team
To win in Formula One takes more than a pair of hot-shoe drivers. Without the right team manager, the best designer and the slickest pit crew, you will never make the podium. Which is why drivers are not the only ones commanding multi-million pound salaries these days. Alan Henry casts his eye around the paddock to find his fantasy grand prix team
Chief designer
Patrick Head (50). Technical director and shareholder of Williams Grand Prix Engineering. Salary 750 000 plus share of profits.
First offered a job by Frank Williams in 1976 when he was asked: “Are you prepared to work 24 hours a day to achieve motor racing success?” Head replied: “No, because anybody who has to do that must be hopelessly disorganised.” Despite this, he got the job and has been the linchpin of Williams’s technical efforts ever since.
Head’s second design for Williams – the 1979 FW07 – scored the team’s first grand prix victory at Silverstone. Since then Head has built a reputation for solidly engineered cars that mirror his practical, no-nonsense approach to F1 engineering.
To him, engineering excellence is the main priority. Drivers who need emotional life- support systems when they are out of the cockpit are not likely to have an easy ride with him.
Team manager
Jean Todt (51). Sporting director of Scuderia Ferrari. Previously a leading rally co-driver, then competitions director of Peugeot Sport, masterminding their Le Mans victory in 1992.
Salary 600 000. Todt’s status as a Formula One team manager can be gauged by the fact that he has survived and prospered for five seasons in the politically volatile and highly-charged Ferrari team.
He has imposed a disciplined method of working on the team and is admired by his drivers as sympathetic and understanding. When Gerhard Berger came into the pits with handling problems at the 1994 San Marino GP, having led the restart after the fatal accident of his close friend Ayrton Senna, Todt correctly judged his driver was emotionally drained. Shrewdly, he told him he had done enough for the day and should get out of the car.
The decision to take a Ferrari driver out of an F1 race in Italy was a brave one, but Todt’s influence was such that it attracted no adverse comment. He has the total confidence of Ferrari’s president, Luca di Montezemolo, and has always understated the team’s potential, never talking up or exaggerating its prospects.
Aloof, unemotional and pragmatic, Todt is the ideal man to bring cohesion and structure to a fledgling grand prix team.
Pit Stop Team
The Benetton team honed their super-fast pit stop technique in the Michael Schumacher world championship years of 1994 and 1995.
However, their current drivers, Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi, continue to benefit from the team’s slickly choreographed performance – Formula One’s equivalent of synchronised swimming.
In the 7,5 seconds that each car is stationary for refuelling and fresh tyres, a total of 19 perfectly-drilled team personnel work with total harmony in conditions of pressure cooker intensity.
The instant the B197 stops, while the driver concentrates on keeping his right foot firmly on the brake, jacks go under the front and rear of the car. One mechanic per wheel attaches the compressed air wheel gun to the central nut and loosens the wheel, another removes the discarded wheel, and a third mechanic offers up its replacement for the wheel gun handler to tighten immediately.
Two more mechanics control the refuelling line, which attaches to a quick-release connection on the side of the fuel cell. From the front of the car, the chief mechanic keeps overall control of proceedings, only signalling the driver back into the race when he is satisfied that all tasks have been completed with flawless precision.
The Drivers
Michael Schumacher (28). No.1 driver with Ferrari. The best driver in Formula One today. Naturally talented, superbly fit and totally uncompromising, the elder Schumacher brother has inherited the mantle of the late Ayrton Senna. By common consent he is worth up to a second a lap over anybody else driving the same car.
He arrived on the F1 scene with Jordan at the 1991 Belgian GP, was immediately head- hunted by Benetton and won his maiden grand prix at Spa on the first anniversary of his debut. Won the 1994 world championship after Senna’s death in the San Marino GP, although early signs suggested that he might have beaten the Brazilian anyway, then won the title again with Benetton in 1995.
One of his greatest assets has always been the way he handles refuelling stops, regularly making up vital seconds on his “in” and “out”laps. A team player, he inspires all who work with him.
Ralf Schumacher (21). New to F1 this season. Drives for Jordan-Peugeot. Younger brother of Michael. Salary 500 000 Following in his brother’s footsteps as this season’s most impressive new arrival in Formula One. Motor racing history teaches us that the younger brother is very often the better; if so, Ralf Schumacher should be one of the very greatest of all time. Followed his brother up through karting and Formula Three and displays the same level of clinically-detached focus towards the business of being a professional racing driver.
Perhaps even more unyielding than his brother, he has already gained notoriety by knocking off his Jordan team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella in this year’s Argentinian GP – surviving to finish a storming third in only his third F1 outing.
Jordan signed up the inexperienced partnership of Schumacher and Fisichella after the team decided to invest 5-million upgrading its technical base to incorporate a new wind tunnel.
The competitiveness of the Jordan 197 reflects that bold decision, and the German signalled the team’s winning potential by running fourth in the opening stages of the San Marino GP, right behind the eventual victor, Heinz-Harald Frentzen. Sufficiently tough and resilient to survive and thrive as his brother’s team-mate.
The aerodynamicist
Adrian Newey (38). Recently left Williams, due to join McLaren on August 1. Developed March Indycars that dominated the Indy 500 in mid-Eighties, later moving to Leyton House F1 team from 1988 to 1991. Then joined Williams as Patrick Head’s right- hand man, but will triple salary to 2- million with move to McLaren.
Adrian Newey’s technical credentials are pretty well impeccable. A graduate of Southampton University with a degree in aerodynamics and astronautics, Newey’s determination to work in motor racing led him into a post with the now-defunct Fittipaldi Automotive organisation where he worked with Harvey Postlethwaite, now Tyrrell’s technical director.
But it was to be Newey’s experience on the Indycar oval tracks that set him apart. Between 1985 and 1987, his March designs achieved a hat-trick of Indy 500 wins. Eventually he turned to F1, becoming chief designer of the Leyton House team in time for the 1988 season.
“Indianapolis is all about aerodynamics,” he says. “When cars are averaging 200mph, it becomes absolutely critical. Indycars taught me a great deal about the subtleties of chassis set-up.”
Cerebral, calm and slightly introspective, Newey has proved time and again he has the key that unlocks the complexities of F1 aerodynamics. That alone makes him arguably the most important ingredient in any team equation after the drivers.
ENDS