Friday 4 December 2009

Jacques comes back

It now looks more probable than possible that 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve will be back on the Formula 1 grid in 2010. Rumour now has it that he will be announced as a Lotus driver some time next week. However, unlike the stir that Michael Schumacher has now twice caused with potential comebacks in 2009, the news Villeneuve is to return has barely even registered beyond a ripple amongst hardened fans and nerdy types.

In a way, this is very understandable, as Villeneuve is possessed of a particularly unusual career history in the world's premier single-seater category. Perhaps only Emerson Fittipaldi, who won 2 titles in his first 4 years in the sport then spent a further 6 tooling around in the pack driving for his family team, can match it. In Jacques' first 33 races in the sport, he won eleven times and finished no lower than second in the drivers' championship standings. In the subsequent 131 he did no better than four 3rd places and fifth in the final table.


Much of the reason for this will be put at the door of his decision, mid-1998, to leave the Williams team and join his long-time manager Craig Pollock at British American Racing. His first season with the team built around him was an unmitigated disaster: he failed to finish any of the first eleven races of the year and finished without a point to his name. He stayed with the team for an additional 4 seasons, but rarely looked anything but a midfield runner. In 2004 he took a sabbatical year, save for three races at Renault towards the end of the season, before an 18-month return to the sport with Sauber and BMW. When he walked out of his broken car at the German Grand Prix in 2006, however, it looked very much like he was done with Formula 1, sick to death and glad to be rid of it.

Because the simple fact of the matter is, Villeneuve never, ever got to grips with Formula 1's grooved tyre era. A vocal opponent of the change, when the ludicrous rubber actually appeared in 1998, Villeneuve was never the same driver again. So reliant on absolute commitment and late braking for his speed, Villeneuve lost his edge, lost his confidence, then lost everything. Perhaps the saddest sight of all was of a once-great driver at all kinds of lurid angles in his early days at Sauber in 2005, damn-nearly completely unable to make his car brake in a straight line.

Yes, there are questions about his decision to join BAR and his suitability thereafter as a team leader and as a focal point for a squad's development. But I honestly think that, with different tyres, we'd have seen a different Jacques. And a different Jacques could have meant the recent history of Grand Prix racing could have been a little different.

There's now a whole new generation of motor racing fans who, though they may remember Villeneuve the midfield runner, may not think of him in any other way. If you were born on the day Villeneuve won his last Grand Prix, you would now be 12-years old and at secondary school. The news that Jacques Villeneuve has been tempted back across the Atlantic by the new Formula and, crucially, its slick tyres, would most likely have failed to excite you. However, with a bit of luck, 2010 may give us glimpses of a return to the old Villeneuve - rear wheels almost perpetually on the limits of the exit kerbs, brakes locked and at maximum attack, the Villeneuve who, between 1995 and 1997 won the Indy 500, the Indycar championship, 11 Grands Prix and the world title. Just to have a driver of his pedigree and personality back in the sport would be treat enough for me. But if his car allows him to recapture his old form, he's going to make an indeleble mark on a whole new generation of impressionable young minds.

Thursday 3 December 2009

2010 new teams for 2010

One of the oft-cited fears about next season's Formula 1 World Championship (during the achingly-predictable political squabbles and threats of a breakaway series that characterised much of the early part of 2009 season) was that without the big-name teams, the sport would be lacking in credibility. An all-new look F1, led by a vanguard of Williams and Force India and largely powered by Cosworth engines seemed, for a time, to be on the cards. This never particularly bothered me - I'm more interested in historical continuity than following big names like Red Bull Racing (who?) around wherever they go. For some, however, it was a real sticking point, to the point where Ferrari even used its lengthening shadow to gain leverage in the propaganda battle.

With the new Concorde Agreement signed and all the usual suspects still in place, 2010 will nevertheless have a very different make-up. Toyota and BMW are gone and - if strong rumours are to be believed - Renault are about to follow them and be run by and badged as David Richards' Prodrive operation for the next few years. There are already going to be four brand new teams lining up at Bahrain next March. With Prodrive and a probable entry for Sauber, the eponymous Peter having completed negotiations with BMW to buy back his old team earlier this week, it would make six. Serbian team Stefan Grand Prix are also trying to find a way in for 2010, rumours having them putting in an offer for Toyota's entry. Not even last years' Constructors' champions will be on the grid in the same form, of course, now that Brawn are rebadged as Mercedes GP.

That leaves us with a probable field of 26 cars and 13 teams, only six of whom competed in their current form in the 2009 World Championship. However, far from being a sign of a sport battling for credibility, Formula 1 is showing signs of enormous growth. OK, the years of plenty have gone, with big car manufacturers unwilling to plough huge amounts of money into a sport where they'll probably be beaten by a British outfit who built their chassis in a shed in Milton Keynes and then cobbled an old V8 into the back of it. But those garagistes were precisely the people who dominated the boom period of Grand Prix racing's huge growth to worldwide prominence in the 1970s and 1980s and precisely the people who the big car companies had to beat. The fact that they didn't and then chucked in the towel only reflects badly on one of the parties.

The irony of this situation is that it was the outbreak of common sense and unity within FOCA and the FIA which has allowed these developments. Through all the threats, counter-threats and posturing - for all the worries about big-name teams departing - all concerned have contrived to create a sport which, though retaining the thread of its heritage and prestige, is nevertheless an attractive and achievable prospect for newcomers. Indeed, the new regulations are even showing signs of tempting new investment from car companies - Volkswagen are said to be looking in to F1 engine supply for 2012 onwards.

It's also good news for the drivers. More cars means more opportunities to get onto the grid, and more drivers on the grid means more excitement and interest for the spectators. Because, and let's hope that Formula 1 teams never forget this, it's drivers who the majority of people come to see. The only loss to Formula 1 2010, then, is some big-name car companies. And I for one think that the loss is all theirs.