Bluebirds Fly

Well the big one is here: Bathurst. And once again, you might have noticed a few retro liveries going around. DJR (soon to be the Aussie branch of Team Penske) are dressed in the Shell livery they wore 20 years ago when they took on a very young Craig Lowndes in the best Bathurst ever. Going back even further are the Kelly Gang's Nissan Altimas, dressed in the red, white 'n' blue of the #15 Bluebird that took pole for the great race in 1984.

Source

What's so special about a Datsun from the '80s, you may ask? Well, the 1984 James Hardie 1000 was the last to be run to Australia's home-grown "Group C" touring car regulations. The Euro-centric Group A rules were just around the corner, and the prevailing attitude to them at the time could be heard in a sneer that's still around today: "Only milk and juice come in 2-litres." This would be the last time around for the Group C stonkers, so the whole thing had a last hurrah/graduation party kind of thing going on.

Don't let them tell you Group C was a golden age though - it was only gilt, with grids so small they often struggled to break a dozen cars, and endless (and I do mean endless) bickering and protesting over the legality of this or that piece of technical arcana. Take the ever-controversial Mazda RX-7s for example: the much-derided "rice burners" with their innovative Wankel rotary engines were widely considered sports cars rather than true touring cars, accepted on a technicality only. Of course, it didn't help anyone's attitude that the cars were Japanese, either (nobody born within 20 years of WWII ever forgave the Empire of the Rising Sun. To this day, I cannot tell you how weird it is for Aussies that flying overseas often involves a stopover at Changi. It's like flying to Poland and landing at Auschwitz-Birkenau International Airport). But the final straw was that they'd poached Allan Moffat, the former Ford hero, to spearhead their attack, and in his hands they'd actually become competitive (of course, Moffat wasn't without provocation given Ford's history of blowing hot and cold...).

Source

Most of the other cars entered in 1984 were less problematic. There was Dick Johnson, for example, by now very comfortable in Moffat's old role of Ford Hero, driving a Greens-Tuf XE Falcon he'd built himself - an Australian family car, a big V8 and a lot of elbow grease done in a shed in Queensland, all very kosher and correct. Less pleasing to the public was Jim Richards, heading up the John Player Team and its brace of BMW 635 CSi's, although the public was less worried about them because under Group C they were uncompetitive (and by now firmly had their eye on the incoming Group A era). And of course there was the professional national hero Peter Brock and the Holden Dealer Team as well, but more on them tomorrow.

Source

Which brings us to Nissan Motorsport*, George Fury, and that Bluebird.

Nissan had been assembling Bluebirds locally since '79, but they were embarrassingly primitive compared to the proper ones made in Nippon, with ox cart suspension and no fuel-injected or turbo versions... not to mention their notoriety for leaving a trail of blue smoke everywhere they went. In fact, if you came across one on the open road, it was traditional to call the driver a menace and give him the finger!

But the one entered at Bathurst, it was a completely different beast. Nissan's team boss in those days was Howard Marsden, a former Ford company man most famous as the brains behind the Phase IV Falcon, as well as the man responsible for euthanasing it when the Supercar Scare made it impossible to race. So Howard was a man who knew Bathurst and the local racing scene, and knew precisely how close to the wind he needed to sail, and knew that when you work for a massive international motor company, you're a fool if you restrict yourself to local parts. Ergo, the Group C Bluebird removed the wheezy L-series motor and fitted a tuned-up, twin-spark, 1.8-litre Z18T imported directly from Japan, good for about 260 kW on an average day. Which was a hell of a lot at the time; the Cleveland under Dick Johnson's bonnet, the biggest, best-prepared engine on the grid, was barely making 300.

But Saturday, September 29, 1984 was no average day: it was bloody freezing. Winter had come back for one last dance before summer took over, and there was even a little snow scattered across the top of the mountain before the mid-morning sun disposed of it. Fans in heavy jackets desperately rubbed their hands together and stomped around trailing their breath while waiting for the action to start, doing whatever it took to keep warm. But their fortitude was rewarded, as Hardie's Heroes got underway.

Source

Howard Marsden knew qualifying would be the turbo's big moment, and couldn't have asked for better conditions to favour it - the limiting factor for a turbo engine was heat, so the colder it got, the more boost they could use and the more power they'd ultimately have. He also knew what nobody else knew at the time, which was that the Bluebird had an illegal boost control mounted on the dash and that one of the onboard fire extinguishers had quietly been rigged to spray halon at the intercooler, bumping the power up even further (and if you think that sounds dodgy, believe me, it was par for the course in Group C. In those days CAMS didn't have the manpower to check everything properly, so anything with a plausible-sounding excuse or just failed to raise suspicion at all was usually given the all-clear)!

That said, Steve Masterton, Dick Johnson and Gricey all put in fast 2:14's, so all the Bluebird's advantage could be squandered if Fury neglected to drive it like he stole it. But they needn't have worried...

That was it: history was made. Fury's time - 2 minutes, 13.850 seconds - was an absolute bombshell. Not just the first sub-2:14 lap anyone had ever seen at Mt Panorama, but a shattering new track record. Peter Brock did his best, but even the new VK Commodore with its ferocious updated body kit couldn't deal with that turbo engine. Fury gave Nissan its first pole at Bathurst and - upsetting the Establishment mightily - took the first pole not to fall to either a Holden or a Ford.

There was murmuring as the crowds went home for a night of restless sleep, but the James Hardie 1000 was to be run over 163 laps, not just one. Sunday would be another day...

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* Small note: the car was entered under  the "Nissan Motor Co." banner, but the team was more or less the same one that would one day become Gibson Motorsport, the team later responsible for Godzilla. I bring it up because I find it amusing nobody ever mentions the other Nissan team car at Bathurst in '84, the #16 Pulsar EXA driven by Fred Gibson's wife Christine (quite a racer in her own right) and a very young Glenn Seton. Were they aiming for a class victory, did they not have the budget for a second Bluebird, or was it just executive meddling? I don't know for sure, but surely they would've entered a backup car going for outright victory if they could. Still...

(source)

...most badass Pulsar ever.

#ForzaJules

What a weekend at Suzuka.

First and foremost, I want to wish Jules Bianchi a full and fast recovery from his monstrous crash that ended the Japanese GP. At the time of writing, the information was that he'd been through the necessary brain surgery and come out the other side okay, meaning he's breathing unassisted. So, for the moment at least, things are looking as positive as they could. Hang in there Jules, we're all thinking of you.

I didn't see the crash itself in the broadcast, just the abrupt safety car, but fan videos have begun to emerge and they're not pretty. I'm not sure if posting this is commitment to the truth or just ghoulish titillation, but nevertheless, trigger warning (you can stop it after the first six seconds though - the rest of it is indeed ghoulish titillation).

If you didn't watch it, suffice to say the cockpit of Bianchi's Marussia went right under the back of the tractor removing Sutil's Sauber, leaving his helmet to take the full impact - an impact that lifted said tractor completely off the ground. No wonder they didn't show it on TV: it's horrifying.

Jules' crash stung me pretty bad personally, because - I'm putting my hand up about this - I was on Facebook at the start of the race, posting impatiently as they circulated under the safety car: "Why does F1 even have Extreme Wet tyres? If the conditions are bad enough to need them, they just red flag the whole thing anyway." Or something to that effect anyway. I may have even called FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting "Chickenshit Charlie," for being so reticent about letting them go. I was a Roman at the Colosseum, howling for the blood to start already.

Except I wasn't expecting blood at all. The go-to example of modern F1 safety is Robert Kubica in Canada, 2007 - he hit the wall with a 70G impact, but as he was stretchered away he was giving the crowd a big thumbs up and cracking jokes in Polish. That's what we've come to expect from F1 crashes, total immunity - so when Bianchi deviated from that, it was chilling.  No driver climbing out, tossing the steering wheel aside in disgust, just ominous radio silence. The medical car deployment, the doctors checking him out and taking him away. No news from the medical centre, just the rumours that Marussia's mechanics had to break down the door to find out what was going on with their driver. It was unheard-of in this day and age; it was terrifying. I was sat on my couch watching the subdued podium ceremony, thinking to myself: "1994 to 2014: has our 20-year run come to an end?" and "Since Dan Wheldon in 2012 something has gone horribly wrong with our sport..."

Walked. Away. (source)

So I'm grateful for the news that Jules is doing fairly well. But I'm not going to join the chorus criticising Charlie Whiting for letting the race run as long as it did. In fact, I still think it should have started earlier - he held off so long it was time for Intermediates by the time they went Green Flag - but it seems clear now that an imponderable like this was what he was afraid of, why he was so cautious. He was thinking ahead. I don't know if the tractor driver broke procedure or not, but it's clear to me this accident wasn't really caused by the weather; it was a freak of probability, just like Felipe Massa's incident in Hungary '09 (incidentally, the most serious F1 injury before Jules). By which I mean, the drivers could spin off and smack their helmets against a recovery vehicle even in the dry. I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but there was almost no carnage in the 2014 Japanese GP, a wet race at Suzuka: Sutil and Bianchi were the only accidents all afternoon, and they happened barely a minute apart; the only other DNF was Alonso, and he had an electrical problem. Charlie had almost no warning that the conditions at that corner had changed significantly.

"Should F1 do more to guarantee the safety of its drivers," they ask rhetorically? I doubt there's much else they can do. A metre one way or the other and Jules would have hit the tractor with his sidepod and walked away without a scratch; the safety cell built into the Marussia would guarantee it. A smidge less throttle in that corner and he wouldn't have gone off at all - and neither would Adrian Sutil, removing that recovery vehicle from the picture entirely. You can talk about not racing in Japan with a super typhoon coming in if you like, but that's the nature of Japan: typhoon- and earthquake-prone, but possessed of a booming economy and a huge, fanatical fanbase. What are you going to do, not have motorsport?

There's more than just tragedy, after all. (source)

Bianchi's situation removed a lot of the shock from the other stunning revelation of the weekend, that Sebastian Vettel is leaving Red Bull at the end of the year. Apparently he has... not quite a contract, but an agreement or understanding that if he ever left Red Bull he'd join Ferrari, so it seems the quadruple champion will be wearing red next year. Alonso, meanwhile, allegedly has a contract with Honda, who've agreed to pay his salary. Since Honda have a contract with McLaren, that doesn't leave much doubt that he'll be back in Woking next year. But past histories mean Alonso hasn't quite worked out the details with McLaren yet, explaining why Jenson Button's still walking on eggshells - when a team keeps quiet this late in the year, it's because they're still negotiating.

Which leaves Vettel. I wonder if the chicken or the egg came first in this decision? Was this the development that started pushing Alonso out of Ferrari, or did Alonso's disquiet lead the higher-ups to start fishing for another driver? Some may wonder why Vettel would willingly go to Ferrari next year, given they're so far behind Red Bull and Mercedes, but I can come up with a few possibilities just on my own:

• Money. I know it seems crass, but never discount the possibility that Ferrari just backed a Ducato full of Euros to Vettel's home address and called it done. This is a team that was willing to pay for Alonso, remember, even when they were still obliged to pay Kimi Räikkönen's substantial salary that year. They're not afraid of flashing money to get what they want.
• Prestige. There aren't a lot of top-level race seats available - McLaren's all but settled, Mercedes aren't gonna change when they're winning, and Williams have Valtteri Bottas to fawn over. Everyone else is more or less a backmarker. Even if they're not especially competitive, however, a World Champion can go to Ferrari without it seeming like a step down.
• A Fresh Challenge. Like Schumacher a generation ago, Vettel might feel he's done everything there is to do with his old team and sees in Ferrari a challenge he can really apply himself to. After all, Alonso couldn't do it, so how much glory is up for grabs now if he can?
• Red Bull's Golden Age is Probably Over. There's no doubt Daniel Ricciardo came as a wicked shock, but that kind of talent he probably could have dealt with - if he still had the backing of his team. Mark Webber was easy on that front: no matter how fast he was, he was just a hired hand, not a son of the dynasty. But Ricciardo is also a son of the dynasty, brought up through the Red Bull Young Driver Development programme, and I'm betting it's the no-longer-being-number-one that's what really rankles. Combine that with lead designer Adrian Newey leaving to pursue other interests at the end of the year, and Vettel might just have decided the time is right to leave Red Bull.
• Sentiment. I know, I know, this one's a bit out there: racing drivers aren't usually sentimental at all, they're hard-bitten and ultra-competitive. They don't care about a team's history, just the quality of their engineering department. Michael Schumacher was once asked about one of the few records he didn't hold, Ascari's nine-race winning streak, and said baldly: "It doesn't mean anything to me." But Vettel is different. He's very aware of the sport's history, likes measuring himself against the greats, and Ascari's record (and his name) would actually mean something to him. Climbing into a Ferrari with that red bodywork around his shoulders and the prancing horse on the nose would mean a lot more to him in 2015 than it ever did to Schumacher in 1996.

Of those, I'm guessing it's a combination of the last two: he's disenchanted with Red Bull, but moving to Ferrari when they're at such a low ebb shows it's something he really wants to do. I have my doubts about how successful he'll be - I've seen nothing from him that suggests he can drive around problems like Alonso or Schumacher, let alone flog himself to work with the team to fix problems - but I wish him well nevertheless. Driving a bad car into race wins it shouldn't have is one of the few things missing from his resume, and it's about time, really.

As long as he doesn't end up like Jules.

Bad Days at McLaren

What the hell is going on in Woking these days?

Seems like only yesterday they had a cashed-up title sponsor, the second best aero package on the grid, the outright best engine, and a pair of World Champion drivers - the sort of summary that'd make most team managers drool. Now they're switching to an unproven engine, are thinking about dropping their more valuable driver, and - most worrying of all - seemingly have no sponsors worth the term.

The good old days mentioned above were the result of the McLaren (read: Ron Dennis) way of doing things. The other teams just want to win; not particularly fussed how, just win, baby. McLaren are different: they don't just want to be the best, they want to be their best. The goal is, for lack of a better word, perfection. When you realise that, Ron's easily-mocked tendency to ask for the ultimate this and the ultimate that becomes perfectly understandable. For McLaren, winning is almost seen as a side effect of doing your job properly: when you have the best car, the best drivers and the best organisation, it's pretty much inevitable. It's an approach that explains why the McLaren team base looks like this.

Via FosterAndPartners

And I like that. When you're working with a $400 million budget and a world-class "Temple of Engineering", anything less betrays a scandalous lack of ambition. That's why I used to be such a McLaren fan, they gave me an ideal to shoot for, a point on the horizon to aid the navigation of my life. And while it was working, it was amazingly impressive: world titles for Lewis Hamilton, Mika Häkkinen, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda and of course, Ayrton Senna - most of them with crushing dominance. When they're hot, God Almighty, they're hot.

But when the wind stops and the sails fall slack, the the whole ship start to look a little silly. That's been McLaren's problem in 2014: the attitude hasn't changed, the this-is-my-serious-face expression is still there, but the effect is completely undermined by being stuck in the midfield. Except the car doesn't even look midfield, it looks like a backmarker. When Vodafone decided to pull the pin at the end of 2013, it ended what I consider one of the all-time classic liveries, the Vodafone chrome-and-Rocket Red. When it debuted in 2006 there was lots of jawboning about whether was tacky or just mildly tasteless, but there was no doubt it was distinctive. In a year dominated by white-and-something paint schemes, it stood out, and after a memorable world title for Lewis and the Silver Age of Button & Hamilton that followed, the Vodafone McLarens cemented their place as classic racing cars, up there with any of the Gulf, Martini or Marlboro liveries the old'uns love to get all teary over.

But Vodafone made their announcement in March 2013. Finding a sponsor prepared to cough up enough cash to fill the sudden $74 million hole in their budget couldn't be a fun job, but Martin Whitmarsh should've been up to it. Imagine what Flavio Briatore could do with that much forewarning - a bit of hand-waving, a few pissed-off phone calls, lots of "Jesus Christ-a"... and twelve months later, the cars'd have a blue-chip title sponsor, a media blitz skiting about it, and a new paint scheme optimised to show them off.

Although... (via AUSmotive)

So what did McLaren do with their twelve-month head start? Kept the chrome, added a Johnny Walker sticker, aaand... that's about it. Even the Johnny sticker looks like an afterthought, the car overall looking like a backmarker from the early '90s, the sort shaking in their boots at the prospect of dropping out in pre-qualifying and having to explain their dismal performance to the overdraft board. And even that's now over: Bernie Ecclestone has just done a deal to make Johnny Walker the official whisky of Formula 1 - a move that usually ends the sponsorship of any particular team. So Johnny Walker has walked, and now, oh yeah, Hugo Boss as well, having realised (as I did) they're Lewis Hamilton fans and not McLaren fans after all. And this all happened just as McLaren announced they were switching to Honda power, so their Mercedes power units haven't been free after all.

Just imagine the sort of budget shortfall that must create (hint: you can't). Panic stations must be in order, and it's no wonder Martin Whitmarsh has already been thrown to the wolves. Poor Martin was in line for the job of McLaren team boss for so long he was called F1's answer to Prince Charles. When Ron Dennis finally stepped aside he managed to make exactly one good decision - hiring Jenson Button - before it all started going south. Since then, all of the above has happened on his watch. And it's not just treasure, under the Whitmarsh Administration McLaren has been haemorhaging talent as well - names like Lewis Hamilton and key personnel like former technical director Paddy Lowe.

So the question now becomes, where do they go from here? The four classical elements were Earth, Fire, Wind and Water. In Formula 1, it's more like Engine, Chassis, Tyre and Driver; getting all four in harmony is the name of the game. Thankfully, two of those have been taken care of already: Pirelli's extended their tyre supply deal for another year, and McLaren are re-opening their partnership with their bosom buddies at Honda, who've just released their first pics of the new powerplant.

Via ESPNF1

That just leaves the chassis - which this late in the year is certain to be finished already, and is probably being wrung out by the windtunnel and computer sim teams to find performance gains as we speak - which just leaves the drivers, where most of the media interest is. The rumours that Jenson Button is about to lose his seat keep making the rounds, like a mosquito as a barbecue, and there's a cold kind of logic to it. Like Vettel, Jenson hasn't found this new-gen F1 to his liking: the extra torque, turbo lag and lack of rear downforce don't agree with his driving style. It was ever the same: 2007 was one of those years his teammate Rubens Barrichello humiliated him, because the Honda RA107 was twitchy and always stepping out at the back. Rubens could deal with that, drive around it; Jenson could not, and suffered for it. As soon as the car got some rear-end grip, however, courtesy of the double diffuser, Rubens was the one struggling and Jenson was storming to that fantastic 2009 World Championship.

So these days Jenson is slow, and probably always will be. But he has other virtues: he's a former Honda-affiliated driver and knows their people, has 15 years' experience in Formula 1 (very valuable in an age without much testing), including several with Mercedes engines strapped to his back. That by itself would make him my choice: despite the media frenzy, drivers will almost certainly be the least relevant aspect of McLaren in 2015. It's going to be their first season in 20 years without Mercedes power, a transitional year of hard lessons and mechanical gremlins. In a season like that, driver continuity is a plus, especially when one of them has bags of experience with the best engine on the grid.

But at the same time, McLaren are apparently eager to bring on young Kevin Magnussen, so even though he'll be out of contract this December, he seems likely to stay on next year. So who else is in the picture, given that Honda will have opinions on the matter and the cash to back them? There are numerous Honda-affiliated drivers out there (Lucas di Grassi, Takuma Sato, Bruno Senna) but none of them really stand out. Valtteri Bottas is attractive, but Williams are sure to cling to him like a barnacle to a rock, especially when they seem likely to bring in a rookie like Simona de Silvestro next year. Alonso remains a favourite, among the media at least, although it would surely be an expensive deal - Ferrari surely wouldn't have let him have a cheap buy-out option, even if his current stint is supposed to be ending - but if Honda are willing to pay for him, they can almost certainly have him. And Alonso is a deft hand in a bad car, and has a habit of getting them across the finish line far ahead of where it should be, a tasty prospect for a team likely to build a bad car next year.

A step up from certain to build a bad car next year... (via ESPNF1)

So it seems to me either McLaren will retain their drivers for next year, or maybe - maaaaybe - they'll turf Jenson in favour of Fernando, keeping Kevin because of his excellent stopwatch-to-dollar ratio. But as I said, that'll be the least important aspect of McLaren next year. Here's the most important: where the hell will they be getting their money? The sponsor question is so huge, so fundamental, it seems daft to even ask it. Keeping your deals quiet until the official announcement is standard practice, of course, but gossips mean secrets are hard to keep, and the stubborn silence suggests either Ron Dennis has already lined up a sponsor for next year or hasn't managed it yet and doesn't want anyone to know. Would you invest millions of dollars in a team if you knew you'd be the only one? Exactly. Confidence begets confidence.

And from that perspective, it makes a lot of sense that he's keeping Jenson's future in doubt - it's a wonderful way to keep the media distracted. And if that seems too Machiavellian for Ron, remember, this is the man who first called F1 the Piranha Club.

Remember the Red Trident?

Isn't it amazing how you can drive past something a thousand times without seeing what's actually there? Look what I just noticed around the side of my local Repco:

"Neptune." Just one of many oil companies - Atlantic, Amoco, Alba, Golden Fleece - that old fogies will remember coming and going as the oil giants went The Blob on their smaller rivals. Neptune was apparently founded in 1909 and traded under the Waratah name; they were sold back-and-forth a few times until they were bought by Shell in 1926, but didn't open petrol stations under the Neptune name until 1952, by which time Shell wanted them to be their franchise in rural Australia (God knows why). I asked around and it seems that back in the day this building was home to Continental Motors, the local Volkswagen dealer and repair garage, which implied petrol retailer as well (yes, petrol stations were once garages rather than mini-supermarkets. Tell your kids).

Like this one at East Denistone, NSW (via GasSigns.org)

Why does any of this matter? Because in 1964, Neptune's Rod Troone had the bright idea to blow his entire marketing budget on touring car racing, setting up one of the country's earliest professional racing teams. Since it was class-based racing in those days, Troone made arrangements with three separate owner-drivers to form the Neptune Racing Team: Norm Beechey in the over-2.6 litre class, driving a tweaked 170 kW Holden EH S4 Special; Jim McKeown in the 2-litre class, driving a just-as-tweaked Lotus Cortina; and Peter "Skinny" Manton in the sub-1.3 litre class, driving his Mini Cooper S (presumably tweaked). All were painted in Neptune Blue, a colour that washes all over a Google Image search for "Neptune Racing Team" and one guaranteed to lower your blood pressure at least a little.

Via PerformanceForums.com

The following year (1965) Beechey traded the EH for a Mustang and won his first Australian Touring Car Championship, beginning the Aussie muscle era in earnest. The next time he won it, in 1970, he was back in a Holden, but it was now painted yellow; Troone's bold gambit had either proved a bad idea or a spectacularly good one, because in 1969 Shell had moved in and taken over all the Neptune sites for themselves. The Neptune Racing Team became the Shell Racing Team, and it wouldn't be until the '80s when they formed a partnership with Dick Johnson that the Shell colours became as ubiquitous as Neptune's were back in the '60s.

Via AussieRoadRacing.com, which is very worth checking out.

Little bits of history, hidden in plain sight. Only motorsport tragics care enough to notice.

Preview: Oh Canada

The final corner of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montréal, home to the Grand Prix of Canada, is a tricky right-left chicane. To get through there on a fast lap you have to be as deft as a cat on a shelf full of china, because opposite the pits, right on the racing line, is a concrete wall cheerily emblazoned with the words Bienvenue au Québec. In 1999, Michael Schumacher led for half the race before he fumbled the chicane, drifted wide and smashed into the concrete wall, climbing from the crumpled remains of his Ferrari with a face as scarlet as his overalls - thankfully hidden by his helmet. Damon Hill (World Champion 1996) had already retired after hitting the very same wall, and Jacques Villeneuve (World Champion 1997) followed him not too long after, so ever since then the Quebec wall has been known as the Wall of Champions.

That little story tells you everything you need to know about the upcoming Canadian Grand Prix. Even the best can be caught out by the circuit on the Île Notre Dame: the odds are there will be crashes, safety cars, flying carbon fibre and general mayhem. And no wonder:

Fundamentally, this is a fast track where the cars break 300km/h in multiple places. That means wings are pared back for top speed and minimal downforce. Normally that would allow you to soften the suspension to make the car more forgiving, except that the need to stay nimble through the chicanes and around the hairpin rule that out in Canada. For the drivers, the cars are left feeling nervous, highly strung - and the barriers are never far away. In most places, the space between the ribbons of Armco is only as wide as a tennis court. High speeds, edgy cars and hovering barriers - what do you think is going to happen?

Just for extra variety - and once again, I'm indebted to Martin Brundle and his book Working The Wheel for pointing this out - the ideal setup on this track actually requires a little understeer to keep the rear wheels planted so you can get on the power early. That means - for once - the, lesser drivers can keep up with the big fish, who can't leave them behind like they usually do (or if they do, it's because they're over-driving like crazy - see "hovering barriers" above). There's every chance that when someone else has an accident, you'll just be in it. Now throw in a dash of the downright bizarre like hitting a groundhog (although that seems to have dropped off in the last couple of decades), and the World Sports Car race in 1990 that produced only genuine case I know of of a car sucking up a manhole cover*, and you have the recipe for a truly unique race.

Although, come to think of it, we saw this all the time.

Just in the nick of time, then, for Renault's round of new engine upgrades. Renault's overheating problems in preseason testing meant for the first few races they had to devote 100% of their resources to getting some reliability - with, it must be admitted, spectacular success. Compare Daniel Ricciardo's regular podium finishes to his inability to even complete a an outlap in January, and you see just how far the crew at Viry-Châtillon have come.

The downside is that hasn't left much time to chase kilowatts and drivability, and as I said drivability is huge in Montréal. The driver who can get on the power first, wins, and the Renault's nasty habit of kicking the car sideways as the turbo spools up is about the worst trait the engine could have, either robbing the car of traction at the exit of each corner or - even worse - robbing Vettel and Ricciardo of confidence, so their throttle application becomes ginger, hesitant.

Remi Taffin, Renault's man at the track, says:

“The long straights demand maximum power for a high percentage of the lap, therefore stressing the [internal combustion engine] hugely. I expect we’ll see speeds in excess of 330kph as we did in Barcelona so we will rely on the MGU-K [kinetic energy harvesting unit] and MGU-H [heat energy harvesting unit] to boost both top speed and acceleration. With very few corners energy recovery via the MGU-K will however be pretty difficult as the cars do not slow frequently over the lap. As a result the emphasis will be on the MGU-H to recover energy through the exhaust gases - we’ll need as much energy as we can as we’ll be right on the limit with the fuel consumption here.”

No, I have no idea how the MGU-H works: I keep imagining a miniaturised cyberpunk boiler, complete with tiny engineers heating their soup on the steam pipes, but it's probably much cooler and more interesting than that. Renault Sport employs people much smarter than me, and the Red Bull otherwise seems like a damn fine chassis, so if Renault can keep up their current rate of progress I predict they'll win a race before the year is out - Hungary maybe, or Abu Dhabi after the sun goes down and the temperatures drop.

Lastly, I have to give credit where it's due - Vettel is taking this season amazingly well. No, I know nobody in Australia wants to hear that, but it must be said. We haven't seen any of that boyish Backpfeifengesicht and its beaming smile like we used to, but that's no surprise. He's losing and he's not happy about it, and - come on - why should he be happy about it? The success of the last four years is pretty easy to get used to, but now he's being shown up by his "junior" teammate, he's finding the car doesn't like him, and even if they don't admit it, every single journalist out there sees the whole situation as karma. Maybe he's let off some steam in the German press, but in the Anglosphere I haven't heard a whisper of complaint. Given how much frustration there must be under that helmet, and I have to respect that.

But I also have to admit - and not just because I called it weeks ago - the schadenfreude of finding out he's been studying Ricciardo's data is delicious.

* Yes, I know Mythbusters supposedly busted this one, but the IndyCar they tested it with has a regulation flat bottom. Those Group C monsters had venturi tunnels which, combined with their phenomenal top speeds, must have produced some truly staggering levels of downforce. Adam, Jamie, I have four words for you - re-visit with ground effects!

So That Was May...

...the golden month of motorsport. And what a May it was.

I know the Indy 500 doesn't get much respect over here, but it should. As I've pointed out before, I've been for a ride in an oval-track racer, and from that perspective the broadcast looks... intense. Even a lumbering stock car corners so hard that if you dropped your pen it would stick to the window, and as the man said, here the cor wheighs hef as much and the tah-ers are twahce as waahde. This article has some actual figures if you're interested - for the rest of us, let's just say the G-force on your head is like lifting a shopping bag full of four 2L milk bottles with your neck - 800 times in two hours. No wonder they fit a sissy pad to brace against.

Now watch how hard these guys were racing at the end of two hours.

A good race and a good win for Ryan Hunter-Reay, even though with just a couple of engines and a only single chassis allowed, it does seem a little pointless. I hope one day the series is rich enough to go more open-formula again. A huge part of the appeal in the old days was the series regulars matching it with oddballs entering just this one race, cars developed and engineered on the fly. Porsche got interested back before it all went to hell; so did Ferrari. If they ditched the control chassis for a more laissez-faire approach, would we see other great racing dynasties come? A McLaren IndyCar, perhaps... (they've already got the Honda engines)? And what about the rising superpowers China, India and Brazil? Would we ever see a Dongfeng overtake an Agrale to chase down the leading Tata? Or would the Americans commit seppuku before they'd let that happen? I don't know, but I'll say again what I wish someone had said to Tony George twenty years ago: Indy can be a great race, or an American race, but not both.

The other kinda shame is that a week later they weren't racing at Milwaukee, but Belle Isle in Detroit, sharing the bill with the NASCAR-backed United Sportscar Series. A sign of the times: the Indy-Milwaukee double-header used to be an important beat in the season's rhythm, but NASCAR has cash and there's none to be made at the cramped, outdated Milwaukee Mile, which can't pack in enough customers to cover costs.

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Congrats also to Nico Rosberg, Prince of Monaco for another year - but really, are we that surprised? He did grow up there. His dad Keke was World Champion himself once, moved to Monaco and left behind his native Finland so completely that Nico doesn't even speak Finnish, hence his official listing as German. But Nico spent his childhood on those streets, so I'm not too surprised that he beat Lewis. If they had a race on the streets of Stevenage, the result would probably have been different. Or maybe not - Nico's precise "classic" driving style did him better service than Lewis' roughly-hewn mastery.

Pic not from this year, I just couldn't waste an opportunity to post it.

But I'm still backing Lewis for the championship. Monaco is an aberration, after all, so Nico's win doesn't necessarily herald a comeback. And - once again - all we heard from Lewis was nonstop whining, pointing to plenty of extra brainpower inside his helmet that Nico didn't have. It's just a shame that Lewis doesn't find a more worthy outlet for it...

Then there was Nico Hülkenberg's moment of the race - hell, the moment of his career, overtaking Kevin Magnussen through Portier. I've been watching and studying Formula 1 for nearly a decade now but I don't think I've even heard of anyone passing at Portier before (this is the corner that ruined Ayrton Senna's perfect race in '88, let's not forget). His boss, Indian bling king Vijay Mallya, hailed it, "one of the best overtaking moves of this season," and even though the season is less than half over I bet it'll stay that way. Let's watch it again:

Seriously, can we get a .gif of that? I want it on permanent loop for every time someone bellyaches the old days were better.

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Lastly, this May reminded me over and over again of the only man alive who's won both Monaco and Indianapolis, the Colombian bruiser Juan Pablo Montoya.

Pictured above.

His 2000 Indy 500 win is better detailed by Motorsport Retro, who recently published a good piece about it. It's a seedy story full of politics, because IndyCar at the time was in the middle of the long war between Tony George and the CART barons. The end result was, even though he was a 500 winner: “My face is not on the trophy. That won’t change.”

What a shame.

His Monaco win in 2003 was a happier story, but a much harder fight. Late in the race Kimi Räikkönen and Michael Schumacher had caught up and were stuck behind his Williams in a long snake the journos cutely named "Monty's Python". The reason why was less funny - his engine was on the verge of exploding.

Then in the last six laps Juan Pablo was on the radio saying, "There’s no fucking power, no fucking power." They said, "Yeah, we know. We’ve got some temperature problems; we’re decreasing the revs." A few laps later Montoya is under enormous pressure: Kimi Räikkönen is all over him. Juan Pablo says, "If you don’t give me some more fucking revs, I’m going to stick it in the fucking wall." This was typical Juan Pablo. He meant it: he was driving the wheels off that car. So they agreed that they would give him a burst of power through the tunnel to protect him down to the chicane. Meanwhile the temperatures are still climbing and everyone is sweating in the pits. This thing is about to let go at any point. But somehow everything held together and we won the race.

The car arrived in parc fermé and there were puddles of water under it. Everyone in Williams knew it was the same problem that had happened at the previous race. There was a realisation within the team that we were within an ace of throwing away a win at Monaco. – Jim Wright, Williams: In Their Own Words

There's progress there, in a way. Monaco doesn't put much airflow over the radiators so it's a hot race for engines, and the BMW engine that year cranked out about 670 kW, plus or minus. The dinky little V8's last year weren't an awful lot further behind, but had no reliability problems whatsoever. Amazing what a decade of R&D can do. So let's not rib Renault too much for their overheating problems, they'll be back - and they'll be bringing Daniel Ricciardo with them.

Jack's Monaco

We lost Sir Jack Brabham just a few days ago, at the age of 88, the greatest - certainly the most important and successful - Aussie Formula 1 driver of all time. His career culminated in three World Championships, one hard-fought and worthy of a movie (1959), one as dominant as a Schumacher or a Vettel (1960), and the one that will follow the comma after his name forever more, won in a car he designed and built himself (1966). Jack's teammate Denny Hulme took the title in 1967 as well, and after he sold the team to a certain Bernard Charles Ecclestone, they went on to take two more drivers' titles with Nelson Piquet, including the first to be won with a turbo engine. His son David also won Le Mans with Peugeot, and his grandson Matthew absolutely wiped the floor with last year's Pro Mazda Championship, stepping stone to the Indy 500.

Via leblogauto (I know, wat?!)

No shortage of silverware for the Brabham name, in other words, but by a handy coincidence, it all started on the streets of Monaco, the upcoming race in this year's F1 World Championship. There's no point embedding a Google Maps image for Monaco - if you can find the route on a map, you don't need it anyway - so instead I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and combine my Monaco preview with a tribute to Jack. This is the story of Jack Brabham's maiden Grand Prix victory...

Quick biography first: unlike the rest of the Commonwealth drivers, who universally learned their trade in 500cc Formula 3 Coopers, Jack had got his start tearing up Australia’s quarter-mile dirt speedways in midget cars. Nowadays that's how you breed NASCAR drivers, not F1 World Champions, but success had brought backing from the Redex fuel additive company, and a banged-up Cooper-Bristol that Jack Frankensteined back into an awesome car (mechanical trade picked up in the RAAF) and rechristened the Redex Special. This special machine had taught Jack how to identify and correct your machinery’s most severe faults, an essential skill if you wanted to go Grand Prix racing, and soon Australia was forsaken for the lure of Europe. He left behind his wife Betty, young son Geoff, and a workshop he knew intimately: “The thing I missed most,” he sighed, “was my lathe."

Via Foxsports

After fart-arsing around for a year or so, he invested every penny he could scrape together into a Maserati 250F, painted a patriotic green and gold. Jack had fallen in love with its classic Italian lines, but sadly the Mazzer didn't love him back, spending 1955 emptying his wallet with expensive engine failures. Then Reg Tanner of Esso said the magic words: “He told me, ‘You’ll never be able to afford to run this Maserati, why don’t you drive for Cooper?’” So Jack was offered a full-time drive with the team in September 1956, with Esso support. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Jack.

Cooper were a father-and-son concern run by Charlie and John, respectively. That they had also built the Cooper-Bristol that became the Redex Special was not prescient; their business was customer racing cars, and business was good. Between 1951 and 1955 they'd sold over three hundred of their beautiful little Formula 3 cars, and won 64 out of 78 major F3 races. Charlie was a survivor of the Great Depression, who understandably viewed his bottom line as the bottom line, so when Jack suggested they build a new F1 car with the engine in the back, just like those jewelish F3 cars, Charlie's response was: "There's the workshop, go and build one."

So of course, he had. And that was how Cooper Cars Ltd came to do business through the late 50's: Jack driving the racecars and twirling spanners in the workshop, virtually for free; John Cooper fudging expense reports so his father wouldn't notice; and Charlie Cooper, when he found the piggy bank mysteriously empty, bleating, "Why change it when we're winnin'?!"

The crucial breakthrough came at the tail end of 1958, with the arrival of a new engine called the Coventry-Climax FPF. Strictly speaking it wasn't new, having been in use for a couple of years now. It was, believe it or not, a repurposed firefighters' pump, but since they had to be light enough for two people to carry between them, that had made them pretty sweet for racing. Lots of enthusiasts had got into the habit of buying FPFs and modifying them to improve the rev range and get them closer to F1's maximum capacity; first 1.5-litres, then 2.2-litres was the limit the block could take. Climax themselves, realising there was a market, eventually agreed to build a full 2.5-litre version for Formula 1, provided Cooper themselves covered the cost of developing it. Charlie baulked, so in stepped Rob Walker, scion of the Johnnie Walker whisky dynasty and gentleman team owner who was one of their best customers, and agreed to fund the engine provided he got dibs on the first one delivered. Which he did, in time for the for the start of the 1959 season.

And with the Argentine Grand Prix cancelled, the first championship race of 1959 was, of course, the Monaco Grand Prix.

Via thejudge13 (on a personal note, I just love that it opens with a verse from The Man From Snowy River!)

So Cooper Cars Ltd arrived in Monte Carlo with their new cars, new engine, and some old rivals. On one side they had Rob Walker and his driver, Stirling Moss. Moss was certain to be quick and was driving a Cooper that was almost - almost - identical to Jack's own. On the other side was Scuderia Ferrari and a brace of drivers including the English dentist, Tony Brooks, and the French hothead, Jean Behra. None were going to be a pushover.

Funnily enough, although Monaco has always been a unique circuit, it was a bit less unique in 1959 than it was in later years. It probably reached Peak Unique in the early 80's, when most of the Formula 1 season ran on permanent circuits and Monte Carlo had barely changed since the 50's. Since then it's become more and more modified and more like a modern Tilke-drome, but ironically in Jack's day it was pretty similar to the average circuit for the opposite reason. More than half the races each year (most of which didn't even count for the championship) were in either France or Italy, and run on open roads or city streets - Pescara, San Remo, Reims, Pau, stuff like that. So Monaco wasn't quite the culture shock in 1959 it was in later years, but still, we need to get this out of the way:

The road was a normal street like the one outside your house, so it wasn't flat, it was crowned to sluice off rainwater. When you're right on the limit, that means a hell of a lot, because turning the car you'll have extra resistance right up until you reach the middle of the road, where it will suddenly fall away and you'll crab across and probably hit the barriers. Except there were no barriers in Jack's day - if a spot needed protecting, they did it with haybales, but even they were to protect the crowds, not the drivers. From the climb from Ste Devote to Casino Square, one of the faster bits of the track, you had to be careful not to break a wheel off on a lamp post. If you even made it as far as the waterfront, you'd find a flimsy wire fence that would do nothing to keep you out of the harbour if something went wrong, and the surface was smooth white concrete which could, in high winds, easily cop a splash from a wavelet. Imagine arriving at Tabac and finding the concrete was now wet concrete, slippery as ice. This was the environment in which the XVII Grand Prix de Monaco was flagged away.

In the early laps it was a race between Jean Behra and Stirling Moss, two lads who never backed down from a fight. The power of the Ferrari had given Behra the advantage off the line and he'd taken the lead, but the battle went on until lap 22, when a faster Stirling finally squeezed past. Brabham's nimble Cooper gave him the edge over Behra's Ferrari as well, and he managed to elbow his way past soon after - which turned out to be rather pointless, as Behra's engine died on lap 23. So today the customer really was coming first, as Stirling's private Cooper led Brabham's factory Cooper around and around the streets of the beautiful people's paradise. It didn't look like Jack was going to catch Moss today. Wrote Gregor Grant for Autosport:

In truth, on a circuit such as Monaco, Moss is now in a class by himself. At no time did he appear to be caning his motor car, and his passage around the circuit was as smooth and delightful to watch as anything ever witnessed. It was an exhibition of virtuosity in Grand Prix racing such as few drivers can ever display.

But it wasn't quite over yet. If Moss was better a straight-up driver than Jack, Jack knew his car far better, down to the last nut and bolt. Since both Rob Walker and the Coopers had found the new full-size Climax engine was a bit too muscular for the flimsy gearboxes they'd been using, both had sought solutions. Walker had commissioned a Modenese ex-Maserati designer named Valerio Colotti to build them one, and that proved a mistake.

Colotti was a pretty good designer and, when it was working, it was a beautiful ‘box to use. The trouble was the metals: at that time they didn’t have very good materials in Italy, so it kept on breaking. – Stirling Moss

Cooper, on the other hand, had sent Jack to see ERSA who made them, an accidental stroke of brilliance.

I could hardly believe my eyes! We came across hundreds of Citroën gearbox cases fresh from casting. It suddenly hit me: it’d be dead easy to modify some cores before they were cast. Luckily the foreman was a bit of a racer, and he agreed to the modifications if I did the job myself. So I spent the rest of the day putting in ribs of plasticine and adding metal in all the places where we’d had trouble. – Jack Brabham, The Jack Brabham Story

On lap 81, Stirling's Colotti 'box came back to bite him, and he was forced into the pits to retire. For the next 19 laps, Jack's hard work paid off as his gearbox held together, and he didn’t make a mistake for the rest of the race - which in itself was quite an achievement, as heat from the radiator pipes was spreading to his pedals and burning his feet! #AussieGrit didn't start with Mark Webber, kids...

Late in the race, John began signalling that Tony Brooks of Ferrari was catching up. I just couldn’t press the pedals any harder, the soles of my shoes were sizzling, the heat all but unbearable. But there was too much at stake, too much within reach, to give in. I just managed to hang on, and suddenly here was the chequered flag. Glory be, we’d won the Monaco Grand Prix! – Jack Brabham, TheJack Brabham Story

He'd never win it again, either, although funnily enough the year he came closest was 1970, the year he retired. What a nice bookend that would've made... but all that was a long way in the future, and today was for celebration.

I found myself limping up to accept the trophy and laurels from Prince Rainier and Princess Grace. Old Charlie Cooper was beside himself, quivering with glee. That night we had an uproarious celebration at the race dinner in the Hotel de Paris, including a strawberry fight. – Jack Brabham, The Jack Brabham Story

It laid the foundation for Jack's first World Championship, which set him up to win it again in 1960, which in turn led to starting his own team and all the hard work and triumph to come. This was the first domino, the one that set Jack Brabham on a path to becoming a legend of the sport and the only man to become champion in his own car. And it doesn't hurt that Australia couldn't have asked for a better ambassador, either.

We'll miss you, Jack. Australia and I can only say, from the bottom of our hearts: Thanks, mate.

Sir Jack Brabham, AO, OBE. 1926 - 2014 (via Wikipedia)