32 replies to this topic

[IndyIan]

Why is this the case now? All the greats used to drive a variety of different cars, Andretti, Moss, etc. Did they not drive in other types of racing during their F1 careers?
Speedvision had two shows on the 1999 goodwood festival of speed and Hill and Coulthard were there. All Coulthard was whine about how the brakes in his F1 car were much better than anything he drove there. Hill at least went out for a race but spun out with a poor downshift.
Do modern F1 cars drive so much like videogames that the drivers can't handle driving a real car?
I guess the contracts are more binding now but still where have the sponsered prodution car races gone? Like the one Senna won to start his career.
Is it because modern drivers are as worried about who is faster as the MS MH JV posters else where on this board and don't want to look silly?
(Sorry for the rambling )

[Ray Bell]

I think you've got it all in there - they get paid enough too!

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Eric McLoughlin]

Money I guess - contract restrictions too and lack of time. If they're not racing, they're testing or zipping around the world in their biz-jets attending sponor's and corporate "do's". Coulthard could only attend the Goodwood Revival Meeting on the Friday morning because he had to fly off that afternoon on a West promotion.

Damon Hill pussyfooted around in the motor cycle race because of the risk factor. Eddie Jordan would not have been too happy if he'd fallen off. On second thoughts, in the light of how the season developed, he might have been delighted as he could have found a replacement before the season ended.

[Fast One]

Many of today's drivers seem more interested in enhancing their portfolios/resumes than in driving for the love of it. In the past drivers drove for love or because they needed the money, since pay was low. A Formula 1 driver today is at the top. He can do nothing but hurt his reputation by driving in "lesser" series. Imagine if MS drove in the BTC on a lark, and got dusted by one of the drivers more familiar with the equipment and style required. Also, as mentioned above, the full F1 schedule and testing requirements don't leave alot of free time. If you're already making millions, would you rather go to Sebring and thump around in somebody's VERY TIRED Porsche, or just have a weekend to relax? Besides, Bernie wouldn't want one of the stars to risk his rep in a competitor's series. Bad for business.

It's a pity. The old drivers never seemed to imagine they COULD be beaten, so they showd up and raced. Clark in Lotus Cortinas?!!! And when some young gun showed his heels to a top driver, he had a chance to get noticed...and get a ride in a better car/series. That was half the fun of racing then, to see a guy like John Love come within a few dixie cups of gasoline of winning the South African GP in '67. A pity it is that it's just one more thing that was lost to "progress".

[This message has been edited by Fast One (edited 04-11-2000).]

[Keir]

Why does this sound like a F1 vs CART driver comparison???

Why can only one in three CART drivers make it in F1???

What real racecars were you talking about???
Please don't say CART!!!!!

Why doesn't Pedro Diniz spend his money on a CART Team??
Because he wants a real challenge!!!!

F1 4 EVER!!!!!!

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"I Was Born Ready"

[Psychoman]

The bit that really bugs me is that there's always a GP on the weekend of the 24 Heures du Mans. I'd like to see the best of the best at the Sarthe Circuit

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"Hey there, all you middle men
Throw away your fancy clothes
And while you're out there sittin' on a fence
So get off your ass and come down here
'Cause rock 'n' roll ain't no riddle man
To me it makes good, good sense"
-Brian Johnson
SHAMELESS PROMOTION--check out my website! Like the Atlas newsroom, only worse!
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[Ray Bell]

Hey, Fast One, put that one up in the thread about performances in uncompetitive cars..

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[IndyIan]

Eric,
I forgot about the time factor, an F1 driver is really busy these days.
Keir,
What I meant by "real" cars is ones without electronic aids, no finger tip shifting, etc... Also cars that may not have perfect brakes, handling, power curves.
I still believe F1 is the hardest series to win but not always from the driving standpoint. Everything about the cars is so optimized that if anything is wrong or designed poorly you lose.
That said I did really enjoy this last race, Mika and Micheal had a good tight battle and it was too bad Mika's car cut out during MS pitstop otherwise it would have been really close.

[404KF2]

I'm with you, Psychoman!

Let's see Jacques Villeneuve at Le Mans! Go for the Triple Crown, Jacques!

[desmo]

Putting myself in the place of an F1 team manager, I can understand why it would not seem too bright to put in jeopardy the pursuit of a championship by allowing the drivers to engage in this or any high-risk behavior. Millions of dollars and the time and talents of hundreds of professionals are hanging in the balance.

[BRG]

One reason is that the FIA in its wisdom (I can't believe I typed that...) rules that F1 drivers could not compete in any other race during a GP meeting. Before that, some would take in a F2/Junior race and/or a saloon car race. The most recent example was the BMW M1 series in the 1980s where many of the then current F1 drivers also raced. Since then, the door has been closed by officialdom. With 17 GPs this season, plus all the testing in between, there isn't much scope for dirvers now to do anything else, even if their masters would let them.

But I am certain that quality would still come out if they did - Schumacher or Hakinen would doubtless be as tough to beat in a Porsche GT car, a open top sportscar or a touring car as they are in F1. It is a shame we don't get the chance to see this though...

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BRG

"all the time, maximum attack"

[Laphroaig]

The only race I can think of F1 drivers regularly do outside of F1 is the Indoor Karting at Bercy (France, for charity or something).
Eurosport broadcasts it eacht year. F1 drivers against top Kart-racers against some guests (rally drivers, ex-F1 drivers, etc, etc). They compete in different classes with a 'grand finale' at the end. Schumacher won it a couple of times...

(p.s: M.Schumacher still has a (testing) track record at a certain Le Mans variant. He had to test a Mercedes sports car there a couple of times early in his career)

[Walrus]

One of these happenings-once-in-a-while was Helsinki-Thunder 1997, present were Salo(who won),Magnussen (I`m not sure),Trulli, Pirro, Tarquini and Villeneuve from F1, JJ Lehto-can`t see why he`s sometimes spelled Letho-,Moore,Franchitti and Vasser. I went there, first time seeing some F1 drivers live. Got an autograph from Salo and JJ.

[Dave Ware]

It's terribly unfortunate that the crossover that existed in the past doesn't anymore. Andretti was a great example: he ran sprint cars, champ cars, F1, F5000, Can Am, Endurance, often in the same season. You'd get F1 drivers in the Can Am, drivers like Elford and Parnelli Jones in the Trans Am, etc. etc. How great it must have been to go to a Trans Am race and see a former Indy winner competing, and then getting beaten by an up and comer (Mark Donahue.) Great stuff. I wish we still had it today.

Why did it go away? In those days, from what I've read, they just didn't test like they do these days. Mario said in an interview that they'd spend a couple of days testing a new car at the beginning of the season and that would be that. They'd set it up a each particular race and the driver would just drive the thing. And of course in those days a great driver could overcome some handling problems with his driving.

I read in '78, the year Mario won his World Championship, that he spent four days a week testing the Lotus. That was the first time I'd heard of anyone testing so much. So he sure didn't have as much time to go off and run sprint cars, or whatever. And I'm sure it was like that for a lot of other drivers, also.

Someone also mentioned the committments of sponsor appearances. That takes a lot of time. Since it's more expensive these days, the sponsor wants more for it's money.

And for whatever reason, the driver contracts are different. Mario said that Michael wanted to run some IMSA GTP cars in the late eighties...in order to do so he would have had to deal w/ 18 pages of contract-type documents and it just wasn't worth the hassle. It seems the sponsors and teams don't want a driver getting hurt in another event. Makes no sense to me, since the driver could get hurt in the event he's contracted to driver for his main sponsor/team. In either case he's hurt and can't drive for a while.

Well, that's too much rambling on my part...

Dave

Hey, I just noticed that "topic review" below this form! That's really neat!

[Leo]

I remember Jean Alesi doing a guest appearance in the Italian Touringcar Championship back in 1994 or 95. Due to circumstances he wasn't able to take part in qualifying and he had to start from last position on the grid. Alesi was in an Alfa Romeo 155, one of the fastest cars of the field at the time, and didn't want to lose much time getting to the front. So he did his quickest start ever. When the lights turned red he sped off, between the two rows of cars and when the lights turned green he was right up with the leaders. Alesi won the race, but obviously he was disqualified afterwards.
Alesi also participated in an European Rally Championship event in Italy last year, after the 1999 Formula 1 had ended. I think he used a Subaru Impreza, and was about 8th in the final classification. Funny detail: Alesi's former Ferrari teammate Ivan Capelli also took part in the same event and ended well in front of Alesi (about 4th or 5th overall).

[Leif Snellman]

The answer can be found in Nigel Mansell's autobiography:

... I wanted to earn some extra money by racing in the Le Mans 24 hours sportscar race. When I asked Colin he immediately refused permission and he replied: "I haven't just invested £2.5 million in you this past year just for you to get yourself wiped out at Le Mans ... I want you to stay at home that weekend. I will pay you ten thousand just to stay at home".

I think it was Keke Rosberg who once told in an interview that his contract forbade him to do anything that could be considered dangerous!

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Leif Snellman
The Golden Era of Grand Prix Racing
http://www.kolumbus.fi/leif.snellman

[BRG]

Presumably that didn't include smoking....

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BRG

"all the time, maximum attack"

[Ray Bell]

Touche! The attack is at its maximum....

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Huw Jenjin]

i think it would be good if they started the Tasman and Temporada series up again, so that the young bloods got a chance to show their talents,in the GP off season. That is Villeneuve got discovered, by driving the pants off three established GP drivers at Trois Rivires in canada.
Even better would be to have three car GP teams, with the third seat going to a local hot shoe, or the test driver. Make it much more interesting than the circus parade they have now.

[Ian McKean]

Thanks to Leo for his comments on Alesi in a rally recently. I had read in Motoring News that he was planning to do it but had not heard how he had done. Apparently as a boy Alesi's hero was Walter Rhorl and his ambitions were more towards rallying than F1.

It is interesting to speculate on which F1 drivers would succeed in rallying. A few have had a go in the RAC (or Network Q as its called now) (rally of GB). Brundle twice, crashed each time and not very quick. I think his style in F1 was very "keep all 4 wheels stuck if your sideways you're losing time" so it was obvious he would not have a clue in a rally car. Nor would Prost, Lauda, Damon Hill or most of the others. But Alesi should be quite good and Rosberg, Schumacher or Hakkinen would take to it well. Funny how the really quick F1 boys are the ones who WILL get sideways occasionally (maybe the grooved tyres have brought this back).

Back on topic, the man who always raced in everything was S Moss. Apparently he used to abstain from sex the night before a race (the consummate professional - made up for it I expect) but broke his rule the night before a meeting at Brands Hatch. He won the F1, F2, saloons, GT and sports car races the next day.

Apologies if the details of that story are wrong, but I'm sure it was 5 out of 5 started!

I suppose Jochen Rindt was the last F2 privateer to beat the works-entered F1-driver-driven F2 teams and launch his own F1 career. That reminds me, Rindt would have been very quick in a rally car. And another I forgot, Ronnie Peterson...

PS
On re-reading this message I felt I should edit it to point out for non-European readers that there is a world of difference between a typical European tarmac rally and the forest rallies you get in UK and Scandinavia. This is true even today when the FIA (in their wisdom) have decreed that secret routes are not acceptable. It would be much easier for a F1 driver to be competitive on a European rally than a forest rally. Even Rhorl used to hate the RAC Rally (secret stages in those days) but he was still quite good on it; came second one year I think.

A modern non-forest rally is probably much closer to a 1930 Targa Florio or Pescara or Mille Miglia that the 1930 races are to a modern-day circuit race. Early photographs of the Targa show as much gravel as you get today on some rallies... large stones even. Again, the sort of races that Fangio cut his teeth on in South America must have been closer in spirit and required driving style to modern rallying than today's F1.

[This message has been edited by Ian McKean (edited 04-12-2000).]

[John Cross]

I think it is a great shame that F1 drivers do not race in other cars and has been bad for the sport. Wouldn't it be great to see the top F1 guys in F3000, Touring Cars, CART, Sports Cars, etc. It would give a lift to all these categories, let us see who are the great all-rounders (Moss, Clark), give the other drivers a proper yardstick against which to measure themselves, etc. Good topic, IndyIan!

I think the rot set in when Lauda got serious about testing with Ferrari in the mid 1970s - the result was near-domination and everyone else had to go testing as well. I suppose it was inevitable, but ...

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I'll be back...

[Ray Bell]

Moss says that Fangio didn't like Sports Cars, yet he drove regularly in events Moss would not go near until after his career was over (London-Munich, 1974, for instance). But if I remember correctly, Fangio had a co-driver die in one of those events in the dark days of the forties, perhaps it was maturity Moss couldn't understand.

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Dennis David]

Because other cars require you to use a clutch?

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Regards,

Dennis David
Grand Prix History

Life is racing, the rest is waiting

[Todd]

Jim Clark.

[Falcadore]

Pretty much all driver have contracts which state they can't drive other categories. Pity. Even as late as the early 90's current GP drivers were competing at Le Mans.

[J]

I think the biggest problem for drivers attending Procar or Porche super cup type events are commercial intrests. Why would for example Ferrari let their driver race and promote some other car.
Rosberg´s decicion not race in Le Mans during his F1 years was due some friendly advise from his then team manager "If racing at night with twelve pro´s and twenty laywers, butchers or whatever, doing 220mph thru´the woods is your idea of a fun weekend, then by all means do it..". Or something like that.
If given the chance the current generation would probably be just as good as the good ol´ boys. As an example Hakkinen winning Porsche Super Cup in Monaco ´93 when he hadn´t even driven a civilian 911 ever before(and this was a Real 911, pre 993)

J

[This message has been edited by J (edited 04-19-2000).]

[J]

Ian McKean

Funny enough, but Rohl never took part in the rally of the thousand lakes...

J

[Huw Jenjin]

In the UK they used to have rallysprints, and there is that event on madera or some such island where all the rally and race aces get together.
My guess is that rally drivers by their nature are more adapaptable, and therefor beat the racers who are used to slicing .0001 sec off a finely honed lap time.
Ickx,Tambay, Schlesser,Migault and Pescarolo do rallying, as did Marc Surer(big mistake!) and Vic Elford, Sandro Munari among others. Elford would be the most successful race driver in rallying wouldn't he?

[Ray Bell]

Depends on what group of drivers you're discussing. Without a doubt the best we've seen is Colin Bond, who was a racing driver first and rally driver second - until rallying became more important to him and he raced as a secondary role.
He was - quite out of the blue - named on a big English show as the "Best rally driver I've ever seen" by Timo Makinen or somebody of that ilk once - for his performance making up time after brake problems in the Heatway rally in NZ in a Torana GTR XU-1.
Come on, ask...

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Life and love are mixed with pain...

[Ian McKean]

I am sure J is right that the best modern F1 drivers could do well in other branches of the sport if their contracts allowed them to compete. Hakkinen is the only guest driver ever to have won a Porsche Cup round. But then Hakkinen is probably the fastest race driver in the world (IMHO). I am looking forward to seeing how Richard Burns does in the guest Porsche, by the way.

Vic Elford was a rally driver who moved to racing not vice versa. But he had always wanted to race and used rallying as a means of getting into motor sport. He could not afford to race; he could only afford to compete on rallies as a navigator! His first event was as a navigator on a Saturday afternoon treasure hunt in 1956. In 1957 he teamed up with David Seigle-Morris and in the 1960 Tulip they won their class, beating the works Triumphs in their privately-entered but works-prepared TR3A. This got them a works Triumph for the Alpine but then Triumph announced their withdrawal from rallying. They then joined the BMC team, driving Healey 3000's. But Quick Vic was dropped after the Acropolis in 1961 because they got fed up with him wanting to be a driver rather than a co-driver. He raced a Mini during the remainder of 1961, then went back to rallying (as a driver at last) in a works DKW in 1962. His first International as a works driver was the 1962 RAC with Triumph. After several good performances in Tiumphs in 1963, he joined Ford in 1964. At this point my records disappear so I am relying on memory when I say that he returned to racing as a result of joining Porsche in 1967. After winning the Monte he started racing a 911 in saloon events in the UK and, driving for the works team, took third at the Targa and Nurburgring 1000 km. Further successes followed in works Porsches and Alfas in sports car races, including 3 wins at the Nurburgring 1000 Km. He also dabbled in F1 with the Antique Automobiles entered McLaren and drove the fan-car Chaparral. It would have been nice to have seen him in a works F1 car.

As for Rhorl, I am not surprised he was reluctant to do the 1000 Lakes. But if he had done it he would still have been quick. I watched him on the 1986 RAC in a Group B Quattro Sport and he was very committed... until he crashed. Those cars were monsters. Rhorl was a pretty good racer too.

Another who was good at both disciplines was Gerard Larrousse. Initially a skier, he started rallying in 1962, first raced in 1968 and came second at Le Mans the following year. I watched him on the Speech House stage on the last day of the RAC in a Porsche 911 about 1969. He was nowhere in the overall classification (well, maybe just in the top 20) because it was his first time on the RAC and French drivers were not used to secret forest stages. But on that last day he completed his learning curve and suddenly set a string of fastest stage times. Speech House had a long top gear straight leading into the fast right 30 degree kink where I was standing. Any fool in a rally car can look spectacular on a second gear corner, but to take high speed corners with no pace notes and look as if you could not have gone any faster after 20 practice runs... that is what separates the men from the boys. And Larrousse certainly had it that last day of the RAC. I was very sad when he had to fold his F1 team.

As for Colin Bond I don't know anything about him at all. Come on Ray, tell me!

[J]

Ian,

Actually Rohl himself was certain that he wouldn´t be competetive in Finland, so he did´t even bother to show up. This was understandable, since at the time Thousand Lakes was an extremely specialised event, where co-drivers were more of an extra ballast than help(I think that one year it was won by Kyösti Hämäläinen without a co-driver). In any case, thou´ being an amazing rally driver, his no show in the Gravel Grand Prix drops him from my top three all time rally drivers list. No matter what the Motor Sport says.

J

[This message has been edited by J (edited 04-19-2000).]

[This message has been edited by J (edited 04-19-2000).]

[Huw Jenjin]

The bit of Vic Elford's career when he joined Ford also involved David Seigle Morris.
I have this brilliant picture somewhere of three works Mark one Cortinas all four wheel drifting through what looks like a quick cornerin 1964. Each one is pointing directly at the Camera, even though the corner is at thirty degrees to it.
In the Cars are Vic Elford, David Seigle Morris and Henry Liddon (or Henry Taylor, I forget which).
I feel sure that Vic Elford did get works drives in F1 _ wasn't the Cooper Maserati a works car?
Vic's son is now one of motorsport's leading photographers.

[Ray Bell]

Colin Bond was the mainstay driver of the Holden Dealer Team when it was formed in 1969 and through until 1973, when Peter Brock was given his head on the racing side. At that time, team boss Harry Firth let Colin concentrate on rallies (for the same team - it was an all-encompassing team) and only drive the races he had to.
I think it could be said that Colin's forte was in rallying. On that NZ event he had rear brake problems and had to catch up. Every stage he had to pass the whole field, as I recall the story, he was on wakey-wakeys after working on the car constantly and was spearing through the dust and through the field in times nobody could match. The car was a Holden Torana GTR XU-1, which was quite an effective thing for a long-nosed Vauxhall Viva with a 3.3-litre iron six stuffed in it. They had plenty of wick and they were pretty well sorted.
This was Colin at his best - though we often saw him turn up at race meetings after a night out rallying and still turn it on. One Oran Park meeting he started off the rear of the grid in a Torana in a hundred lapper and won the race after being up all night in the dust...
The story about the pommie TV show and the surprise answer to the question came from Colin's sometime navigator, John Dawson-Damer, who these days does little other than own Lotus 16, 18, 33, 39, 49, 63 & 72 models, and I think there's a 78 as well.
He said he was surprised to hear the comment, but knew it was quite true... he was there!

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Life and love are mixed with pain...