Sometimes I come in here, read a page of posts and think I've entered the twilight zone.
Sometimes I come in here, read a page of posts and think I've entered a group-hug zone. Let's welcome new posters, as long as they don't troll.
Watson was never a screw-the-courage-to-the-sticking-post sort of driver. He was though the best overtaker in F1 in that period. Obvs his coming from 22nd to 1st at Long Beach 1983 is proverbial, but he wasn't far off doing that at Detroit in 1982, when it was much harder.
Regarding Watson and Niki, everytime I compare Lewis and Nico in mind, these quotes from Watson emerge. Read it as if Watson is Lewis and Niki is Nico.
‘We struggled all the way through prac- tice and qualifying to find grip,’ Watson says. ‘In the intermission when the race was stopped Pierre Dupasquier of Michelin, who was one of the smartest men I’ve ever met within motor racing - a very, very smart engineer - came to me and said «John, you’re on the 06 (or whatever it was), the softest tyre. Please go and put on a set of 05s, one compound harder.»
Actually it wasn’t so straightforward because in those days there were extremely subtle differences between grades, compounds and construction of tyres and Michelin operated with great secrecy anyway. I’m not sure Pierre didn’t even say «You will win the race.» I went to my mechanics and said: 'Look, have you guys got some of my 05s?'
They dragged some out, strapped them on, the race recommenced, and bit by bit I found myself able to pick up pace. Michelin would never have gone to Niki and said the same thing to him because he always ran the 06s whenever he could, so it would have been pointless...’
‘Anyway, I was coming through with such positiveness: bosh, bosh, bosh, job done. the power of positive thought is an exceptionally powerful tool in all of life but it’s knowing how and when to apply it.
‘It was my little tsunami, if you like. I had a rhythm, I had a car which, suddenly, was reborn with the tyres. Ironically if you were looking for rhythm you couldn’t come to a better city than Detroit, home of Tamla Motown.’
‘While all this was going on, behind me my good old team-mate and friend Niki suddenly went: oh, oh, you can pass here, reprogramme the computer chip in the brain. He got past Cheever and Pironi and he had a better chance of winning the race than me. He was fewer seconds behind Keke than I was and he could have finished second on the road but won on aggregate. He tried to pass Keke, got it wrong and shunted, which Keke found very amusing. Whereas I was quiet, clean, positive, Niki was: will I, won’t I? Keke shut the door, and that was it.’
Edited by Nemo1965, 14 November 2014 - 07:36.