125 replies to this topic

[Henri Greuter]

I think in 1983 Prost was the number 1 driver at Renault, not because that was in his contract, but that Cheever knew when he signed that THAT year Renault finally had to win the world championship and that Prost was the best chance for Renault do it. If Cheever had outperformed Prost (hah!) I am also convinced that they would not have given Cheever wooden tires or held him back ('Alain is quicker than you, Eddie.'). But Cheever's car was the driving laboratory for Renault, Eddie had to test all the stuff in races they deemed to risky for Alain's car.

 

So I gather Eddie HAD the number 2 status in his contract... or was told he was.

 

 

When renauult did have a  #1, it certainly stuck to the decision. I remember in '80 when Arnoux won his first GP after Jabouille retired (nothing new here) that there was happynes about being victorious. But when Arnoux won the next race as well after yet (!!!) another retirement from Jabouille, even when Rene was be far better placed in the title chase, Ranault still had Jabouille as their #1 in mind.....

Only during the summer when Jabouille's chances to do well were gone, he still had yet to scre a point that season, the team puts its weighe behind Arnoux and then he got all the mishaps and Jabouille winning a race when Renault had preferred it to happen for Arnoux....

 

 

Henri

[AJCee]

Jabouille's world championship points haul was truly remarkable: surely no one else comes close to a total of three points scoring outings, but two of them being wins!

[Collombin]

Well there's Bill Vukovich but you will probably say he doesn't count.

[AJCee]

Good point well made E.B.

[Henri Greuter]

Well there's Bill Vukovich but you will probably say he doesn't count.

 

Bill had two victories, true. But his third point score wasn't because of a point scoring finishing position but because of the fastes lap in the race.

But you're probably right as this being the closest that we can come to if it comes to WDC scores for a driver.

 

On a side note, this just for fun

This fastest lap in the race point score: Indy 1956 made that this rule took care for a very odd fact. I have done some research on the subject but to my knowledge, during genuine F1 races it has never happened that the fastest lap and thus the point belonging to it went to a driver who was classified dead last in the race. The only occasion it ever happened within the WDC's was in 1956 when Paul Russo drove the fastest lap in the Indy 500 that year but was the first retirement of the race thus 33rd!

I don't think any driver ever scoring a point in the FIA WDC gained a point in the season standing with such a low classification....

 

Henri

[Collombin]

I wasn't saying Vukie would have beaten Jabouille in this regard, just that he would have been close - I had actually assumed he would have earnt a fastest leading lap point for both 1952 and 1955.

[Henri Greuter]

I wasn't saying Vukie would have beaten Jabouille in this regard, just that he would have been close - I had actually assumed he would have earnt a fastest leading lap point for both 1952 and 1955.

 

 

I had only verified 1952 overlooked his 1955 point.... .

I had assumed McGrath having taken that.

 

Henri

[charles r]

One of the things about the McLaren-Honda&Senna deal was of course the fact that McLaren was in need of a new engine supplier once TAG decided to leave F1.

Sometimes I still wonder why they went out. I know that their engine was a bit long in the tooth (1983) and had ran out out steam agains the towerhigh boosted engines of Honda and to some extend Renault. But in '88 the boost was reduced to levels like in the early years of the TAG and it may well have been competitive enough again in the final year of the turbo. And had TAG contineued then there had been a bet less need for McLaren to look for an new engine partner for the future. Who knows the alliance with Honda never had happened then. But everything regarding to who Honda went to was/is directly affected to where Piquet and Senna went to. 

But Image: Honda had stayed on in '88 with Piquet and Mansell, McLaren had retained the TAGs and prost and who-ever. I have no idea where Senna& Honda would have gone to,....

And for 1989 on: Williams still with Honda and them McLaren might have ended up with the Renaults....

 

But even if TAG had expressed a willingness to continue one more year, I doubt if Ron Dennis would have accepted such wih the risk of not ending up with a decent engine deal for beyond '88. Ferrari was likely the only team that would never accept any deal by Honda to become their engine partner and get Senna with it. Every other team I can think of would jump on the occasion instantly.

Anyway, Honda `had` to accept Prost as being the favoured son at the moment within McLaren when they teamed up with McLaren and it appears as if they were not that unhappy with that but only as a solid backup when Senna should fail for whatever reasons. But then for race vistories only, missed world titles by Senna were not really expected....

 

 

The kind of focussing and favouring a single driver within a team is however nothing new. A perfect example of it was seen in the few years before Honda&Senna.

BMW was very fond of Piquet

 

Edit:  Not unsurprisingly after all support and confidence he had in BMW and participated in the development of the BMW engine    EndEdit

 

and so was the entire Brabham organisation. Betweeen '81 and '85 the team was pretty much organized around him and him only. Other drivers didn't really matter and had only to fulfil the wish of Parmalat that if possible, be an Italian, BMW preferred a German or another of their protégés. Patrese, The Fabi brothers filled in the Italian job perfectly to please Parmalat and Ollivetti and one year Francois Hesnault brought a substantial amount of extra $$$ with him to get the ride. None of them could challenge Piquet for the position of team leader, let alone be a danger for him. And when Hesnault bowed out because of the cars being too much to feel comfortable with for him, BMW protégé Surer was the right stand-in.

No worries for Piquet to deal with, what it was to deal with a team mate of his level he was to find out after leaving Brabham. And he certainly didn't like that a split second!!!!

 

BTW, I also recall that in 1983 when the TAG was under development, Mclaren had Lauda do just about all the work with the test car and putting John Watson on below second level. And then came Alain.....  (Giving Lauda a dose of the kind of medicine that he was to get in later years from Senna ......)

 

 

 

Henri

 

Interesting piece about Hesnault here https://joesaward.wo...t-35-2/#respond More to him than I originally thought.

[Henri Greuter]

Interesting piece about Hesnault here https://joesaward.wo...t-35-2/#respond More to him than I originally thought.

 

 

Certainly interesting.

 

Got to say that my comments about François in the post you requoted now reads as too hard. As if I rated him a coward.

Not that I felt him to be a coward btw, anyone who feels that he got into too hot water and has the guts to pull out, kudos.

Now I know this about the crash with a Brabham....

And all that he went trough before.....

 

Kudo's to Francois. It reminds me a but about his successor at Brabham: Marc Surer.

Marc also had some big crashes with injuries that took some time to heal. But after his crash with the Ford RS200 in which his co-driver was killed and he barely survived, he rightly concluded that after so many crashes and recoveries, it was time to quit.

Francois deserves credits for what he did.

 

Henri

[JtP2]

From memory, the only stipulation in Prost's 93 Williams contract was that  Williams could not sign Senna for 93. Senna went mental over the winter trying to get in the car, even offering to drive for free, but to no avail. I think they had to pay Alain even if he didn't drive through the signing of Senna.  Mansell was offered a contract and refused the terms and held his "retirement" press conference at Monza in the middle pf which a Williams employee came to him in the middle and offered increased terms to meet his demands, chocolate Hobnobs? So this meant that Prost had no direct input into Mansell's departure. This then led to the over winter speculation about the 2nd seat at Williams. Ayrtoun saying "I am the best driver, therefore I should have the best car". This begs the question, if you are much better than everyone else, why would you require the best car?

[Steve99]

. This begs the question, if you are much better than everyone else, why would you require the best car?

 

In any profession, you want the best tools for the job, as it makes things much, much easier.

[airbox]

Senna knew he'd be struggling to mount a challenge over a full season with a customer spec Ford V8 in the back of the McLaren

 

Plus, I suspect it was one thing seeing Mansell winning a title in a car that was class of the field, quite another seeing Prost doing the same (and winning his 4th title in the process)

[realracer200]

This begs the question, if you are much better than everyone else, why would you require the best car?

Because in modern motorsport the car is more important than the driver? Also he never said he's "much better than everyone else".

[F1matt]

The best drivers will always want to be in the best cars, nobody can have success if you are in a poor car regardless of how talented you are. I do realise the possibility I may have opened a can of worms...

[PCC]

The best drivers will always want to be in the best cars, nobody can have success if you are in a poor car regardless of how talented you are. I do realise the possibility I may have opened a can of worms...

I think the worst drivers always want to be in the best cars too. Every driver wants to be in the best car. It's hardly a controversial or scandalous desire.

[William Hunt]

IIRC it wasn't Arnoux wife but one for a fairly high placed person from Renault, so that's not the reason for anything to do with Arnoux. And you forgot Prosts fell out with two of the teams he drove for (Renault and Ferrari), one could even say three and include McLaren at the end of '89. So his record in that regard is no better than Mansells, just that evidently he has a far better way to always present himself as the innocent victim.

 

It was in 1983 that the fallout with Renault happened after he was caught with his pants down in a trailer with the wife of an engineer of his own team, Renault. Because of this he was fired.

 

Also: Didier Pironi claimed he had an offer from Ron Dennis to drive for McLaren (one year contract as a stop-go before they could grab Senna) for 1987 but that Alain Prost blocked that move with a veto.

[guiporsche]

Reading from 'Renault F1 les années Turbo' and some bios of Prost, the whole thing is much more complicated than that and (Prost's alleged 'indiscretions', as the Renault F1 book puts it), the real reason he was fired by Renault was that a scapegoat was needed after the defeat of 1983.

 

Prost had been increasingly critical of the team's reliability record, particularly as they were forced by 'upper' orders to use components from within the Renault group (namely the infamous Renix electric engine that controled the V6's injection). That caused a series of retirements in 82-83 and seriously hampered his attempts at winning the WDC in both seasons. Although he was clearly held as n.1 de facto inside the team (faster than Arnoux and as Dudot often remarked, capable of providing intricate feedback and developping a car's setup in every race - unlike Arnoux), he was also seen as somewhat cold and, growingly, overly critical. The feeling was also that in the latter part of 83 he had lost it, having been out-psyched by Piquet and Renault/ELF's inability to win the BHP race against BMW and BASF. According to Dudot, Renault simply had no money left to match BMW's development rate. Being a 'state' team meant that although large by respect of a small independent team its budget was not illimited and certainly not meant to be extended/transgressed. France, at that time, was suffering the after-effects of the second oil shock and the inflationary experiments made at the onset of the first Mitterrand presidency, which in March 83 led to the adoption of deflationary measures.

 

Relations between Prost and Larrousse/the team's direction had, seemingly, already gone sore even before whichever alleged activities took place. One of the issues in question was the 82 French GP won by Arnoux. According to Prost, the plan was for Arnoux to push hard in the beginning to make the Brabham BMW's break and then for him to let Prost go through. What bothered him was not so much that Arnoux did not respect those orders but that no mention of team orders was given by Larrousse or anyone else after the race, making look Prost like a sore loser (and afterwards even receiving threat mail and if I remember correctly, seeing the tyres of his car slashed). In France, Arnoux/Prost was always a bit like Poulidor/Anquetil. 

 

Come the end of 83 and the big defeat (with all the ads already printed, etc) everything was put in question and a decision to start over was made. Prost was fired, and while Larrousse and Dudot continued, Jean-Pierre Boudy was made the scapegoat from the technical side as there was a feeling (I'm basically quoting from 'Renault les années turbo) that he could not translate the developments he made on the V6 to the race track (as in design -> testing -> raceability). Boudy went on to Peugeot and work on the 205/405T16, Le Mans, and the F1 effort, with varying degrees of success. By the end of 1984 it was Larrousse that was canned and Toth was brought in, most probably, to effectively shut the team down, while in the parliament and senate MP's questioned the sense of funding a F1 team while the group was in crisis. But that's another story.

Edited by guiporsche, 16 June 2020 - 08:50.

[Michael Ferner]

Yes, that's pretty much how it appeared to an enthusiast reading the motoring papers at the time, before the "juicy" story emerged in the yellow press (and has, seemingly, become the accepted view ever since).

[F1matt]

It was in 1983 that the fallout with Renault happened after he was caught with his pants down in a trailer with the wife of an engineer of his own team, Renault. Because of this he was fired.

 

Also: Didier Pironi claimed he had an offer from Ron Dennis to drive for McLaren (one year contract as a stop-go before they could grab Senna) for 1987 but that Alain Prost blocked that move with a veto.

 

I know Pironi had tested for AGS and Ligier in 1986 but I thought the conclusion was he was unable to complete a race distance and also the issue of having to pay his insurance company back which is why he switched to class 1 power boating. Chuck in the fact that he hadn’t raced for 4 years because of his injuries would Prost really veto him joining as his team mate in a team where he was double world champion? It doesn’t make sense.

[PayasYouRace]

It would make more sense that Prost advised against Pironi because of his time away and his injuries, which could very easily be misconstrued as a veto.

[guiporsche]

Indeed. The only flagrant case of a driver that at his Mclaren time Prost ever vetoed (on his own admission) was Piquet for 1988 - he backed Senna instead (not that Senna would not have got the drive anyways).

Prost was friends with Pironi, visited him in hospital, accompanied his recovery. He surely knew that due to his injuries Pironi was no longer capable of driving an F1 competitively. That, if I remember correctly from a Roebuck or a Hughes article, was also Arnoux's immediate impression upon listening to Pironi driving the Ligier.

[kayemod]

It would make more sense that Prost advised against Pironi because of his time away and his injuries, which could very easily be misconstrued as a veto.

 

Indeed, about forty years ago, I suffered leg injuries very similar to Pironi's. I've made a pretty good recovery all things considered, but without a shadow of a doubt, Didier could never, ever be anything like the driver he was pre-crash, especially over a race distance.

[Nemo1965]

It would make more sense that Prost advised against Pironi because of his time away and his injuries, which could very easily be misconstrued as a veto.

 

Pironi did a test with AGS and Ligier and everybody who was present knew: it was over. But towards the press both team-managers of the teams praised Pironi's driving as fantastic, just to lure perhaps a sponsor here and there. Off the record they said quite something else. Back then it really left a bad taste in my mouth. 

[William Hunt]

I know Pironi had tested for AGS and Ligier in 1986 but I thought the conclusion was he was unable to complete a race distance and also the issue of having to pay his insurance company back which is why he switched to class 1 power boating. Chuck in the fact that he hadn’t raced for 4 years because of his injuries would Prost really veto him joining as his team mate in a team where he was double world champion? It doesn’t make sense.

Actually I was quoting this (that Pironi had agreed a contract with Larrousse on the Friday before he had his terminal power boat accident) from the Pironi biography that came out in 2018. That book is called: 'Pironi, the champion that never was' written by David Sedgwick.

Now to be honest Mr. Sedgwick is not exactly the most objective "journalist", he has written other books that are basically extreme right / alt right conspiracy books where he defends Donald Trump, calls the media fake news and the BBC communist (that in particular is laughable considering how they actually ran an anti-Corbyn campaing but that's not the point here)....Segdwick breaks just about every rule in journalism including cutting quotes in half etc... in those books, he just tries everything to "prove" his point including fabricating fake news himself.

What I'm trying to say is that the Pironi biography that he wrote is a fun read but it is written by a fan and nowhere in the book is he critical towards Pironi. Well that book claims that Pironi's times in the Ligier were extremely impressive and that he broke the Dijon lap record (well since they didn't race F1 cars there anymore that wouldn't have been difficult) and that Didier was quicker as Laffite had been there. Yet he doesn't explain in the book why Guy Ligier then opted for Philippe Alliot and not for Pironi when Jacques Laffite had to be replaced because I think the Dijon test took place before Jacques accident.

 

The author claims that everyone was in awe after Pironi's tests with AGS (at Le Castellet) and Ligier (at Dijon) and that he was ready to come back now. The author also mentioned the insurance money problem but strangely doesn't mention it anymore when he talks about the McLaren offer and the Larrousse contract...

Also on the Imola incident the author brings up a couple of very good points but at the same time he puts all blame on Villeneuve and he totally clears Pironi of any wrong doing there. I do agree that the backlash Pironi received for Imola was very unfair and far too harsh but putting the blame on Villeneuve as the author did is another matter. In reality we may not know all details of everything that played a role so many years later, at least that's what I think.

So to conclude: I do not know if I can believe this author that Pironi had signed a contract to drive for Larrousse in 1988 just shortly before he died. There is however one person who can now this: Gerard Larrousse himself!
Maybe someone on this forum knows Mr. Larrousse, that would be the only way to find out if Mr. Sedgwick just wrote what he wants to believe or that he did good research there. The book does have a lot of chapters that certainly were researched well but as mentioned before: it's written like as a fan would write about his childhood hero and not by an objective journalist. And considering his other books I'm quite sceptical and really don't know what to believe anymore as a result and considering the far right sympathies of the author I'm even more sceptical. I'm not saying that someone who had far right ideology can't write a good F1 book, it's a different subject in the first place and if I believed that I would not have purchased the book (that again I did enjoy quite a lot) but it does make me more sceptical, in particular because the biography is so lyrical about Pironi, almost as if Didier is a half god...

 

I do know, and this I am very sure of, that in those days there was talk in the (French) press of Didier coming back and that Larrousse was specifically mentioned in F1 magazines, unfortunately I don't own those copies anymore but I clearly remember reading it (and I have a very good memory).

But at the time I interpreted that as the press just speculating on rumours as they so often did (and still do). There were rumours about Jacques Laffite coming back up until 1988! That seems very unlikely since Laffite was already 43 when he had his accident and he would have been 45 in '88. I remember that Laffite was linked to a 'new team Italian called Trivellato' for 1988. Now I know for a fact that Trivellato Racing was going to enter Emanuele Pirro in a customer Benetton in '86, they had the car ready and had a sponsor, but that was called of last minute due to political games. I think Trivellato ended up working together with Scuderia Italia in the end but they were rumoured to set up a new team for '88 but it seemed so unlikely that they would choose Laffite to drive for them.
I think that you should see the Pironi - Larrousse rumours that emerged in '87 in the same light: wishful thinking from some motorsport editors, they were probably just speculating but the only way to find out about this is contacting Mr. Larrousse about it!

 

I also find it strange that Prost would block a move from Pironi (for 1987) to McLaren because... how could Prost see someone who didn't drive for 4 years as a potential threat? Maybe Prost blocked Pironi because he didn't believe he would be quick enough so that the team would miss out on a constructor title? Or maybe Prost blocked Pironi because he didn't like him? Pironi was friends with Arnoux, Depailler, Alboreto and several other drivers but according to the Pironi biography he was not friends with Prost (at least it is never mentioned how their relationship exact was).

So I don't know why Prost would block him, I also find it weird that Ron Dennis himself offered a 1 year contract to Didier as Mr. Sedgwick claims. The author goes as far as saying that the Dolhem-Pironi familly to this day refuses to pronounce the name of Prost because they think that if Prost had not blocked Pironi's move to McLaren that Didier would still be alive today. I find all of that almost surreal, I can't believe McLaren offered that deal and wouldn't be surprised that it's one of Mr. Sedgwick's own fabrications...

Nevertheless I did enjoy the biography and I would recommend to read it IF you keep in mind that it's a book written by a fan and that some parts may not be so objective and are to be taken with a grain of salt. In any case I'm glad that at least someone wrote a Pironi biography since there are several Villeneuve biographies but none about Pironi before this one and Didier is a very interesting character for a biography since he was a complex man and a lof of dramatic things happened to him in '82.

 

At the time, end of '86 early '87 the two lead candidates for that second McLaren seat were, as far as I know, Jonathan Palmer (who came close to getting it) and Stefan Johansson. Dennis might have also considered Thierry Boutsen but I think he was signed up for Benetton quite early so probably not. But in those days never had I heard of a story linking Pironi to that seat as Mr. Segdwick claims, I find it very odd because why would Dennis pick a driver that was 4 years out of F1 above the likes of Johansson, Brundle, Boutsen, Pirro or Palmer? Makes no sense to me. I think it was always between Palmer & Johansson most likely.
Segdwick is suggesting that it was the impressive Ligier test that triggered the McLaren offer, again hard to believe for me because why didn't Guy Ligier make an offer to Pironi then? Yet in the Pironi biography Sedgwick writes of the McLaren offer by Dennis and Prost blocking it as a fact that happened, not as something that could have happened of something that was rumoured, no he claims it is a fact. Seems like very sloppy 'journalism' (or even fake news) to me, the author doesn't even mention a source for it.

Edited by William Hunt, 17 June 2020 - 01:17.

[Nemo1965]

Actually I was quoting this (that Pironi had agreed a contract with Larrousse on the Friday before he had his terminal power boat accident) from the Pironi biography that came out in 2018. That book is called: 'Pironi, the champion that never was' written by David Sedgwick.

Now to be honest Mr. Sedgwick is not exactly the most objective "journalist", he has written other books that are basically extreme right / alt right conspiracy books where he defends Donald Trump, calls the media fake news and the BBC communist (that in particular is laughable considering how they actually ran an anti-Corbyn campaing but that's not the point here)....Segdwick breaks just about every rule in journalism including cutting quotes in half etc... in those books, he just tries everything to "prove" his point including fabricating fake news himself.

What I'm trying to say is that the Pironi biography that he wrote is a fun read but it is written by a fan and nowhere in the book is he critical towards Pironi. Well that book claims that Pironi's times in the Ligier were extremely impressive and that he broke the Dijon lap record (well since they didn't race F1 cars there anymore that wouldn't have been difficult) and that Didier was quicker as Laffite had been there. Yet he doesn't explain in the book why Guy Ligier then opted for Philippe Alliot and not for Pironi when Jacques Laffite had to be replaced because I think the Dijon test took place before Jacques accident.

 

The author claims that everyone was in awe after Pironi's tests with AGS (at Le Castellet) and Ligier (at Dijon) and that he was ready to come back now. The author also mentioned the insurance money problem but strangely doesn't mention it anymore when he talks about the McLaren offer and the Larrousse contract...

Also on the Imola incident the author brings up a couple of very good points but at the same time he puts all blame on Villeneuve and he totally clears Pironi of any wrong doing there. I do agree that the backlash Pironi received for Imola was very unfair and far too harsh but putting the blame on Villeneuve as the author did is another matter. In reality we may not know all details of everything that played a role so many years later, at least that's what I think.

So to conclude: I do not know if I can believe this author that Pironi had signed a contract to drive for Larrousse in 1988 just shortly before he died. There is however one person who can now this: Gerard Larrousse himself!
Maybe someone on this forum knows Mr. Larrousse, that would be the only way to find out if Mr. Sedgwick just wrote what he wants to believe or that he did good research there. The book does have a lot of chapters that certainly were researched well but as mentioned before: it's written like as a fan would write about his childhood hero and not by an objective journalist. And considering his other books I'm quite sceptical and really don't know what to believe anymore as a result and considering the far right sympathies of the author I'm even more sceptical. I'm not saying that someone who had far right ideology can't write a good F1 book, it's a different subject in the first place and if I believed that I would not have purchased the book (that again I did enjoy quite a lot) but it does make me more sceptical, in particular because the biography is so lyrical about Pironi, almost as if Didier is a half god...

 

I do know, and this I am very sure of, that in those days there was talk in the (French) press of Didier coming back and that Larrousse was specifically mentioned in F1 magazines, unfortunately I don't own those copies anymore but I clearly remember reading it (and I have a very good memory).

But at the time I interpreted that as the press just speculating on rumours as they so often did (and still do). There were rumours about Jacques Laffite coming back up until 1988! That seems very unlikely since Laffite was already 43 when he had his accident and he would have been 45 in '88. I remember that Laffite was linked to a 'new team Italian called Trivellato' for 1988. Now I know for a fact that Trivellato Racing was going to enter Emanuele Pirro in a customer Benetton in '86, they had the car ready and had a sponsor, but that was called of last minute due to political games. I think Trivellato ended up working together with Scuderia Italia in the end but they were rumoured to set up a new team for '88 but it seemed so unlikely that they would choose Laffite to drive for them.
I think that you should see the Pironi - Larrousse rumours that emerged in '87 in the same light: wishful thinking from some motorsport editors, they were probably just speculating but the only way to find out about this is contacting Mr. Larrousse about it!

 

I also find it strange that Prost would block a move from Pironi (for 1987) to McLaren because... how could Prost see someone who didn't drive for 4 years as a potential threat? Maybe Prost blocked Pironi because he didn't believe he would be quick enough so that the team would miss out on a constructor title? Or maybe Prost blocked Pironi because he didn't like him? Pironi was friends with Arnoux, Depailler, Alboreto and several other drivers but according to the Pironi biography he was not friends with Prost (at least it is never mentioned how their relationship exact was).

So I don't know why Prost would block him, I also find it weird that Ron Dennis himself offered a 1 year contract to Didier as Mr. Sedgwick claims. The author goes as far as saying that the Dolhem-Pironi familly to this day refuses to pronounce the name of Prost because they think that if Prost had not blocked Pironi's move to McLaren that Didier would still be alive today. I find all of that almost surreal, I can't believe McLaren offered that deal and wouldn't be surprised that it's one of Mr. Sedgwick's own fabrications...

Nevertheless I did enjoy the biography and I would recommend to read it IF you keep in mind that it's a book written by a fan and that some parts may not be so objective and are to be taken with a grain of salt. In any case I'm glad that at least someone wrote a Pironi biography since there are several Villeneuve biographies but none about Pironi before this one and Didier is a very interesting character for a biography since he was a complex man and a lof of dramatic things happened to him in '82.

 

At the time, end of '86 early '87 the two lead candidates for that second McLaren seat were, as far as I know, Jonathan Palmer (who came close to getting it) and Stefan Johansson. Dennis might have also considered Thierry Boutsen but I think he was signed up for Benetton quite early so probably not. But in those days never had I heard of a story linking Pironi to that seat as Mr. Segdwick claims, I find it very odd because why would Dennis pick a driver that was 4 years out of F1 above the likes of Johansson, Brundle, Boutsen, Pirro or Palmer? Makes no sense to me. I think it was always between Palmer & Johansson most likely.
Segdwick is suggesting that it was the impressive Ligier test that triggered the McLaren offer, again hard to believe for me because why didn't Guy Ligier make an offer to Pironi then? Yet in the Pironi biography Sedgwick writes of the McLaren offer by Dennis and Prost blocking it as a fact that happened, not as something that could have happened of something that was rumoured, no he claims it is a fact. Seems like very sloppy 'journalism' (or even fake news) to me, the author doesn't even mention a source for it.

 

William, apart from suspect sponsor-hunting, even good journalists in F1 (not saying the aforementioned is one) often have the De mortuis nil nisi bene-virus: nothing but good (even when it is not true) about dead drivers. Jacky Stewart made Francois Cevert in remembrance as good as himself as a driver, Heinz Prüller made Ronnie Peterson a victim of the Lotus-team and Jules Bianchi is now often portrayed as the perished heir to Lewis Hamilton.

 

It is a much better story for F1-writers than Didier Pironi was still good enough to be world champion, and even a better story for hacks about the 'infamous political' Alain Prost put a stop to that. 

[kayemod]

William, apart from suspect sponsor-hunting, even good journalists in F1 (not saying the aforementioned is one) often have the De mortuis nil nisi bene-virus: nothing but good (even when it is not true) about dead drivers. Jacky Stewart made Francois Cevert in remembrance as good as himself as a driver, Heinz Prüller made Ronnie Peterson a victim of the Lotus-team and Jules Bianchi is now often portrayed as the perished heir to Lewis Hamilton.

 

It is a much better story for F1-writers than Didier Pironi was still good enough to be world champion, and even a better story for hacks about the 'infamous political' Alain Prost put a stop to that. 

 

Well put, and all very true.