The carnival
continues
‘Fat
Tuesday’ has been and gone in Brazil.
The costumes, the headdresses, the samba and the
floats are all now locked away in various low rent
suburbs of Rio De Janeiro until next year. The
hangovers have cured themselves, the poor people, the
petty crooks and pickpockets now have to jettison
their fantasies and transient illusions to become the
real people that they were before ‘Carnival’.
But the daydreaming can linger for just a little
longer as, in the bars of nearby Sao Paulo and
in the squalid cardboard favelas of its
sprawling suburbs, watched over by revered images of Ayerton
Senna, Nelson Piquet, Emerson
Fittapaldi and New hero Rubens Barichello,
talk turns in earnest to the merits of their
courageous Countrymen and how they rate in the
Brazilian hall of hero’s. Grand Prix fever is
upon the masses and, in the greatest show of
capitalist propaganda in the world, the Formula One
State Circus lands on the shores of South America,
strutting its extravagant finery, putting on
it’s own costumes and plumage and averting its
eyes from the poverty and squalor surrounding it. The
people of Sao Paulo and Rio don’t care. Their
passion is motor racing and their drivers, like their
Italian counterparts, are Gods. The definite
possibility in years past of Fittapaldi or Senna
winning the Brazilian Grand Prix would be enough to
give the jaded revelers a touch more incentive for
dancing in the streets.
Some Brazilians will
tell you that the Golden age passed with the death of
Senna yet the younger fans will remember last
year’s stunning performance by current Stewart
Grand Prix driver, Barichello who put his Jordan
Peugeot on the second row of the grid to the
unbridled jubilation of the whole of Brazil, albeit a
second short of World Champion, Damon Hill’s
Williams Renault. He said recently of last years
race: " Last year in Brazil I had one of the
best races of my career. It has normally been a good
circuit for me. I put the car on the front row and I
think that meant more to me than my pole position in
Spa"
The circuit of Interlagos
is tightly packed into a natural amphitheatre close
to the urban sprawl of Sao Paulo, South
America’s fastest growing city. Anticlockwise,
it winds around itself crossing a lake in a 2 and a
half mile mixture of sweeping bends, high speed
straits and sharp hairpins. All the drivers complain
about the inherent ‘bumpiness’ of the
circuit and despite regular, but half hearted attempt
to flatten them, the problem still persists. From an
engine point of view according to European Director
of Ford Motorsport Martin Witaker, "Power
is obviously important because of the long straits,
but a lot of lap time comes from flowing smoothly
through the series of slow corners behind the pits.
For an engine this means that driveability and
smoothness of power delivery are vital." Sub
tropical climate makes the weather extremely
unpredictable. Last year an unexpected downpour half
an hour from the start, turned the race into a
lottery. It was won in commanding manner by Hill
providing the platform from which to build his
Championship title. Barichello, despite running a
feisty race and for two laps running a close second
to Hill, unfortunately spun out on lap 60 out of 70. Jean
Alesi another Wet weather maestro had his highest
finish of the season finishing second in front of Michael
Schumacher. It went downhill for him from then
on.
With the tyre war
promised at Melbourne not materialising, there could
be some fireworks this weekend if it rains, as Bridgestone’s
wets have proved to be dominant in winter testing
giving as much as a four seconds a lap advantage over
Goodyear shod cars. The back markers are
almost exclusively on the Japanese rubber so some
midfield skirmishing could be a possibility before
the big boys assert themselves.
Both Benson &
Hedges Jordan drivers Ralf Schumacher and Giancarlo
Fisichella will be racing in Brazil for the first
time for a Formula 1 team. It is probably hard for
Jordan Peugeot Boss Eddie Jordan not to have
misgivings about his two raw recruits especially as
Fisichella suffered a massive shunt attempting to do
a race distance recently. But, always at the
forefront in spotting new talent, he must take heart
in the fact that his 24 year old German protégé
Schumacher, was fastest by a country mile during the
same testing session last week at Silverstone.
This included the times of recent race winner David
Coulthard’s West McLaren Mercedes
but not significantly, the Williams’ who were
brake testing elsewhere. The Italian was lucky to
have suffered nothing but a bruised knee and will be
fully recovered for the coming race weekend.
According to Technical Director Gary Anderson,
"We had not planned to test the new FIA
rear impact structure, but we can reassure everyone
that it works very well! Fisichella went off at Stowe
doing 220kph and within 0.72 of a second was at a
standstill. This represents a deceleration of between
11 and 12g. Without the new rear impact structure,
the damage could have been quite severe."
It probably won’t
be the World Champion that will be the crowd’s
point of focus, but new team mate Pedro Diniz
who finished a creditable 8th last year in the Ligier
Mugen-Honda. Not much chance of that this year,
but the Fans will cheer him on and turn the Samba up
loud as he passes. The Arrows team will regard
it as a plus just to be able to start the race
at Interlagos and their best hope is to finish.
Hill’s Arrows A18 was more than 2 seconds
slower than Jacques Villeneuve’s Williams
in testing at Paul Ricard last week
It is still Williams
that is expected to take the first, if not second
prize despite their poor showing in Melbourne. Heinz
Harald Frentzen could be the hot favourite even
with a flea in his ear from Williams Chief engineer Patrick
Head who has let it be known that Frentzen was
partly to blame for his shattered brake disk by over
braking with simultaneous use of the throttle. This
could make Frentzen a more cautious driver, leaving
the way open for Jacques Villeneuve, a man who will
give no quarter and certainly not to his team mate
who is constantly trying to upstage him.
Second equal in the
pecking order and which could provide some
excitement, are the McLarens and the Ferrari’s.
David Coulthard turning the expected
procession of the Australian Grand Prix into an
entertaining race by winning it - ending a 49 race
drought for Team Boss Ron Dennis - and putting
Schumacher in the middle of a silver sandwich, the
bottom slice being Mika Hakkinen. Coulthard
however, is realistic about his chances of a second
win. "I’m not filling myself with false
hopes," he said after the race, "I was 1.7
seconds off pole position and its doubtful that I can
make that up in Brazil".
The Ferrari’s
reputation for its unreliability could make the
weekend a bit of a struggle for them. However Eddie
Irvine says," The car is promising and
we’re finding improvements all the time."
After taking out both Johnny Herbert,
Villeneuve and himself in Melbourne and unwittingly
opening the race up for the rest of the field, Irvine
remains unrepentant despite the majority of media
opinion that, true to recent form, the Irishman tried
to dive through the barn doors before they were fully
opened. Writing in the London Times this week,
he said, "Villeneuve was asleep when the lights
signaled the start, but refused to concede he would
have to lose places because of his mistake. He
won’t be making a start like that again in a
hurry or he won’t be winning the
Championship".
The only other
possible challengers could be the Benettons of Alesi
and Gerhard Berger. Disappointing themselves
badly in Melbourne due to a major error in setting up
the cars and, compounded by Alesi’s blatant
disregard for his crews pitboard instructions to pit
for fuel, Boss Flavio Briatore must surely be
looking for nothing short of a win to claw back
Benetton’s rapidly diminishing credibility as a force
majeur . Chief designer Nick Wirth, said
of Benettons blunder, "It was a car problem and
I’m disappointed we didn’t pick it up
earlier. I’m just gutted about it." Despite
Berger narrowly missing a podium step by only seven
tenths of a second, the management will look to him
rather than the Sicilian to provide the result that
the team so desperately needs.
Best of the new
Bridgestone runners after the first race of the year,
were the new teams of World Champion’s Alain
Prost and Jackie Stewart. Looking forward
to Brazil Stewart said, "We must be careful not
to set our sights too high after Ruben’s
excellent qualifying effort in Melbourne. We’ve
had little testing since then, alas, so we don’t
come to South America with very high
expectations." Both Barichello and rookie Jan
Magnussen will be trying to keep up with the
Jordans in their SF1’s but should have no
trouble staying ahead of the Lola’s
who’s dire form in Melbourne prevented them from
setting times within the 107% qualifying rule. Things
don’t look set to change until their new engine
comes on line for Spa but the teams presence
in South America is important, as funding is provided
by the Brazilian arm of finance giant MasterCard.
Eric Broadley Lola’s boss said, " We
are treating it as a test session."
Both Olivier Panis
and Shinji Nakano finished extremely well as
did Jarno Trulli in the vastly improved
Minardi Hart. It seems though that Stalwart
campaigner Ken Tyrell will see little
improvement from running last years specification Ford
engine.
This could be then,
the true indication of the direction in which points
will go. If, as is commonly believed, the Williams
trounce all and sundry the probability is, that
McLaren and Ferrari will enter the fray as secondary
contenders. Provided that the set up problems of
Benetton have been ironed out we should expect to See
Berger qualifying on the second or third row also and
the third step which now has to be the holy grail of
all contending drivers, seeing as the first two are
spoken for, could be his for the taking. Hill will
have no expectations. Qualification should be easier
here but as Irvine reckons quite reasonably ‘he
wont be higher than fifteenth’. Irvine has
forgotten Hill’s knack of shaking the daylights
out of a car and giving it a good kick in the pants
to push it to its limit as we all saw in Melbourne.
Hill I am sure will do all this and if Tom Walkinshaw
who admitted ‘screwing up’ in Australia
gets it together for the champ, his ride might not be
quite so rough as everyone expects. But, don’t
hold your breath.
This is the start of
the Grand Prix season proper where all the cars will
begin to reveal themselves and the drivers, getting
used to the body jarring bumps at Interlagos, will be
hoping that their cars will stay in one piece long
enough to get over the line and before they
themselves expire through physical exhaustion. This
is a race about the survival of the fittest both in
man and machinery, but if the rains come, and storms
are forecast for race weekend, then all bets are off
and you may even see the Minardis taking a brief
spell in the spotlight. No matter what the weather
the spirit of ‘carnival’ will be briefly
re-ignited and irrespective of the outcome Brazil
will have their talking points for the rest of the
year.
Chris Richardson
