The US Grand Prix appears after a gap of almost ten
years. The last US GP was, from memory, at Phoenix in 1991. This one will
be very different.
Set on a new circuit in the infield of the Indy 500
track, this US GP will have more US hype than just about any event in
history. The George family that controls the Indy 500 will make sure of
that.
There are already some “journalists” trying to say
that this being a new circuit will favour or not favour certain drivers.
Let me assure you that guys like the Schumachers, Hakkinen, Coulthard et
al are professionals. They will be in the swing of the circuit within five
laps - or they ain’t worth the high figures they command as drivers.
Remember too that Button in the BMW Williams has been competing on
circuits he has never driven on before during this year - and he’s not
done bad (other than a few over-enthusiastic manoeuvres).
The true race drivers will quickly size up a corner and
have it off pat very quickly. Mind you, I remember a hair-pin corner at
the long defunct Warwick Farm circuit in Sydney Australia, called Creek
Corner. At the end of my first race there, a journalist came up and said,
“Congratulations, Mate. You tried 27 different lines through Creek and
every one of them was wrong!” He printed it too, to my chagrin!
Ferrari has certainly had a new breath of life
recently, with the dominance of both Ferrari’s in Qualifying at Monza,
and Schumacher’s decisive victory in the race. Coulthard has definitely
dropped his bundle, in my opinion, resorting to his lame “I got held
up” statements to explain his poor qualifying positions of late. All the
cars were out there for Hakkinen as well, but Happy sets a time. There’s
something about reading the track conditions ahead - and that includes
working out where the cars are up front. We should not have to teach
Coulthard this at this stage in his career. Mathematically, with 30 points
still left, Coulthard could still win the championship, but it would need
Schumi and Hakkinen not to finish in a couple of races, and of course,
this is still quite possible, even if not probable.
I certainly wouldn’t have liked to have been a Jordan
driver at Monza. Eddie (Jordan) is not a guy to mince his words, and
destroying two cars in the one accident is a no-no in any race team
owner’s language. I get the feeling that Heinz-Harald Frentzen is
getting a little desperate, with Trulli out-qualifying him yet again.
Jaguar? Send the cats back to the zoo and start again,
FoMoCo! Or perhaps Eddie the Mouth could dye his hair in Jaguar spots and
that might make a difference - nothing else has. At least Johnny Herbert
gets a free trip to the States to sign his CART contract for next year. He
should be able to watch the US GP as well, as his car rarely lasts more
than a couple of laps!
For all the action, join me trackside at Shenanigans
(formerly known as Delaney’s) on 2nd Road. The time? A very unsociable 2
in the morning by my reckoning - but look at the notice board in
Shenanigans.
Autotrivia Quiz
Mark, who owns a lovely old Dodge Challenger said I
should put some more technical questions into the autotrivia questions. So
just for Mark, I posed the techo question. What is a Sprague? And what was
it used for?
Well Mark (and everyone else), it was a spiked piece of
steel that hinged onto the rear of the car. When you felt you might not
get up the hill, you dropped the Sprague, like an anchor, and it stopped
you running all the way down the hill again by digging into the bitumen.
So to this week’s question. The following is a famous
quotation and was spoken by a famous race team owner. “I have killed my
mother” was what he said. Who was he, and to whom was he referring? Best
of luck!
For the Automania FREE beer this week, be the first
correct answer to fax 427 596 or email [email protected].
Simply the Best!
Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher or Mika Hakkinen or
whom? This question still comes up all the time when F1 drivers are being
compared, but here is the correct answer - Juan Manuel Fangio by a country
mile.
Here
is the record. Taking pole positions, Fangio put his car on pole for 50%
of the F1 races he ever competed in. By comparison, Ayrton Senna managed
40%, Sir Stirling Moss 22%, Michael Schumacher 20%, Hakkinen 18% and Prost
16%.
Let’s look at race wins - Fangio won 41% of his
races, Alberto Ascari won 35% of his, while Schumacher is on 28%, Senna
25%, Prost 25%, Moss 22% and Happy Hakkinen 12%.
Who was on the podium more times than anyone else?
Fangio stood up there for a whopping 60% of his races, Schumi’s closest
at 56%, followed by Prost 52%, Senna 49%, Ascari 46%, Moss 33% and
Hakkinen 32%.
And finally, and probably the most telling, is the list
of retirements. Moss retired in almost half of his races - a 48% record of
DNF’s. By comparison, Ascari had 40% DNF’s, Hakkinen 38%, Senna 33%,
Prost 29%, Schumi 29% and Fangio 24%! From this list, you can see just who
were (or are) the car breakers amongst them.
No, Fangio won a greater percentage, was on the podium
more often, set more poles and broke his car less often. So who was the
best? J.M. Fangio by that country mile!
1000 BHP Ford Focus
Thousand horsepower Fords aren’t all that rare. The
351 V8’s could always get those sort of numbers if you hung a hair dryer
on the side of them, but can you imagine a 2 litre thousand horsepower
Ford engine?
Ford claims that in the US they just commissioned one
such animal. The whole shooting match is in a Ford Focus bodyshell and has
a standard Ford block and cylinder head. Everything else is custom made -
like the crank and rods for starters! It has a special magnesium and
ceramic Indycar turbocharger and drinks methanol rather than petrol. The
eggheads say it will do a quarter mile in under 9 seconds. By comparison,
the world’s fastest production car, the McLaren F1 (not to be confused
with the McLaren Mercedes F1 car as used by Hakkinen and Coulthard) takes
11.1 seconds for the quarter mile.
