Peter Windsor has been at the centre of the F1 paddock for 30 years, during which time he has been a journalist, commentator and Williams team manager. He is currently Grand Prix editor of F1 Racing magazine. To subscribe to F1 Racing, click here
Cards on the table: Who is going to do it this weekend?
Everyone I know seems to be saying “Kimi” in answer to this question – and I can see their point.
The McLaren boys will probably trip over all the FIA officials in their garage and Fernando will cry for outside help whenever he is a tad slower than Lewis.
This policy will hurt Lewis, of course, much more than it will help Fernando.
Meanwhile, Ferrari will perfectly execute team orders to enable Kimi to win…
Does McLaren, or Lewis Hamilton, bear the primary responsibility for the Shanghai debacle?
I suppose the obvious answer is that this was obviously a deliberate policy from the team to favour Fernando Alonso. McLaren kept Lewis out on clearly-worn tyres and nearly caused a major accident…
No, seriously, I think this was a similar situation to that of Turkey.
Lewis was beating the Ferraris on a Ferrari circuit – let alone beating Fernando – but that sort of brilliance often comes with a price.
In drying conditions, Lewis was using his rear (wet) tyres much harder than was Fernando. There was no pre-race data for this, no precedent. The fuel window was approaching, there was another chance of rain…I can appreciate the dilemma the boys faced.
Whenever something like this occurs, it’s always good to put yourself in the position of the people making the decision. In this case, I think I would have done exactly what McLaren did.
If anything, the team (and Lewis) were guilty of not appreciating how dangerous the pit lane gravel trap was going to be. It is unusual to have gravel like that, flush to the Tarmac, and so I guess Lewis should have been hearing that famous “McLaren voice”, urging him to slow to a snail’s pace as the pit lane corner approached.
I say this not necessarily in hindsight because Lewis, if you remember, was having to sit through a ridiculous stewards’ enquiry on Friday in China when instead he could have been walking the circuit, or at worst thinking about the pit lane in the wet…
What is your opinion of the FIA’s decision to dispatch a special scrutineer to ensure McLaren treats its two drivers equally in Brazil? If, as we are told, F1 is a team sport, surely such matters are the team’s prerogative?
I think it is completely ridiculous, if only because it adds credibility to Fernando’s claims that he has been unfairly treated in 2007.
Unfairly treated? He has had a winning car, he has had majority use of the spare car and he has had his own Hitco brake system.
In China, a week after the event, Fernando claimed that Lewis had been favoured in Japan’s Q3 fuel-burn period.
Both Martin Whitmarsh and Fernando’s engineers refuted this – as did the facts. I really don’t understand what he is on about.
There is an upside for Lewis, though: If he beats Fernando in Brazil, Fernando in theory will have to accept it.
What did you think about the additional stewards’ enquiry into the Fuji safety car incident in China?
Again, completely ridiculous. It was clear, upon talking to him, that Sebastian Vettel didn’t even know the safety car rules.
For a young kid to run into the car ahead of him and then partly blame Lewis Hamilton for “distracting” him was absolutely outrageous.
And it didn’t end there. Mark Webber, normally a genial type, described Lewis’s driving a few days after the accident with a profanity; two Red Bull media officials also told me that, in their opinion, Lewis’s driving had been “erratic”.
What are these people on? Lewis was the race leader, for Pete’s sake! He is fully entitled to yo-yo and use whatever pieces of track he pleases.
It behoves everyone behind him not to crash into one another. That is why they can be up to five car lengths apart. That is why the leader only needs to be five metres from the safety car…
What this was really all about was jealousy. Suddenly, there is no respect for Lewis. He is too young, too fast, too new…too good.
Drivers like Vettel should be the first to want to learn from Lewis, not criticise or blame him. And yet they can’t resist it.
Respect? Forget it. There is as much mutual respect in F1 these days as there is respect for the fans – ie zero. (Lewis’s values excepted, of course.)
Ron Dennis was absolutely right when he said in China that several drivers should concentrate on their own shortcomings rather than criticise Lewis.
And I think that Lewis was only thinking the predictable when he said, post-hearing – post seeing how his peers really think and behave – that “if this is what F1 is like then I’m not sure I want to be a part of it”.
Isn’t it sad that the best driver we have seen in F1 since Jim Clark – both in terms of talent and in being a decent person who cares about the sport and everyone around him – has been reduced to saying that?
Has Ron Dennis’s credo of giving drivers equal status has been tested to destruction this season?
Yes. As it turned out – and as many of us predicted – McLaren would have been much better off running Hamilton-de la Rosa or Hamilton-Coulthard. I hope this is the sort of balance they will have in the future.
What you need alongside Lewis is a driver who isn’t going to throw his toys out of the pram the instant he is slower than his team-mate – but is nonetheless quick enough to win if Lewis strikes trouble.
A Heikki, for instance – or maybe a 2006-vintage Massa. What you don’t need are Fernandos or (dare I say it) Nicos.
We hear rumours of an Alonso/Kovalainen swap deal for 2008. Would that make sense for all concerned?
Probably, although Fernando needs to think about why he left Renault in the first place.
Winning, as many great drivers have proved, is as much about commitment as it is about skill.
There was obviously something that irritated him about the Renault team. Has that now magically gone away?
Heikki, meanwhile, is exactly the right driver to race alongside Lewis at McLaren. All he needs to do is slightly raise the pace of his second-phase turn-in (see the next edition of F1 Racing, out after Brazil).
The parallels with the 1986 title showdown in Adelaide are striking. As a senior Williams man at the time you must have some pretty vivid memories of that weekend…
Not happy ones, I’m afraid, because we were all so conscious of how on-the-edge the tyres could be.
Like Lewis in comparison with Fernando, Nigel Mansell was harder on rear tyre temperatures than Nelson Piquet. This wasn’t an “oversteer” thing; it was a “load” thing – born of Nigel being quicker on fast and medium-speed corners.
In those days it was “safer” to eliminate a pit stop if you possibly could – and Goodyear counselled us to go non-stop. The tyres, they said, could take it.
I think it was Thierry Boutsen who retired a few laps before Nigel’s blow-out. Whatever, a Goodyear engineer came down to our garage to say that the tyres on the Arrows were looking a little tired and that it might be better to bring Nigel in for a precautionary stop. It would be no problem; he could still win the title.
David Brown was just about to press the “speak” button on his radio when Nigel’s tyre blew…
We then brought Nelson in (thus losing him the championship) – and guess what? His tyres were perfect.
How will Formula 1 remember Alex Wurz (assuming, of course, that he doesn’t find a new role in the sport)? And were you surprised that he decided not to race in Brazil?
Yes, I was surprised – just as I was surprised on the grid in China when he denied that he was stopping. At this point, his retirement notice had already been posted on the internet!
I think it’s a shame because Alex, to me, is a driver who never really honed an amazing natural talent into a useable, relatively error-free performance base. He is intelligent and thoughtful – and yet he never developed into the driver he could have been.
I am sure that he will argue that he was never with the right team for long enough – and in some respects he is right.
The differences, though, between Nico and Alex were at the start of 2007 in my view very small. With a lot of extra work and application, Alex could have emerged from the year with at least a 50 per cent qualifying record against his team-mate.
Too often, though, he made silly mistakes under braking when under pressure in qualifying. He made the corners “go on too long”; he locked inside fronts. All stupid things that he should not have allowed to happen.
By the end, Nico had destroyed him – and I guess that is reflected in his decision not to race in Brazil.
Having said all that, I hope Alex remains in the sport. He would be an excellent president of the FIA.
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