Ron Dennis, the boss of McLaren, was reported in Motoring News to have said (before the accident) that car designers, because of the loophole in the regulations, had to ask themselves a serious question: ‘Are you going to make your car deliberately less safe to achieve a performance advantage, even if that advantage is improved lateral vision?’
Can you imagine what the tabloids would have done with that had Brundle received a serious head injury?
At the end of the day, it was the responsibility of the FIA technical delegates and they had passed the Jordan as legal. The fact remained, however, that the designers of the Formula 1 teams had drawn up the rule. What had become clear was that two of the designers knew they were going to find an advantage with the very rule which they were helping to establish. The sport’s governing body had asked the designers for their help. It was totally wrong for two of them to then use a loophole.
Anyway, the main thing was that Martin was perfectly okay. That’s the first concern when you see another driver have an accident; you just hope he gets out. When he does, you then shut the whole thing from your mind.
I have to admit, that was much easier to do than usual because of my position near the front of the grid. When you are in the middle, it’s a nightmare. When you are at the front, you’ve got the two guys ahead, and that’s it. Once I had seen Villeneuve and Hill get going, I could take a quick look behind to see who was there, and then get on with the business. Further back, however, it is much more difficult to register exactly what is happening. The basic rule of thumb is that the driver following has to watch the guy in front and try to work out what he is going to do. In effect, you look after your front wheels. That’s the law as I see it.
At the restart in Melbourne, once again I made a better getaway than Damon but this time he got through the corner without making a mess of it. The Ferrari was definitely lacking in acceleration and straight line speed. Whether it was a question of insufficient power or perhaps too much aerodynamic drag, I’m not sure. All I know is that I was on the clean side of the grid (in effect, on the racing line which had more rubber and less dust and dirt) and twice I beat Hill off the line, and twice he left me way behind.
While waiting on the grid, I had been thinking about trying to get rid of the understeer. I didn’t want to make too many adjustments as this would take me further away from the original set-up arrived at during practice. It would have been a risk to make further changes because the understeer could have been caused by the tyres not having enough temperature at such an early stage of the race. In the end, we left the car as it was. Maybe, with hindsight, we should have done a bit more because, as soon as the race started, I knew I was still in trouble.
After the first couple of laps, I felt there was no point in trying to push as the understeer would destroy my front tyres. I had to apply caution and simply try and maintain my position.
With Villeneuve and Hill in front that meant I was third, with Michael closing on me. We had agreed before the race that, if I was quicker than him, then he would move out of the way and vice versa. It made good sense. The deal was that I could run my own race if I was faster than Michael, but, if we came to the last corner and I was third with Michael fourth, then I would let him through. I had no problem with that. Michael was employed to win the Championship. As far as I was concerned, it would be three points instead of four. Big deal. Who needs statistics?
We had agreed that if Michael felt he could go quicker than me, he would radio the pits and then my engineer would speak to me and just say ‘Michael’. That would be the signal and I would let him through. Since I was struggling with understeer and Michael was closing on me, it was pretty obvious what was going to happen. But I wanted to allow him though without letting the Benetton of Jean Alesi get by as well.
I chose the back straight, a place where Alesi might not expect such a move to take place and, even if he did try to come through, there were a couple of twisty corners immediately afterwards which would help me keep him at bay. The trouble was, I think I caught Michael by surprise as well! He ducked out from behind me at the last minute but luckily it worked out. Alesi missed his chance.
I knew I couldn’t run with Michael; I was just too slow. Whether that was because of the understeer, or whether he was just quicker than me, I don’t know. Interestingly, in the morning warm-up (when we run in race trim in final preparation for the Grand Prix) the two of us had been separated by just a few hundredths of a second, which was quite satisfying.
In any case, I was also concerned about brake-wear during the race. I knew from experience that I tended to be a lot harder on the brakes during the race than I had been when qualifying. We had measured my wear-rate on the Ferrari and, if the usual percentage increase occurred, I would have great difficult finishing the race. But this was speculation because I had not had the chance to put in a full race distance during testing with Ferrari, so we didn’t know how big the problem might be. I had no choice but to take it easy. To be honest, even if I had pushed hard, I could not have run with Michael. My race was with Alesi and the Benetton. I just tried to be smooth and not make any mistakes. Unfortunately, with Alesi, you never knew what was in his mind.
Approaching the braking area for a very slow corner – one where I was troubled by the understeer – I took a look in my mirror. I saw Alesi give some thought to coming down the inside, but he was too far behind. I reckoned there was no chance of him coming through from that distance, so I didn’t worry about him.
Then I looked again and there he was, on a mission to nowhere. In fact, he lost control of the Benetton before he even hit me. The impact could have been a lot worse; he could have spun me out of the race. In fact, the Benetton damaged part of my rear wing so I took things easy during the next few laps, just to check that everything was okay.
It was typical Alesi. He seemed to get away with that sort of thing at almost every race. Going into the first corner, not long after the start of the previous year’s Belgian Grand Prix, he came barrelling down the inside with his brakes locked up. I was ahead of him and, if I had turned in to the corner – which was totally my right – he would have gone into the side of my Jordan and the race probably would have been stopped. And I know who would have been blamed. In the event, I gave him room and lost several places in the process. This time, however, he paid for his impatience.
It was great, because Alesi’s retirement took the pressure off me for the rest of the race. I was able to drive at my own pace; in fact, I was able to pick up speed because I could smooth everything out and drive neatly without having to play a defensive game. I found about two or three tenths of a second per lap and, by no longer needing to worry about braking that little bit later just to stop Alesi from coming through, I was removing the worry about brake wear.
The rest of the race was uneventful. I moved up to third when Michael dropped out with mechanical trouble, but I was not pushing at all. I was thinking: ‘I’ve got to finish, I’ve got to finish. I can’t believe this is happening.’
This, of course, was the furthest I had gone in the new car. That’s when you learn things – such as the fact that I was moving around a bit too much in the seat. It seemed a snug fit when I tried it for the first time, but, after an extended period in the cockpit, I was making mental notes about where I needed extra support. I was learning about the way the car was handling, which was very useful experience for the future.
It was quite funny because it occurred to me that, if the Williams drivers crashed into each other, then I would win! I would be like Nigel Mansell, who won his first race for Ferrari in 1989, against all odds. Nigel had been in an identical situation, as the new Ferrari had been plagued with problems. They were introducing a semi-automatic gearbox and Mansell was lucky if he managed a handful of laps during practice without the car coming to a halt. The warm-up for the race had been a shambles. I believe Nigel had booked himself an early flight home. He really didn’t believe he would finish the race, never mind win it. When he did, Italy went beserk.
I was thinking: ‘That would be great if the same happened to me!’ But then I thought about the Australian Grand Prix at the end of 1995. I was holding an easy third place and thinking