NIGEL ROEBUCK - ונהגים "זקנים" בפורמולה-1

[דובי מילר]

אחת האימרות המוכרות לכל יהודי הינה- אל תשליכני לעת זיקנה ונכתבו על כך הרבה שירים.

כולנו יודעים שלעיתים כאשר אדם מתבגר, מזדקן הוא כבר לא כמו פעם . הביצועים יורדים היופי אולי לא כמו פעם והכל משתנה.

במרוצי מכוניות בכלל ובפורמולה-1 בפרט נוצרת מין דעה כזו שלנהגים זקנים אין מה לחפש על המסלול, אלא אם קוראים לך מיכאל שומאכר.

לואיס המילטון הצעיר של מקלארן-מרצדס כבש את מסלולי המרוצים בפתיחת עונה מסחררת ושלוש פודיומים, דבר שאף אחד לא עשה לפניו וגרם שוב למחשבות באם לא כדאי לתת את ההגה לנהג צעיר מאשר להסתבך בהרפתקאות נוסח בריקלו, פיסיקו או טרולי.

 

NIGEL ROEBUCK נדרש בשאלה הזו השבוע והנה תשובתו המעניינת .

 

תהנו

דובי

[דובי מילר]

I'm not sure that the word 'slow' is the right one to describe any Formula One driver, but I know what you're getting at. It's a fact that - unless he's someone like Michael Schumacher - F1 drivers these days do seem to reach a 'sell by' date, at which point they find themselves unable to get a worthwhile driver any more.

 

This happened to the likes of Alesi and Berger - even though Gerhard dominated a Grand Prix (Hockenheim) in what was to be his last season! And while we're on this subject, does anyone doubt that Luca di Montezemolo's obsession with signing Kimi Raikkonen hastened Schumacher's decision to retire? I don't.

 

Michael, of course, is an extreme case - I don't think there's much doubt that he would have been well capable of winning races for quite some time - but he is 38 now, and team owners are inevitably always looking to the future.

 

Money comes into this, too. By the time a driver has been competing in F1 for eight or 10 years, chances are that he is extremely highly paid. It's like any other job: you start on a relatively lowly salary, and over time of course the money goes up - to the point that eventually an employer starts to find very attractive the idea of starting all over again, with someone young, someone cheap.

 

You cite Ralf Schumacher, Giancarlo Fisichella and Rubens Barrichello as examples of drivers who should perhaps have no place in F1 any more. Apart from being 'slow', you also suggest that they are unmotivated, averse to taking risks, and very expensive.

 

I think maybe you're being a little unfair in describing them as unmotivated: maybe they don't go at it like rookies, but that's been the case since the beginning of time - and I think it's worth pointing out that both Giancarlo and Rubens have been rather stronger in the races than their more youthful team mates, Messrs Kovalainen and Button.

 

Ralf, I'll grant you, has been blown away by Trulli - but Ralf is something of a special case, anyway. For reasons known only to Toyota, he is extremely highly paid, way more, for example, than Fernando Alonso. Go figure - I can't.

 

I'm a touch amused by your suggestion that 'Lewis Hamilton has shown that the teams need not worry - the new guys have all the skills to compete', etc. With the best will in the world, I don't think Lewis - the first man ever to finish his first three World Championship Grands Prix in a podium position - is exactly your standard rookie. If all newcomers were as good as he is, you're right, the teams would indeed have no need to worry. But they're not.

 

If you're right that 'the teams place way too much emphasis on experience', it's only because F1 has changed so much in the recent past. I think you're probably right, but - unlike you - I regret it, because an older driver, perhaps not as out-and-out quick as he had been, could put his experience and guile to work against a younger team mate's blinding speed. In 1979, for example, Gilles Villeneuve was much the quicker of the Ferrari drivers - but it was Jody Scheckter who won the World Championship.

 

Experience counted in other ways, too. In the days before refuelling was brought back, a driver had to work on his car's set-up so that it handled well throughout a race, with very different fuel loads. This was a very specialised art, in which Alain Prost was supreme, but nowadays, with the cars always running relatively light (effectively in 'qualifying spec'), that has become much less important.

 

In this modern era, too, experience counts for less than it did, thanks to 'data'. When rookie Damon Hill joined Prost in the Williams team in 1993, he was invariably way slower than Alain on the opening day of qualifying.

 

"At the end of the day," Adrian Newey said, "Damon would study Alain's 'traces', compare them with his own, and see where he'd been losing time. Next day he'd put that knowledge to good use, and invariably be up there with Alain. Without having access to his team mate's traces, it would have been much harder for Damon, and I always felt a bit sorry for Alain on that score. It was probably the same in every team."

 

As well as that, there is general agreement that today's F1 car - with all the electronic 'gizmos', including traction control - is very much easier to drive than in times past. You can't miss a gearshift any more, you never have to take a hand off the wheel, you have the 'parachute' (as Barrichello calls it) of traction control, and on and on.

 

All these things being so, it's no longer unusual for a raw rookie to step into an F1 car, and immediately be very quick in it. But I rather agree with those who suggest this shouldn't really be able to happen, that the cars are too forgiving, that technology is doing too much of the work which was once the province of the driver. Roll on next year, when traction control is finally banned.