Fifth Column: Nigel Roebuck
Fernando Alonso is wearing a replica of his Indy lid this weekend; wouldn’t it be great if more top drivers ‘crossed the floor’?
IN AUSTIN THIS WEEKEND FERNANDO ALONSO IS to reprise the helmet he used for the Indianapolis 500, and he’s doing it, he says, in tribute to Indy and to American racing fans. The only pity is that the helmet won’t be seen in an orange car, as at the 500, where the reappearance of the colour resonated strongly with one and all. What we need over the winter is for Mclaren’s marketing/brand people to replace the nondescript livery of this year with the papaya synonymous, in Bruce’s day, with the cars that bore his name.
As I wrote at the time, the Alonso I saw at the Speedway was overtly happier than at any race for a long time: for one thing, the fresh environment in which he found himself was much to his liking; for another, for the first time in four years he was going into a race with a competitive car.
As it was, Fernando’s Honda engine let go 20 laps from the end when he was in with a genuine shot at victory, and as he pulled off at Turn 1, the cheers from the crowd were audible over the sound of the engines. No surprise that, for all it ended in disappointment, the 500 experience has been very much the highlight of Alonso’s year.
When we talked before the race he mentioned that one of the many little pleasures of Indy had been the procedure for starting the engine: “Formula 1 engines are so complex now, but this is like the old days – you just raise a finger, and away you go!”
There is of course endless debate about the specification of the next engine in Formula 1, although by common consent it must be considerably simpler and cheaper than that in current use. When I suggested to Fernando that maybe there was a case to be made for using the contemporary Indycar engine – a turbocharged 2.2-litre V6 – as a basis, he agreed: apart from being far less complex and costly, relatively equal performance was more or less guaranteed.
Trouble is, it ain’t a hybrid, and Alonso made another point, too: “It would never work in Formula 1 because the big manufacturers will never accept the idea of ‘similar’ engines, will they?
It’s a never-ending story.
“For sure,” he went on, “the actual racing would be more spectacular if you had F2 cars, driven by Formula 1 drivers. Compared with what we have now, it would be cheap, and with the cars so equal, the driver would matter more – I think the spectators would love that kind of racing, but of course Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault would not be there…”
Alonso’s words came back to me last week when I watched on TV the F2 race at Jerez, this final European round of the
“Drivers participated in other series, and worked hard for their money”
year a ‘stand alone’ event, run the weekend of the Japanese Grand Prix. The race, I’m told by a friend who was there, received absolutely no publicity, and in this day and age it was thus no surprise that hardly anyone showed up to watch, which was a shame because Charles Leclerc – surely Ferrari’s next star – and the other frontrunners put on a fine show.
The same thought occurred on race day at Monza. In the morning there was a riveting Formula 2 race, with passing left, right and centre, and that served only to highlight the acute dreariness of the Italian Grand Prix, a race whose only virtue was its brevity.
Formula 2 is of course seen as a feeder series for Formula 1, and such was always the case, but time was when it had far greater cachet than now. In the 1960s and ’70s the racing world was a very different place, and although Formula 1 was obviously the top of the tree, it was not to the degree we take for granted these days. For one thing, there were far fewer grands prix.
For another, a driver couldn’t make a living from Formula 1 alone. In 1965 Jim Clark, the greatest on earth, won not only his second world championship, but also the Indy 500, and his share of the $166,000 prize money will have been most welcome: for a season of Formula 1 with Lotus, Colin Chapman was paying Jimmy £7500.
Therefore the top drivers participated in other series, too, be it world championship sportscar racing, Can-am, touring cars, Formula 2, whatever – and they worked very hard for their money: if, in 1967, there were but 11 grands prix, there were also half a dozen non-championship F1 races (four of them in the UK) – and no fewer than 22
F2 races (six of them on these shores), in which the likes of Clark, Surtees, Brabham, Hill, Stewart and Ickx routinely took part. After the Canadian Grand Prix, indeed, five of them took a ‘red eye’ from Toronto to compete at Brands Hatch the following day.
Drivers on this level – designated ‘graded drivers’ by the FIA – were not eligible for points in the European Championship, but that didn’t matter: what was so intoxicating – and revealing – about Formula 2 was that it enabled future stars to measure themselves against the aces of the moment. When, for example, an Austrian unknown beat Graham Hill in a straight fight at Crystal Palace in 1964, that registered: the following year Jochen Rindt was into Formula 1.
Formula 2 cars were of course slower and less sophisticated than their big brothers, but the thing was, they raced superbly, and yes, being relatively equal, the driver – as Alonso suggested – mattered more. I’m afraid it’s a pipe dream, Fernando, but I’d travel a long way for an F2 race featuring guys like you and Lewis and Max, with such as Leclerc thrown into the mix. The challenge for Ross
Brawn is to make Formula 1 as entertaining as that.