Can Montoya and Schumacher create a legendary rivalry to quicken F1’s pulse?
Richard Williams
As the only 22 men in the world entitled to call themselves grand prix drivers start up their shiny new cars in Australia this week, those of us who call ourselves grand prix fans could be forgiven for feeling that it will take more than a fresh coat of paint to repair some of the damage recently done to the sport’s appeal.
Formula One made the lead story on the front page of the Financial Times last week, for example, and for the wrong sort of reason. On the eve of Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, which opens the 2002 season, the world championship series is up for sale, at a knockdown price.
This is not the image grand prix racing likes to present to the world. Formula One has always been about glamour and success, and since Bernie Ecclestone took control 20 years ago its prosperity curve has come to resemble the acceleration graph of Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari. No one was very surprised when, a fortnight ago, Ecclestone was rumoured to have paid 65-million for a London mansion of such opulence that Charles Foster Kane would have winced with envy. Even a novice like Jenson Button seems to be able to afford all the expensive toys.
As the circus reconvenes in the pleasant surroundings of Melbourne’s Albert Park, however, even the least observant will notice a few clouds drifting over the paddock. The darkest and most significant of them hangs over the garages that should have housed the Prost team.
The history of Formula One is littered with the names of defunct teams, but Alain Prost’s failure seems more surprising since it comes not long after the series was restricted to 12 entrants, with the intention of excluding no-hopers whose cars might take precious TV time away from better-financed teams. The lack of applicants to fill the vacancy forms a dramatic contrast with the position three years ago, when Ford paid 65-million for Jackie Stewart’s team simply in order to buy a ticket to enter the championship.
The face of the sport is changing in other ways. At the wonderful old Monza autodrome, for instance, venerable buildings in the backstage area are being demolished in order to increase the amount of space available for the Paddock Club, the travelling temple of 1 000-a-head corporate hospitality.
There is also the suggestion that the centre of gravity will move east, out of the traditional European heartland and into territories unaffected by the European Union ban on tobacco advertising. If that were to mean forfeiting the Hungaroring or the new Nrburgring, artificial circuits of no distinction, few would mind. If it meant losing Imola or Spa, something precious would go out of the sport.
In the list of discouraging portents, the recent series of new-car launches ranks high. On the outside this year’s cars look pretty much like last year’s, give or take the splash of yellow paint signalling the metamorphosis of a Benetton into a Renault. Tight regulations and computerised design have virtually eliminated the great conceptual leap, at least of the sort that any spectator could recognise.
And yet, against all the odds, the pulse is quickened. For all the sense of uncertainty surrounding the ownership of the sport, for all the tawdriness of the presentation, enough strands of continuity remain to make it possible for the committed fan to maintain a degree of enthusiasm.
Look at any new car and you want to know how it will perform. Can the Ferrari F2002, for example, enable Schumacher to equal Juan Manuel Fangio’s five titles? That would make it an historic season by any definition.
Schumacher’s deeds already qualify him for admission to the ranks of such unchallenged champions as Fangio and Jim Clark. But the finest motor racing history is made when great drivers create the sort of rivalries that pass into legend. A battle between the reigning champion and Juan Pablo Montoya two very different kinds of hero is what most fans will be hoping to see.
Perhaps Montoya will turn out to be the Nuvolari to Schumacher’s Varzi, the Senna to his Prost. In which case all the hype and the gloom will be blown away, and all the absurd sums of money involved will have been worthwhile. Or so, on the road to Melbourne, a fan’s mind still says.