My background as an F1 fan began in 2000, at the tender age of 6. During the 2000 Belgian GP, I found myself channel hopping in the hope it would quell my Sunday afternoon boredom. The moment I flicked to the F1 Mika Hakkinen was putting the extraordinary move on Michael Schumacher at Les Combes whilst lapping Ricardo Zonta. I was hooked. Hakkinen’s humility in the press conference was astonishing. I was in awe of Hakkinen. He was my first sporting hero. His McLaren replacement, Kimi Raikkonen (Another Finn) amazed me with equal awe. Because of these 2 drivers, I am a massive fan of all Finnish Athletes in any sport. Fast forward 5 years for the greatest race I have ever seen.

The 2005 Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka was without doubt the greatest race I have ever seen. For me it was the perfect race. As a massive Kimi Raikkonen fan, I was dejected to see Fernando Alonso take the title in Brazil the race before, but with 2 races to go the constructors championship was still at stake for McLaren and Renault.

A remarkable wet qualifying session meant it was a mixed grid with Ralf Schumacher on pole for Toyota and Jenson Button 2nd; Fisichella was 3rd for Renault. Team Mate Alonso was 16th after getting affected by the heavy rain, so to were Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya, who qualified 17th and 18th. I’d anticipated before the race was that Fisichella would have the measure of Button and the 3-stopping Ralf Schumacher and that While Raikkonen, Alonso and Montoya would fight back to score some points on a track that’s notoriously hard to overtake.

Race day was dry and sunny. The race was primed. I woke up expected a processional race where Fisichella won by a mile. I dragged myself to turn on the TV ready for the race and had my usual pre-race nerves for my idol Raikkonen. The 5 lights went out and Fisichella got a good start and got past Button. Alonso got a flying start and was up to 8th after the first lap, with Raikkonen not far behind. But Raikkonen dropped back after missing the Casio chicane. Montoya moved in front of Raikkonen, but at the final corner tried to pass Jacques Villeneuve around the outside, but went wide and hit the wall. He was out. The Safety car was deployed. All this action on lap 1! I suddenly thought it was going to be an immense race.

Montoya’s retirement meant McLaren had only one driver who could score points, and he was in 13th. Soon after the restart, Alonso passed Christian Klien around the outside and missed his braking point cutting the chicane. He let Klien back past on the final corner and then re-passed him into turn 1, much like Kimi-Lewis at Spa 08. The FIA said Fernando had to let Klien regain the place so Fernando had to pass Klien a 3rd time, but this had allowed Raikkonen to catch up with Alonso who passed Klien into turn 1 soon after.

Up at the front, Ralf Schumacher had pitted on the first of his 3 stops and ended up 8th, behind the charging Raikkonen and Alonso. They were being held up by Michael Schumacher, who had banked on a wet race and had a wet setup and was therefore woefully slow down the straights. Alonso had been looking menacing behind Michael for many laps and made his move into the 180mph 130R around the outside. I couldn’t believe he had done that. That was one of the best passes I had ever seen. Alonso pitted earlier than Michael Schumacher and Raikkonen, who both pitted on the same lap. They came out ahead of Alonso, who had passed David Coulthard for 6th. After the pit stops the top 6 was Fisichella, Button, Webber, Michael Schumacher, Raikkonen and Alonso.

Soon after, Raikkonen passed Michael around the outside at turn 1. I was hugely relieved as he’d being stuck behind Michael for a great deal of laps. Once he’d passed Michael he started chasing down Button and Webber at a rate of 1.5 seconds per lap. Second place now seemed at realistic target for Kimi as Fisichella was almost 20 seconds in the lead. Fisichella was the first to pit and came out a couple of seconds behind Raikkonen, who was now 3rd. Button, Webber and Alonso pitted a few laps later. Raikkonen ran 8 laps longer than Fisichella and 5 laps longer than Button, Webber and Alonso, ending up with a 14-second lead before he pitted. He came out around 7 seconds behind Fisichella with 12 laps to go.

The Top 5 was Fisichella, Raikkonen, Webber, Alonso, and Button. Raikkonen and Alonso had fought through the field sensationally, but their afternoons weren’t over just yet. Alonso passed Webber with an equally sensational move to the one he put on Schumacher through 130R. Webber covered both sides of the narrow Suzuka straight, but Alonso took 2 wheels worth of grass to give him the extra space he needed to complete the stunning overtake. More was to follow, as Raikkonen wasn’t settling for second. He closed the 7-second gap with 4 laps to go. But he was in his dirty air and took a couple of laps to get a move to overtake on Lap 51 of 52. He had a couple of looks on that lap but nothing serious, ontil the start of the final lap that is!

Fisichella had defended a bit too much in the chicane and had compromised his exit. Raikkonen pounced: he used the slipstream of Fisichella to reel him in on the pit straight. Fisichella moved right, Raikkonen left. Fisichella moved back to the left to cover off Kimi but Kimi jolted further left to avoid Fisichella. Bouncing off the rev-limiter at 200mph (7th gear was too short on Kimi’s car) Kimi turned into turn 1 taking 1st place on the final lap. I went mental! I was overjoyed with emotion, shouting at 6am in the morning. But it still wasn’t finished, I thought of Nurburgring earlier in the year when Kimi’s suspension broke on the final lap. It’s never over till its over.

But Kimi took the win, followed by Fisichella, Alonso, Webber and Button. Amazingly, Kimi had won from 17th on the grid. That fact helped numb the damage caused by Montoya’s retirement as Renault would go on to take the Constructors. Peter Windsor described Raikkonen’s move on Fisichella as “a sharp Finnish knife cutting through a tender piece of Italian Salami”. That move reminded me of what got me into F1, Mika Hakkinen’s great overtake at Spa 2000. Ron Dennis described the win as the greatest of Kimi’s career. Ron was clearly trying to show that the relationship between him and Kimi was good but what people didn’t know was that Kimi was fed up with McLaren. He had quietly signed a contract with Ferrari 3 months earlier for the 2007 season, and McLaren didn’t even know.

I first got hooked on Formula One in 1986 when I was just 10 years old (there you go, you do the maths) and I suppose the man who sparked that initial interest was Nigel Mansell, ably assisted of course by the infectiously enthusiastic Murray Walker. Indeed, it may have had more to do with the latter than anyone on the track. Others played their part, Alain Prost and Nelson Piquet would make it a three-way battle for the title with Mansell and for me it all started with Mansell’s duel with the black and gold Lotus of Ayrton Senna in Spain. Sure, he had ridiculous facial hair but by the time Mansell had won at Brands Hatch he’d become a national hero. It was turning into a vintage season but as a newcomer to the sport, I thought it was always like this. And the season finale was still waiting to serve up some final twists.

The Title Battle

With one race to go, Mansell was the favourite to clinch the drivers’ title, holding a six point advantage over Prost with the Englishman’s team mate a further point behind. This meant that either Mansell needed to only finish third or for neither of his rivals to win the race.

Operation Adelaide

The morning before the race I woke to find that Mansell would be starting from pole position. It felt like half the job was done and the stage was all set for Mansell’s moment of glory. Cue what I dubbed Operation Adelaide as I set my alarm to wake me in the middle of the night. With my parents unaware, I snuck downstairs – I was going to be watching with the volume turned down low but I had no plans to miss this race. Of course, the job was far from already half completed, as soon became evident as Mansell’s poor start saw him fall behind Senna and then Piquet and Keke Rosberg. However, the outlook started to improve as first Rosberg took the lead and proceeded to establish a gap and then Piquet spun and dropped back. Positions between the three title challengers swapped and changed but Mansell was still comfortable. Then Rosberg’s tyre failed – bringing home the reality of the situation with it.

The End of a Goodyear

What happened next has been written about countless times before and so I won’t go into it in detail. Mansell’s exploding tyre and struggle to maintain control of the car became one of Formula One’s iconic images. It was heartbreaking but of course it wasn’t all over quite yet, Prost and Piquet could have picked up their own problems, either still had to win to claim the crown and so I was forced to watch until the bitter end. At the finish, it was Prost who claimed the win and the title with it, with Piquet trailing home just behind.

C’est La Vie

An unwanted end, then, to my first season of Formula One and it certainly wouldn’t be the last time Formula One would treat me this way – Adelaide again in 1994, Interlagos in 2007 and finally again in 2008.

What’s that you say, Hamilton passed Glock on the final corner? Well I missed that moment (by all accounts so did the radio commentary) but of course that only made the instant of realisation of the actual result that much better even if the shout of joy reduced my seven-month old daughter to tears (sorry, darling). Yet that was always the case with the other near misses. Being robbed by his tyre simply made Mansell’s later great moments all the more to be savoured and his World Championship, when it finally came, all the more deserved. The same was true with Damon Hill and Lewis Hamilton.

Final Thought

It occurred to me that this must happen to other fans of other drivers. We saw the images of Ferrari’s joy in 2008 turned to abject disappointment in an instant with the realisation that Hamilton had done enough on the final lap to clinch the title but what of all the Felipe Massa fans? One point, one corner, one track position away from everything they had hoped for. Yet there would be other days.

Or would there? Team politics seem far more important to Ferrari than what the fans might want…

Credit © Sutton Motorsports / Williams F1

I started watching F1 in 1986 at the tender age of 12, after my brother gave me a pre-season guide (for info it was The Daily Mail Grand Prix Guide- if anybody has a copy drop me a line!)

I’d never taken interest in the sport before but I was becoming a huge car enthusiast and I was captivated by the action on track. In particular a certain moustachioed British driver caught my attention, not least because the aforementioned publication contained an article entitled “Mansell: The Big Danger”. Now this may have been nationalistic hype in a British magazine, but winning two races the year before and having one of the strongest car/engine combinations at his disposal, it was a fair bet that he was on the rise and ‘86 would be the season that “Our Nige” made a challenge for the title. And for this patriotic near-teen-boy he became my focus, and remained so throughout his career and beyond. Even now he is a yardstick by which I compare other drivers and the way they are behind the wheel. And of course Murray Walker helped a lot here, his famous pants-on-fire commentary style helping to fan the flames.

Now it’s interesting to note that the patriotic side of me chose a driver and not a team to follow (in sharp contrast to most Italian F1 fans for example) but that was what my young mind centred on. Of course Williams, the team that Mansell drove for was also British, but it was the driver that I plumped for.

In fact when I looked at the picture of the McLaren – a British team who were reigning world champions – I never really considered them to be British, purely because their drivers were a Frenchman and a Finn. Also there were other British drivers in F1 that year (Brundle, Palmer, Dumfries, and later Warwick – only Palmer not driving for a British team) but I ignored them and made my choice to follow the guy with the ‘tache and the dull Brummie accent. Hey I was young and new to the sport; I can’t always back up my decisions with sound logic. That one article has a lot to answer for…

As it turned out Mansell was the big danger that year, winning more races than any other driver, missing out on the title with a dramatic high-speed puncture in the final race while running in a position that would have secured him the crown.

Almost… But Not Quite

That race took place in Australia, and therefore happened when I was asleep (visiting my Gran that weekend, so staying up all night wasn’t an option sadly), and when I saw the replay later I was nearly heartbroken. Whatever you say about Mansell, one of the many words people use is “exciting”, and this was no exception.

There’s no doubt that the image of that tyre blowing and taking Nige’s title hopes with it will live with me (and many others) for a long, long time.

So why have I not picked this as my memorable race? Two reasons really. Firstly, for me Mansell wasn’t about retiring from a race and leaving me disappointed, he was about battling and winning and – crucially – overtaking. Secondly it’s to do with another man: Nelson Piquet.

The Villain of the Piece…

Every hero needs a nemesis, and a good rivalry always helps to build the tension. Prior to the legendary battles of Senna v Prost we had Mansell v Piquet, in both cases it was a battle of team mates who would never give way to the other, and who drove each other on to give their absolute all.

When Piquet joined Williams from Brabham for ‘86 he claims he was promised outright number-one status by Frank Williams. However this was seemingly never written down in the contract, and when Frank has hospitalised by his pre-season car accident it appears that nobody else at the team knew or believed that this was the case, if indeed it was true. After all it went against everything that the team stood for, and it’s still not clear to this day.

So instead of having a subordinate team mate giving way, Piquet had a rival who was challenging him, and the team seemingly not giving him the support he believed he was due. Naturally this created a lot of tension, and by the end of that first season relations between the two drivers had completely broken down.

The Tension Builds…

Come the start of the 1987 season and the mind games started again, Piquet even attacking Mansell via the media, notably calling his wife “ugly”. Of course this may have been misquoted and taken out of context, but for a 13 year old patriotic F1 fan it really helped confirm that I’d chosen the right Williams driver to support.

As had been the case the year before this was a closely fought season between the two Williams drivers (with Senna and Prost in there too). Nowhere was this more so than a sunny July weekend at Silverstone.

Going into the race Mansell was riding high from victory at the previous event, the French Grand Prix, where he had beaten his Brazilian rival. Despite this he was 4th in the championship, behind Piquet, Prost and then Senna who was leading the title race.

The home Grand Prix is always a special event for any driver and Mansell had won the race the year before, albeit at Brands Hatch. In qualifying Piquet had snatched pole but Mansell was alongside him on the front row just 7 hundredths behind. The Honda engines were powerful, the Williams cars were the class of the field, everything was set for a great race.

And We’re Off!

Prost made a great start to lead into the first corner but he couldn’t hold on for long, first Piquet and then Mansell getting by. The two Williams drivers then went off into the lead, free to race each other. It was likely one of them would win the race, reliability and fuel permitting, but which one would it be?

12 laps in and Mansell lost a wheel balancing weight, which gave him a bad vibration. Neither car had planned to stop for tyres, but on lap 36 Mansell could take it no more and pitted. He came out in 2nd place but 29 seconds behind his team mate. However he had fresh rubber, the crowd behind him, and 28 laps to do what he did best. Could he make the time up?

The Race is On!

Some drivers would have settled for second place and the valuable points, but Mansell wasn’t that kind of driver, and if course this was his home Grand Prix.

Over the next 25 laps he was on a charge, hunting down Piquet and breaking the lap record an incredible 11 times, reducing the gap every time he crossed the finish line. On lap 62 out of 65 he was right behind Piquet having made up more than a second per lap on the Brazilian, an incredible rate but one which put his fuel level dangerously low. He had just a few laps in which to make his move, or end the race knowing all his hard work had been in vain.

Sat at home in front of the TV I was on the edge of my seat. Mansell was giving it everything, could Red 5 take victory for the home crowd?

Now or Never…

One lap later and with just two laps to go, as they came down the Hangar Straight Mansell saw his chance. He sold a beautiful dummy as he first flicked to the left, let Piquet move across to cover it, then immediately flicked right to squeeze past on the inside as they moved through Stowe corner. A brilliantly opportunistic move that stunned us all, not least the Brazilian.

The crowd went ballistic, Murray Walker nearly exploded, and I leapt from my seat and screamed a massive “YEESSSS!!!!” at the top of my lungs, euphoric at the move I’d just seen. It may have been 23 years ago, but seeing that move still makes my hairs stand on end.

On the slowing down lap he ran out of fuel and was mobbed by the crowd, the passionate fans overjoyed at what they had just seen, their hero giving them the result they wanted in the best possible way.

This win raised Mansell up to second place in the championship, tied with Piquet on 30 points each but Mansell was ahead on race wins. Senna was now just one point ahead, and the season was set to be close and exciting. Mansell went to win a total of 6 races that season, twice as many as Piquet, although the Brazilian went on to win his third title through consistency and the dropped-points rule, and Mansell not taking part in the final two races through a back injury sustained when he crashed in practice at Suzuka. It took another 5 years before Mansell went on to claim the crown for himself and there were many memorable overtaking moves along the way, but this one is definitely one of the greatest – and the build up just adds to the spectacle and makes this my most memorable race ever.

Credit © Sutton Motorsports / Williams F1

It’s our second birthday and rather than jelly and ice cream (which incidentally, we do love) we decided to put in a request for birthday presents (and it wasn’t for money, although we appreciate that too). So over the next few days, we will have a series of authors discussing their most memorable Grand Prix – from fantastic overtaking moves to great weekends away, thrilling comebacks to the disappointment of near misses.

So watch this space. The first of the series is coming up later today…

The first plans for the new Formula 1 circuit near Austin have been revealed. The circuit, which will host the United States Grand Prix from 2012 through to 2021, is an anti-clockwise, 5 and half kilometre (3.4 miles) track featuring 20 turns, a maximum elevation change of 41 metres and a back straight stretching to 1.2 kilometres (0.75 miles) in length.

After the sharp, wide, uphill Turn 1, reminiscent of the first corner at Austria’s A1-ring and which organisers hope will offer the opportunity to overtake, a right-hander feeds out in to Turns 3 to 6 – a snaking series of esses similar the Maggots/Becketts complex at Silverstone or Suzuka’s tricky esses.

At the far end of the circuit their is the ubiquitous Tilke hairpin at Turn 11 which leads on the circuits longest straight which gently curves and undulates down to the complex at Turns 12 to 15 which makes a nod towards the Hockenheimring complex following the Parabolika.

Turns 16 to 18 is a long triple-apex corner which resembles Hermann Tilke’s perhaps most celebrated creation – Istanbul Park’s infamous Turn 8. Two left handers will then feed the cars back on to the start-finish straight for the 290 km/h (180 mph) blast back down to Turn 1.

Race promoter, Tavo Hellmund promised fans good views of most of the circuit due to the natural elevation changes with speeds up to 322 km/h (200 mph).

The organisers are saying all the right things, particularly in terms of elevation changes, but reproducing sections of existing circuits doesn’t always work. Usually, the character is as dependent on the turns feeding into them as much as the famous turns themselves. The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding.

 

It’s not often I can pick up a book and read it from cover to cover in one sitting without losing interest, but “Rapid Response: My Inside Story as a Motor Racing Life-Saver” captivated my attention and left me hanging on every word. Written by Dr Steven Olvey, former Medical Director for the American CART racing series it recounts his time working as an emergency physician for the series and the challenges he faced during 40 years dedicating his life to improving driver safety.


The books’ dramatic start graphically recounts Alex Zanardi’s near fatal accident at the 2001 championship race in Dresden, Germany three days after the events of 9/11. Although Alex was to lose both his legs in the accident the actions of the medical safety team undoubtedly saved his life. Without their rapid response and critical medical care he would not have survived to race again. It’s testament to their skill and dedication that many drivers were able to pursue their racing careers after horrendous accidents that could have left them severely disabled.

The author then goes on to recount his work at the trackside from his early beginnings as a second year medical student volunteering at his local track, the Indianapolis Speedway through his qualification as a doctor, specialism in trauma medicine and ongoing research in driver safety. Currently Director of the Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami and a Founding Fellow for the FIA Institute for Motorsports Safety, Olvey consulted on Felipe Massa’s recovery after his skull fracture at the Hungaroring last year.

At times the story is poignant and extremely sad, occasionally graphic, especially when Olvey reminds us of the horrors of racing in the sixties and seventies when safety was in its infancy and medical facilities were dismal. But here was a man and a team who were determined that driver safety should be paramount. They struggled to improve conditions against a backdrop of track owners who were, at best, sceptical of what could be achieved and unwilling to fund improvements until the inevitable fatalities occurred.

It’s fascinating to read of the improvements Olvey and his team helped implement that make single seat racing as safe as it is today: The black box data recorder, changes to seating position, six-point harnesses, the introduction of head and neck support (HANS) and ear accelerometers that measure the g-forces in a drivers brain in the event of a serious accident. It surprised me to discover that many of these improvements were first trialled in the USA in CART prior to uptake in Formula One through parallel initiatives being run by the FIA Institute in Europe.

This book is considerably more than a review of safety and trauma advances across the decades. It’s interspersed with many anecdotes of the authors’ encounters with CART and F1 motor racing legends including Graham Hill, A.J Foyt, Ray Mears, Nigel Mansell and Emerson Fittipaldi; a veritable “who’s who” of racing royalty. At times it’s also extremely funny and reveals much, much more about the character and inner determination of the drivers; the story of the Mansell lesion being my particular favourite. Whether you are interested in the history of motorsport, advances in critical medical care or you’re fascinated with driver safety you’ll simply love this book, it’s a must have for your collection and an outstanding read.


Rapid Response: My Inside Story as a Motor Racing Life-Saver
Author: Dr Stephen Olvey
Haynes Publishing (2007)
Newly released as a paperback, £9.99 RRP
IBSN 978 1 84425 982 3

We’ll be holding an exciting competition to win one of three copies of Dr Olvey’s book. Take a look in the Monza edition of our free Grand Prix View e-magazine next week to find out more.