Racing was barbaric, it’s much safer now
MARTIN BRUNDLE EXCLUSIVE
MARTIN BRUNDLE dashing around the grid will form a rich prologue to the 1,000th grand prix show, as it has done for the past 22 years.
‘It’ll be written on my grave,’ says TV’s leading pundit of his a- word- here, a-word-there grid walk.
And before we move on to weightier matters such as how Brundle believes lewis Hamilton is likely to be crowned a seven-time world champion by the end of next season, what does he make of his pre-race gallop?
He draws a breath, perhaps betraying the fact that he could never shed it even if he wanted to, which he just might.
‘The problem is that nine out of 10 people say they love it, and it’s my trademark, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘It’s really my alter-ego doing it. I interrupt people.
‘ I cut in as a driver is having an important conversation with his engineer. If legends like Niki lauda and Alain Prost are talking, I butt in. It is so not me. I have never watched one back.’
Brundle’s scurrying lasts about nine minutes, is totally unrehearsed and unscripted, a high- stakes adrenaline rush that Sky broadcast to 68 nations. And, yes, it can go wrong.
‘I had a “car crash” in Bahrain last race,’ he says. ‘You could hardly see an F1 car for people it was so busy on that grid. I knew Guy Ritchie, the famous director, was somewhere out there.
‘I actually know him from spending some time with him early in the year. So I asked him a question, or so I thought. I wasn’t looking at him at the time, but peering around for my next victim. I’d got the wrong man — somebody who looked like him. I later found Guy and said I’d just spoken to his twin brother. He said it was his bodyguard.
‘But the grid walk has produced some unbelievable moments. At the title showdown at Suzuka in 1998, I remember Mika Hakkinen was pulling his helmet on and gave me a look as if to say I of all people should know better than to approach him then. But I asked him if he could win the title there and then. “Yes, I can,” he said. And 90 minutes later he was world champion.’
We come to speak to Brundle an hour or two before he flies off to his 500-andsomethingth Grand Prix — in Shanghai tomorrow — in his 36th year as an F1 professional, first as a driver who started 158 races and then as a broadcaster since 1997. ‘I can’t wait to go,’ he says of the trip to China. ‘I’m as passionate about Formula One as I’ve ever been.’
He was born into the milieu with his mother and father, who owned a car dealership, steeped in motor racing. Aged five, Brundle went to his first race in 1964, rising before dawn to get from home in Norfolk to Brands Hatch with his uncle Keith. He later stood on makeshift wooden boxes at Copse Corner to watch races at Silverstone.
Having narrowly missed out on the 1983 Formula Three title to Ayrton Senna, Brundle entered Formula One the following year. He had several big smashes, perhaps most memorably when he climbed out from a crash some thought had killed him, at Melbourne in 1996, to drive the spare car, calm as you like.
One injury that still pains him was sustained in practice at dallas in 1984. He broke both feet and ankles, the left ankle so badly that amputation was feared. ‘I put my wife liz and the family through a lot of worry and I am thankful for their understanding more than for anything else,’ he says. Others did not walk away. Of those he knew well, his Tyrrell team-mate Stefan Bellof died in a World endurance Championship race in 1985. And nine years later he was racing in the San Marino Grand Prix at which Senna perished. ‘We drove around his pool of blood for 50 laps after the accident and that enrages me to this day,’ says Brundle. ‘The show must go on, sort of thing. I remember seeing Ayrton’s private jet with the door open and the steps down and thinking that’s not going to happen. I also remember the silence after the race, people doing what they had to do without making any noise. When you step into a racing car you know you might get injured or paralysed or killed. But you want a bit of fear, a bit of selfpreservation. It is safer now than in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.
‘death in the name of sport is totally unacceptable now, but then it was unexceptional. It was barbaric, but only through today’s eyes.’
Brundle will nurse his dodgy ankle through Sunday’s race as he stands to broadcast, as co-commentator to david Croft. Standing was the technique he developed as Murray Walker’s apprentice for the title ‘Voice of Formula One’ during their stint together at ITV in the late Nineties and early 2000s.
Walker did not believe the lungs could function to full- decibel level from a sedentary position.
I ask Brundle, 59, who his heroes were as a boy? ‘Sir Jackie Stewart and Graham Hill, for their amusing sketches on BBC Sports Personality of the Year, like the Two Ronnies.’ And the best? ‘It’s the person you most revere in your own era. Jackie would put Jim Clark up there. Sir Stirling Moss would put Juan Manuel Fangio up there. I would put Senna up there.
‘Mika was the fastest over one lap I ever raced against. Ayrton had Godgiven talent. Michael Schumacher was the most complete. I would add lewis to a list of all-time greatness.’
But does five-times champion Hamilton get the credit he deserves in his own land? ‘Perhaps not,’ says Brundle. ‘Maybe you have to retire or die before people really appreciate you. I like lewis. I have known him since he was 12 but sometimes I feel as if I don’t know him. The next two world titles have his name on them unless Ferrari or Red Bull get their acts together.
‘Mercedes have stamina in their car to stay strong over the season. But I think lewis or Fernando Alonso would have got closer to Mercedes if they rather than Sebastian Vettel had been driving for Ferrari last year. lewis is so streetwise wheel-to-wheel. Seb loses his head a bit. He needs to be out front.’ CHINESE GRAND PRIX: LIVE Sky Sports F1 and Radio 5Live Today: Qualifying 6am. Tomorrow: Race: 7.05am