Scotland’s former F1 champion Jackie Stewart was thrilled with second place in Monte Carlo
MOTOR RACING:Alan Henry
RUBENS BARRICHELLO revived the love affair between his team owner Jackie Stewart and the Monaco Grand Prix with his flawless drive to second place in last weekend’s rain-soaked race.
It is 33 years since Stewart, now 57, first visited Monaco to compete in the Formula Three classic that is the traditional curtain-raiser to the main event.
The following year he returned to this most famous of circuits as a Formula One novice, partnering Graham Hill in the BRM team, and for a while looked certain to win the Grand Prix at his first attempt, only for a spin to drop him to third.
In 1966 he returned to win the race for BRM, and he was leading again in 1967 when the transmission failed and he was left to watch from the pits as an ominous cloud of smoke rose from over the chicane, marking the point at which the Italian hero Lorenzo Bandini crashed fatally in his Ferrari.
Throughout the remainder of his racing career, which included two more Monaco wins for Tyrrell in 1971 and 1973, Stewart campaigned ceaselessly for higher standards of cicuit safety. Last weekend he was happy to watch from the pit wall as a new generation of drivers, benefiting from what is in part his legacy, competed safely in atrocious weather conditions.
Stewart claimed that Barrichello’s second place had given him greater satisfaction than any of his own achievements behind the wheel.
“I have never been happier in my entire racing career,” he said, “not from a race victory nor a world championship, not even here at Monaco.
“I’ve never been second at Monaco, but I’d much rather our team’s car finished second here than win the race myself.
“Monaco is the jewel in the crown of grand prix racing. Rubens drove fantastically well.
“He really put it together superbly, apart from one slight error at the chicane, but apart from that it was all we could hope for.
“The Stewart-Ford team has certainly achieved its first podium finish much earlier than we could have ever expected.”
Stewart retired from driving at the end of the 1973 season and pursued his various interests before renewing his involvement in the sport when his son Paul took up racing in 1987.
Paul graduated to Formula 3000 before retiring at the end of 1993 to concentrate on the development of Paul Stewart Racing, a team who have scored more than 100 race wins in minor-league formulae including the F3 and Vauxhall Junior categories.
Jackie Stewart’s achievements have apparently earned him no privileges in F1, though. He has been in dispute with Bernie Ecclestone over the siting of his team’s motorhome away from the established teams’ prime position on the Monaco waterfront.
Stewart is taking legal advice to establish his team’s position in relation to the Concorde agreement, the complex protocol that governs the way in which F1 is administered and, perhaps even more significantly, how the prize and television revenues are shared out among the competing teams.
McLaren, Williams and Tyrrell – Stewart’s old team – are involved in a separate long- running dispute over the Concorde agreement with the FIA, motor racing’s governing body.
The outcome of the Monaco race was entirely shaped by the decisions of the drivers and team managers in the half-hour before the start, when spits of rain appeared to carry the threat of something worse.
With Heinz-Harald Frentzen on pole position and Jacques Villeneuve third, behind Michael Schumacher, the Williams team trusted the computerised forecast of clearer weather and left both cars on slick dry-weather tyres.
While Schumacher’s rivals were consulting their computerised weather forecasts, the German looked at the sky. They saw a prediction of clear weather. He saw clouds and sniffed rain. Two hours later his Ferrari splashed across the finish line almost a minute ahead of its nearest rival.
Schumacher’s racing brain is always most keenly activated by wet weather, and the race here last Sunday provided further proof. The reward was his.
Ferrari’s first win of 1997giving him the lead in the drivers’ championship after five of the 17 races.
ENDS