DEREK BELL
The Legend
Well, the 2021 motorsport season is well and truly underway. Obviously, having raced sports cars for so long, I was excited to watch the Sebring 12 Hours, and the stars were aligned for Sébastien Bourdais, Loïc Duval and Tristan Vautier who claimed honours. It never ceases to amaze me just how competitive these endurance events are these days.
I remember when they were won by several laps. In some instances, it would be well into double figures amid all the attrition. Nowadays, they really are longdistance sprints, and in March the top four cars finished on the same lap. That’s incredible.
The thing is, I also recall a time, not all that long ago, when race directors would try to spice up the action by throwing a full-course yellow or two because of an ‘incident’ that really wasn’t anything of the sort. I used to hate that when I was driving. You would flog your guts out trying to eke out an advantage, only to see it vanish in an instant. That clearly wasn’t the case at Sebring this year, though. There was just hard racing for 12 hours straight. What I love about American motorsport is that the organisers really know how to put on a show, and the equivalency regulations appear to be working brilliantly.
The first Grand Prix of the year in Bahrain also proved highly entertaining. I know the outcome will have been picked apart and analysed to the nth degree by the time you read this, so I won’t go into too much detail, but I have to say that I thought it was a corker. Yes, Lewis Hamilton won again, but it was great to see Max Verstappen battling him to the end.
I want to see a lot more of that this year as, I suspect, do you. They are both brilliant drivers, the class of the field, and it’s nice to see Lewis really having to work for it. I am not suggesting that he has had an easy ride these past few seasons, more that he clearly had the best car and extracted every ounce of performance from it. Now it would appear that Red Bull is a lot closer to Mercedes than in recent years.
I was also very impressed by Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez, who overcame his car-related dramas on the warm-up lap to finish fifth. I was also pleased to see that Fernando Alonso hasn’t lost any of his fighting spirit after a few years away from ‘Eff One’. He was great value until a sandwich wrapper got stuck in his Alpine’s rear brake duct, which caused it to overheat. I have heard some unusual reasons for retirement before now, but that was a new one. And what about Yuki Tsunoda’s drive? The rookie was mighty in practice and great value in the race, in which he finished ninth. Alonso is his hero, but the Japanese youngster was only nine months old when the Spaniard made his debut in Formula 1. Can you say ‘changing of the guard’?
The big news in the build-up to the Bahrain race was the rumour that Porsche might be making a return to Grand Prix competition in 2025. I was contacted by a few journalists asking me for my thoughts, I guess because I am a Porsche Old Boy, but I was rather caught on the hop. The thing is, there have been stories about Porsche re-entering F1 for as long as I can remember. The motor racing weeklies were always running such items whenever there was a slow news’ day. Porsche last competed as a manufacturer way back in 1962, let’s not forget.
Yes, I know there was the association with TAG and McLaren in the 1980s that was incredibly successful, plus the lamentable tie-in with Footwork in 1991 that was anything but. I have read a few quotes from insiders who claim that Porsche may consider returning due to its interest in sustainability. That, and if plans for the implementation of e-fuels get the green light. So nothing is concrete, but they have time on their side. You have to ask yourself, though, what is the point?
I remember when I was a works Porsche driver and I learned that the Group C programme was being axed in favour of IndyCar. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Porsche – which was rooted in sports cars, not least because that’s what it manufactured – would opt for single-seaters. That wasn’t much of a success, either, but that’s a story for another column.
The point is, motorsport tends to be tribal: NASCAR fans don’t tend to follow the WRC, in the same way that F1 types probably aren’t interested in the BTCC. Maybe that’s a myopic viewpoint, but I don’t think it is. I, for one, would love to see Porsche stick with sports car racing because that is where so much of its history, its legacy, lies.
And what a phenomenal legacy it is.
‘LEWIS HAMILTON WON AGAIN, BUT IT WAS GREAT TO SEE MAX VERSTAPPEN BATTLING HIM TO THE END’