to check a car for safety. A rev limit of, say, 14,000 rpm would not allow for fine tuning, but it would allow a car to be checked out.
Jean Todt was not my first choice to replace Max, but he has recent hands-on experience of motor racing. He was a superb team organiser whereas Mosley at March, in 1977, was downright embarrassing. Todt always struck me as being a pragmatist and I hope he continues to be so and has the balls to remind everyone about the spirit of the rules, like let HRT check that things do not fall off.
Mosley has left F1, and the least he might have done was to clean up before he departed.
Mike Lawrence
mike@pitpass.com
To check out previous features from Mike, click here