Dave's random mumblings…

@sniffpetrol

Reporter: ‘Sebastian, can you explain how you massively fucked up?”

After Sebastian Vettel managed to have an accident with his team mate and throwing away a 1-2 for Red Bull at the Turkish GP. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button moved up and gave McLaren an unexpected win.

Vettel was trying to take team mate Mark Weber in the inside, Weber (as is his right) held his line and Vettel seems to loose control and moved into Webers car. Weber had enough time in hand that he was able to pit for a new nosecone and tires and finished third ahead of Schumacher.

Hamilton was just behind the Red Bull pair and said “It was fantastic. I got the best view of it! Sebastian is safe, but I just saw him go up the inside… It was unfortunate for them and fortunate for us.”

Sitting talking to a friend of mine tonight, it has been a very long afternoon and evening.

We race cars against each other and have done for a long time; we talked of what makes racing so special for those who get it.

I don’t think I’ve ever slept well the night before a race. No matter if it was a minor club road rally or a round of the European Rally championship, not being able to sleep was there every time.

The restlessness was down to one thing, fear. I’ve done close to 300 races as a competitor and it’s always been there.

Sport is made special in part because of that fear.

It’s not the fear of physically hurting ourselves if we mess up and send the car into the trees; both of us accept that as part of the sport. Same with playing rugby, everyone who runs out on a Sunday afternoon up accepts that sprains and dislocated shoulders come with the territory.

It’s the fear of being put to the test, and finding ourselves falling short of what we could do. Not exactly a fear of failure, it’s a lot more than that. It’s more the test itself.

I love racing, it’s the precision mixed with brute force. The rush is addictive and the people almost universally wonderful. The top three or four most satisfying and memorable events for me are not the championship clinchers or the wins, they are the days where I believe that car went about as fast as it could with my mediocre talent.

In the Maine Forest Rally in 2002 we came away as fastest two-wheel drive car and a huge class win. Same event the following year and we crashed out, but the race itself was far more memorable. In 03 that car went as fast as it could over one particular stage, we left nothing behind and were totally committed. As close to perfect as we could be, and that was more satisfying than winning.

This may not make total sense, but the fear that keeps me awake is more than straight failure, racing is good at forcing you to deal with failure. It’s more the fear of the process, of the test itself and being found wanting.

Every time I was getting ready for the start, pulling on the race suit and thinking about the day ahead I’d look for a reason to not start. I never actually took an excuse not to start, but it’s been there every time.

Occasionally it would go well and I’d get a glimpse of what greatness in a car looked like. There would be a corner or two that I’d go as fast as it was possible to go, occasionally it would be for more than a corner or two. In Maine it was for an entire 8-mile stage.

It’s a feeling of reaching that far beyond the ordinary, and that moment of personal satisfaction is made all the better for the fear of the test.

All good sport needs drama, a certain level of intrigue, someone to root against and personalities.

If you’re English and follow football it’s easy, the Germans provide all of these (unless the game goes to penalties, then England looses, it’s just how it is).

Journalist Nigel Robuck once said racing always used to be better than it is now. Maybe there is an element of that with me, but when it comes to F1 I do find the races more processional and less interesting now (though vastly improved over 4 or 5 years ago) then when I was involved in the 90’s.

Today I find it difficult to find a driver with enough personality to care enough about; they are pretty much all corporate clones that give the same sound bites. Having said that Jenson Button still seems endearingly rough around the edges compared to many of his colleagues, but he is tallest of the pigmies. However if I see him called a “plucky underdog” one more time the “endearing” label is pretty much done.

The moments of high drama seem to be relegated to history; I doubt we’ll ever see anything like Ayrton Senna starting a fight with Eddie Irvine for some perceived slight, or Guy Ligier throwing fire extinguishers through car windows. The teams’ media handlers would never let Nelson Piquet (senior) give an interview where he discusses Ayrton Senna dating men and how Nigel Mansell has an ugly wife and two ugly children.

And the sport is poorer for it.

Today sees the departure of another one of those larger than life personalities – Flav Briatore – leave the sport. Loath him or hate him, his fake tan, designer sunglasses and sweater thrown nonchalantly over his shoulders made the pit lane a more interesting place. In the “finding an edge” stakes having driver stick the car into the wall is a little extreme, but it’s only shades of grey different to the things other drivers, engineers and principals have been doing since the first two cars raced each other.

In the last few of years also we’ve lost a few of the people who turned F1 politics into an art form in Ron Dennis, Eddie Jordan (who was a very quick learner in how to thrive in the “piranha club”) and Jean Todt. Add the impending departure of Max Mosley (the combined F1 press brought him a riding crop as a going away present) and we are only really left with Bernie to continue the political drama that makes F1 so special.

It’s been a while coming, but Renault have finally taken the “naughty boys” title from Mclaren, and they have done it in style.

Team orders are nothing new, they have been around since the beginning and despite claims to the contrary are still there. However I’ve never heard of a driver being told to deliberately crash to help fix a race. And if there is a team principle who is going to do it, it’s Flav.

Today Flav Briatore and Pat Symonds left Renault, and the team released a statement indicating that they will not deny the race fixing accusation. With the FIA handing out race bans for improperly tightened wheel nuts, being suspended the sport does not seem out of the question when they meet Monday.

Clearly Flav and Pat are being thrown under the bus in the hope the FIA will see this as the work of two individuals and not the team. Past history says this may not help, it did not help McLaren when Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan took the fall for the Ferrari technical documents, the team was still suspended from the manufacturers championship and fined an astronomical $100M. However, F1 is not as healthy and with the departure of Honda and BMW the FIA is desperate for stability and may give Renault a stiff talking too and leave it at that.

Mr Piquet is going to struggle to find a team to give him another chance, the sport places a lot of weight on loyalty and supporting the team, whatever happens. Going public with race fixing allegations after being released by Renault after a series of poor results is going to frighten off a lot of teams.

Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn has backed the company’s investment in F1 a number of times. He stated “We are not in Formula One out of habit or tradition. We’re here to show our talent and that we can do it properly.” I wonder how he feels today?

There is that fleeting moment, it’s the split second where you know it’s all gone terribly wrong, but the full extent of the trouble has not played itself out yet.

• When you feel the front tire of the bike go flat on the downhill…
• When you feel the back of the race car step out when you turn into the corner…
• When you see the football heading towards your head…
• When you catch the ball and the biggest forward on the other team is about to hit you…
• When the jump turns out to be bigger than you thought…

Time slows down, senses become much sharper and you notice the details that would have normally passed you by….

Then the impact occurs, you hit bike/ground/car/tree and just for a fleeting second you think that maybe you got away with it, that its not going to hurt as much as you thought…

Then reality smacks you upside the head and it hurts, oh my it hurts…

I was rallying with JB Niday in California a couple of years ago. The notes read “50 Jump 100 Big Jump 350”, translated that’s a jump followed by a short straight that led to another bigger jump, again followed by another straight.

Others slowed for the second jump, we did not, and hit the crest of the second jump at a little over 80MPH. That was the moment we both knew our day had taken a turn for the worst.

It seemed like we were in the air for an age, I had enough time to drop my notes, assume the crash position of putting my chin on my chest and holding onto my shoulder harness to stop my arms flapping around if we rolled.

I then had time to look up once again, see we were still in the air and I recall the ground being a lot closer than it was previously. We were in the air for 164 feet (we went back and measured it) and landed heavily, very heavily, nose first and yes it hurt a lot. It was not pretty, the car was very bent, but we got some cool pictures of the accident.

This is my favourite photo, the front had landed, the back was still in the air with dirt auguring off the front, and the best bit… The brake lights are on.

The car behind us had friends in it, they stopped to see what had happened, we explained how we took the big jump flat. George looked at us and blurted out “you are so f$#%ing stupid…”, Jeff his codriver yelled “You did that? That is so f$#&ing cool…”

That’s rally, and people like George and Jeff are why I love the sport.