Green Notebook from the Alps of Le Mans

It’s a little known fact that Le Mans has its own Alps. I’m not kidding. They are called the Alpes Mancelles (pronounced à la Nigel Mansell) and are to be found around 35 miles to the north of the celebrated motor racing city. For those who enjoy linguistics, Mancelles is the plural form of females from Le Mans (the men are known as Manceaux) and for some reason an Alp is a feminine word.

Still, as we passed through a village called Sainte-James (the e on Saint meaning a feminine saint), these things can get quite confusing…

This being the Formula 1 summer break, I spent my time off enjoying pottering about on road trips to visit places I didn’t know and meet up with relatives in various places, which was a pleasure. This was the perfect antidote to Formula 1.

I didn’t fire up the computer more than once in the fortnight and I didn’t read emails to any great extent. Some folks seem to think that the word “holiday” does not apply to journalists and continue to send out things that they want the world to know. They didn’t have much luck with me, I’m afraid. A break is a break. You cannot have half a break…

Given the F1 calendar these days it is absolutely necessary for those who still travel to all the races to use the opportunity wisely, and spending leisure time with family is never a bad idea. And once we get going again next week the plan is to cram 12 races into 15 weekends. And then, as if by magic, it will be Christmas.

At one point I had the idea of going to the unique NASCAR/IndyCar double-header weekend at Indianapolis in mid-August as this would be an unheard opportunity to meet all the big players in the sport in one place at the same time – and consequently to promote US motorsport around the globe. I thought this was a very good idea, which would also allow me to see my long lost son, who could have flown from his home on the West Coast to meet up with his father after two years during which we have only seen one another electronically.

At the moment the US has a policy of not allowing many people in on the basis that they don’t need any more COVID-19 than they already have, although they seem happy enough to ship out their nationals to be tourists elsewhere. In order to get through Homeland Security one needs to be vaccinated, have a suitable and valid visa, and have something called an NIE (a National Interest Exemption) which means that you have to show that your presence in the US is absolutely essential for the future of the nation. Apparently being a racing driver qualifies as a good reason, but being someone who promotes racing globally does not.

Go figure.

Anyway no-one managed to reply to my application, which was made weeks in advance, until the day after the event was finished. I hope that they will get themselves sorted out a bit more by the time we have the United States Grand Prix in the autumn. In any case, I wrote not one word about Indianapolis as a result and went to Macau instead.

Now you may think that this is strange given that the FIA has recently called off all its events at the Macau GP because of a 21-day quarantine that the locals insist upon, and you’d be entirely right, except that there is another Macau you might not have heard about, which is to be found in the Médoc, where the big thing is wine, rather than racing cars. It’s true that one of the most famous wine-making establishments in the region (one cannot call it a winery) is Château Mouton Rothschild, which is just up the road from Macau. This has been very famous for a very long time but it is a global icon largely thanks to Baron Philippe de Rothschild, who was a pretty impressive fellow in lots of respects, including being a rather good Grand Prix driver, using the pseudonym “Georges Philippe”. If you ask Professor Google you will discover that “Georges Philippe” finished fourth at Monaco in 1929 and scored some other notable results before his family found out what he was doing and pressured him into doing something a bit more sensible and so he went back to being a vigneron, became a film producer, a screenwriter and a yachtsman as well. Sadly, the old fellow died in 1988 and so I never had the chance to meet him, although there is a splendid book about his life called “Milady Vine”, which was written by his companion in later years, the celebrated theatre producer Joan Littlewood.

I would drink his wine every day if I could afford it…

Macau is close to Chateau Margaux, which for some reason always reminds me of Margot Laffite, the multi-talented daughter of F1 driver Jacques Laffite, who races herself while also being one of the presenters of the Canal+ French coverage of Formula 1. Sadly, for her, she is not related to Château Lafite Rothschild, which is one of Mouton’s biggest rivals and neighbours – but is owned by a different branch of the Rothschild family.

Anyway, this explains, in a round about way, how it was that I found myself heading up to Le Mans on the day of the 24 hours, having realised only the day before that my return trip would coincide with the race, and that the route would take me past Le Mans. It seemed a strange thing for a motor racing journalist to be driving past one of the biggest motor racing events of the year… with no intention to get involved.

There was a time when having a permanent FIA Formula 1 pass allowed one access to any big event without question but I had heard from colleagues in the period before the summer break that the Automobile Club de l’Ouest was not being very helpful with passes (nothing new there, then) and so the idea of going to Le Mans was soon forgotten.

But when I found myself on the old Route Nationale 23, renumbered by some bureaucrat with no understanding of romance, heading in the vague direction of Le Mans, passing through places with vast chateaux and pretty rivers with evocative names like Seiches-sur-Le-Loir, Huillé-Lézigné and Durtal, the great conductor in the sky waved his baton in the vague direction of the string section of my heart and there was a scramble to hit the right notes to create harmonious sounds. This happens now and then when I find myself thinking about experiences I have had in that wonderful and wistful foreign country known as the past, where things were done differently. These intangible and unreliable memories are of places where one recalls the good times and forgets the painful bits.

Normally one would whizz up the motorway and around Le Mans on its ring road but this being a Saturday in August this was not a good idea because the race coincided with a day on which millions of Parisians were turfed out of their holiday rentals and headed grumpily home, converging on the capital from all directions to return to normal life.

For a brief period I remembered previous visits to the Le Mans 24 Hours, a race which I reported on several (three or four) times in the 1980s, They were nostalgic thoughts of what a fine old time it was, commentating with the very first Radio Le Mans and other such things. The race is not usually in August and so it has never been on the radar since those days when Saubers were looping loops on the Mulsanne and Rothmans were sponsoring Porsches. Even if there was a vague longing to return, the idea of watching a Toyota procession was not that interesting a thought and so I turned my attention to finding a way of avoiding the inevitable traffic jams ahead and so found myself going cross country from Angers to Alencon, initially on the old RN23 and then on smaller roads to Sablé-sur-Sarthe and Sillé-le-Guillaume, which is how I stumbled upon the Alpes of Le Mans….

The F1 world’s news (worth reporting) over the break consisted of Renault having parted company with the head of its motorsport engine division, the F1 financial results for the second quarter (which were not bad), the cancellation of the Japanese GP and the sale of another part of the McLaren empire, with some of the money raised being used to gain control of the Arrow McLaren SP IndyCar team. Other stories include Mercedes’s withdrawal from Formula E being announced, a messy murder story involving the CEO of Spa Francorchamps, George Russell doing a tyre test for Mercedes and Alfa Romeo running a 2019 car for the promising Theo Pourchaire and unpromising Mahaveer Raghunathan. Dan Ticktum’s topsy-turvy career continued with the news that his role as Williams test driver had been terminated with speculation that this related to remarks he made during a online gaming session about Williams race driver Nicholas Latifi. The other points of interest were an announcement in Brazil the governor of Sao Paulo has requested a change of date for the Sao Paulo GP from November 7 to November 14. This opened the way for a double-header in Austin, while also making it possible to have an end-of-season triple-header with Qatar joining Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. It’s still all being sorted out as nothing is simple when it comes to international travel at the moment.

The Formula 1 group did however indicate that it hopes to produce a calendar (for next year) some time in September with the revelation that the new race in Miami will take place in May. This was an odd thing which suggested that F1 is planning to have three distinct trips to the Americas in 2022. That does not make sense in the short term but once the teams have done it once, they won’t complain in the future and so there is the potential to add double-headers in place of single events, which could open the way for two more US events: one twinned with Miami in the spring, and another with Canada a few weeks later. The race in Austin is already twinned with Mexico. So for me this looks like the US expansion plans are beginning to heat up – and that we should watch out for activity in Las Vegas (in particular).

This week we’re off on the marathon that will take uo to Spa, Zandvoort and Monza on consecutive weekends…

It’s good to be going racing again…

It’s that time of year…

Green Notebook from Sotteville-sous-le-Val

Sunday was one of those lovely happy days that Formula 1 has from time to time when almost everyone is happy to see a new and (sometimes) unlikely winner. We had that in 2017  in Sochi when Valtteri Bottas won his first victory and then in 2019 with Charles Leclerc. Last year we were spoiled with Pierre Gasly and Sergio Perez and, oh so very nearly, George Russell.

I was delighted with Esteban Ocon’s win for a number of reasons. Firstly, he’s always been a good bloke and F1 has not changed him at all. Secondly, he’s not had an easy path in his career. And thirdly, as readers may know I live in Normandy and so my two  “local” F1 drivers are Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon. It is also where Alpine was first established (in Dieppe). Regulars will know that I love to find out the intricacies of racing history and Alpine is a great story.

The firm was founded by Jean Rédélé in the late 1940s. He converted Renault 4CVs into rally cars for his own benefit initially and then expanded to sell the cars to customers and to produce road car models. What few people know is that the links to Renault are even stronger than that because Jean’s father Emile was one of the very first Renault employees at Boulogne-Billancourt, and he was Ferenc Szisz’s mechanic in the very first Grand Prix de l’ACF at Le Mans in 1906. Emile decided to start a taxi business in Dieppe after World War I and Louis Renault himself asked him to become a Renault dealer.

Now a Dane will tell you that Normans are all descended from the Vikings (as the name North Man suggests) and if you go back 13 centuries you can discover that yes, it is true. The Vikings were pretty good at rape and pillage and they not only burned down Rouen but also beseiged Paris on a couple of occasions. In the end the first Duke of Normandy was Rollo, a Viking raider. William the Conqueror was a descendant.

If you happen to be driving down the A13 motorway near Rouen, you may see a large metal monument with a globe and arrows going in different directions. You can find it as you pass Sotteville-sous-le-Val. This was erected in 1990 and was by the sculptor Georges Saulterre. It is called “Sur les traces des Vikings” (which translates as “In the footsteps of the Vikings”).

At the bottom of the hill you might also see a kart track next to the motorway. It is called the Circuit de l’Europe and it is significant because this was where Pierre and Esteban first began competing. When they were nine they were best buddies.

Now, the two are both Grand Prix winners and this caused French TV commentator Julien Fébreau to get VERY excited. He’s already famous for going completely crazy when Gasly won at Monza last year and as Ocon crossed the line in Budapest Fébreau was screaming again. There’s nothing like enthusiasm – and he has it by the bucketload.

The naysayers of social media always find fault in everything and say that it was all down to luck, or whatever. But it has to be said that Esteban drove a stunning race, free from error and under intense pressure all the way from Sebastian Vettel, a four-time World Champion. It was a day when it was easier to get things wrong than to get things right and Ocon got it all right. If you listen to what other drivers said you will see that Ocon is a popular fellow, with Vettel, Hamilton and Alonso all singing his praises. He has made it to F1 from very humble beginnings and has been completely unchanged by the experience.

It is a great story if you don’t know it already. Esteban’s parents moved to France in the 1980s, when they were in their late teens. His father was Spanish and his mother of Algerian descent and they settled in Evreux, in Normandy, where his dad worked as a mechanic and built up a small garage business. Esteban is named after a cartoon character that his mother loved from a TV series called “Esteban, Child of the Sun” in the original Japanese version but “Les Mystérieuses Cités d’Or” (The Mysterious Cities of Gold) when dubbed in French. Esteban went to search of lost cities in the New World…

The Ocons stumbled into racing by accident when Esteban was a very small boy. He loved driving microkarts and it quickly became obvious that he was very good.

They bought a kart from a family who lived 40 miles away in Rouen. Their name was Gasly. The kart had belonged to Pierre’s brother. So Pierre and Esteban would meet on Wednesdays and at weekends, when there was no school, and they would hammer around the Circuit de l’Europe.

As they grew up things became more serious and the Ocons literally sold everything to give Esteban a chance. They won a lot with little money, but they lived in a caravan and they got their tyres by picking up what bigger teams had thrown away.

In 2009, when Esteban was 12, he was spotted by an aspiring racing entrepreneur with the unusual name of Gwen Lagrue, who was pals with the new Lotus F1 team principal Eric Boullier. Eric was beginning to build a stable of young drivers under the Gravity Management banner and so they took on Ocon and found some money to help him, but in the KF3 World Cup in Braga in 2010 Pierre and Esteban had a crash that ended their friendship. Pierre became best mates with another youngster called Charles Leclerc…

With money from Lotus things were fine and in 2013 Ocon was hooked up with ART to race in Formula Renault. The following year he switched to Prema Racing in Formula 3 and won the title first time out. But then things went wrong. Lotus was running out of money and Boullier moved to McLaren. Suddenly there was no budget for Ocon to move up to GP3.

Fred Vasseur came to his rescue at this point, although it was not perhaps as altruistic as that sounds because ART didn’t have a driver capable of fighting for the GP3 title. The car carried almost no sponsorship but Ocon won the title at his first attempt. This led to him becoming a Mercedes driver. To understand that one needs to know about Vasseur and Toto Wolff. They may be rival team principals these days (although it is a bit of a one-sided contest) but they go back 15 years, to when Wolff first bought a stake in AMG, which was supplying Mercedes Formula 3 engines to Vasseur’s ASM.

The two men hit it off, sharing a passion for winning races and making money. They enjoyed huge success in Formula 3 with the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Paul di Resta and then after the team became ART with Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg and Jules Bianchi. Wolff was also part of the management of Valtteri Bottas when the Finn raced for ART in 2009 and won the GP3 title for Vasseur in 2010. By then Wolff had bought into Williams and Bottas became reserve driver. Later ART would also run a team in DTM for Mercedes. If you dig deep enough you find that when Wolff got married in 2011 one of his witnesses was a certain F Vasseur. And the pair also ended up using the same apartment in Oxford for a while when Toto was running Mercedes and Vasseur was at Enstone. The pair are close and one might perhaps ask whether this will end up being part of why Bottas will likely end up at Alfa Romeo in 2022.

The story of Alfa Romeo in Budapest was at best a total disaster. There were penalties aplenty and Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi ended up 11th and 14th on a day when points were up for grabs in the most dramatic fashion. The opportunity was completely lost. But it actually got worse as night fell because Sebastian Vettel’s disqualification meant that while Raikkonen picked up a point for 10th, the team’s situation dived because the two Williams drivers moved from eighth and ninth to seventh and eighth and the team doubled its points from five to 10. This means that Alfa Romeo will need to score eight points (at least) in the rest of the year to be eighth in the Constructors’ Championship (the usual position). Given that they have managed just three points in the first 11 races that is going to be a real cliff to climb in the second 11. And if the team ends up ninth, the prize money will be significantly reduced, despite the investment and expansion that Hinwil has seen in the last few years.  It is clearly something that is frustrating Raikkonen, as after the British Grand Prix when his engineer suggested he could have been 10th without a collision with Sergio Perez, Kimi replied: “Maybe, or maybe we need to make the car fast, it’s simple. It’s impossible to fight against them. Same this. Same that. And try to fight with the other cars. Come on, we’ve got to wake up and do something.”

In theory, Alfa Romeo has both seats open next year but there are multiple repliable sources saying that Bottas is close to signing a deal. That means Raikkonen won’t be staying. Giovinazzi is the only Italian driver in F1 and dumping him would be troublesome for Alfa Romeo, particularly as he has not done a bad job. But Alfa Romeo no longer has the right to nominate a driver. Ferrari doesn’t either, but it would be wise for the Swiss team to stay sweet with its engine supplier, which appears to be getting much closer to Haas these days. Still, there is a Ferrari deal in place for some years to come.

Having said that, in F1 a contract is always something that can be negotiated away. A switch to Renault power is an option in the longer term, which Renault would like as it is lining up good youngsters and has nowhere to put them.

In the short-term, it would probably help if Alfa Romeo went with a Ferrari youngster: Giovinazzi is one, so are reserve driver Callum Ilott and Russia’s Robert Shwartzman, the last-named being highly-regarded at Maranello.

Vasseur may well argue that the team should take a risk and go for something a little different. Theo Pourchaire has almost got enough points to get a superlicence – and he’s testing an Alfa Romeo this week. He turns 18, the minimum age for a superlicence these days, on August 20.

He’s not really ready for F1 yet, but seats are few and far between and so the team might think that Pourchaire is a risk worth taking. If you see the impact that running Charles Leclerc had on the team a few years back, it might be an option to galvanise the staff. And it might help Renault get Pourchaire into its stable, which would be an incentive for a big French firm. The driver decision is due at Monza, after the summer break.

But, in the short term, a fast car is really what is required…

The other team with a seat that’s really available (as opposed to being available in theory, like the second Red Bull, the second Mercedes and so on) is Williams. Nicholas Latifi has a contract for next year and so the opportunities for others are rather limited. The team says it doesn’t yet know if George Russell is leaving, but there are a lot of people trying hard to get the team’s attention. One man who was much in evidence in the paddock in Budapest was Nyck de Vries, the Mercedes Formula E driver and an F1 reserve. He is keen to find a ride in a Mercedes-engined team and is being talked about as a possible Williams driver, but he was also to be found chatting in a serious fashion with Aston Martin types in Hungary. One man who we know won’t be at Williams next year is Dan Ticktum, who has been released from his contract in recent days. Don’t hold out any hopes for Roy Nissany, Jack Aitken (who broke his collarbone and fractured some vertebrae in a big shunt in the Spa 24 Hours last weekend) or Jamie Chadwick.

I did hear a whisper that there might be some major excitements at Aston Martin over the summer break, but I do not know any more – although the source was good. I wouldn’t mention it otherwise…

Anyway, that is the main action noted in the green book from Budapest, with a few nuggets added.

On Sunday evening French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted congratulations to Ocon, having learned after Gasly’s win in Monza last year that trying to contact a race winner in F1 by mobile is really a waste of time. Macron was delighted that Ocon and Alpine had both become winners. The French government, by the way, still owns a significant share in Renault.

Politicians love F1 when things go right for them, but getting more involved is never a great idea. And vice-versa. After Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel protested about new laws being proposed in Hungary, the country’s Minister of Justice Judit Varga was obviously not impressed.

“I have seen that sadly Lewis Hamilton is joining the manufacturers of international fake news by attacking our child protection law,” she said. A shoe-maker should stick to making shoes – and a F1 driver should stick to driving.”

Varga says that the law is being introduced to prevent child abuse and to stop LGBT indoctrination.

“I suggest that Lewis Hamilton read the Hungarian Child Protection Act,” she added.

One hopes that he and Sebastian already have.

The sport has enough politics of its own without getting involved with real world controversies, which inevitably end up with this kind of response from politicians. One can only wonder what F1 teams and drivers would say if a government minister suggested set-up changes that might be made to make cars go faster…

When it comes to F1’s politics, the FIA President Jean Todt recently suggested that there might be more candidates in the presidential election that is due later this year.

“The closing date is sometime in October,” he told media at the French Grand Prix, “so there is still time.”

This was perplexing because the system is such that it is very difficult to find the necessary representatives required to create an election “ticket” because of the requirement to have people from different regions and from both touring and sport clubs. Todt knows that this is the case and so the suggestion that there might be another candidate was interesting because that would require one or other of the contenders to withdraw. It is no secret that in some FIA circles the choice on offer is not generating much excitement, but is there enough to create an earthquake?

Much news these days is about the calendar – not 2022, but 2021. It is a complete nightmare as F1 tries to find another 12 races that will fit together with one another, with the complex (and changing) government restrictions, with red lists and quarantine requirements. It is fairly pointless speculating at the moment because nothing can be decided before August 10 when there will be a decision about Japan, after the Olympic Games is over. After that, dominoes will start to fall. I could go into complex speculation about all of this but I see no point. I do expect to see a race in Qatar this year and I would suggest that the most likely date is November 21 because when there are new races on the F1 calendar there are generally free weekends before and afterwards to make sure that there are no problems with customs authorities and so on. What I do hear, however, is that with Qatar paying a LOT of money, F1 might not need to have 23 races to hit its financial goals.

It is also worth noting that Circuit of the Americas (COTA) promoter Bobby Epstein was in Hungary on his second visit to a European race in recent months. Epstein is negotiating a new long-term deal for COTA – and discussing whether or not there could be a second Formula 1 race this year, with the United States Grand Prix, scheduled for October 24. The suggestion is that there could be a second Grand Prix of the Americas on October 17, but that could only happen if the Japanese Grand Prix drops off the F1 schedule.

But that would also create problems for the Turkish Grand Prix as the country is on Britain’s Red List which would mean another race in a non-red list country would be needed afterwards to avoid all the British-based F1 personnel being put into expensive government-regulated hotels for 10 days on their return to the UK. No-one is going to agree to do that… although one might suppose that to avoid such a thing staff could be given paid holidays in low-risk places… No, you’re right, that’s not very likely, is it?

And would it be included in the budget cap?

I drove for a day and a half to get home from Budapest, which gave me plenty of time to consider the options. I reached no conclusions because it is impossible to do so. One can only come up with possible outcomes: Plans A to Z. And you need always to think about the weather as well.

The recent weeks have been awful in Europe, with constant rain and devastating flooding in places. The run from Budapest, heading home to France, was pretty nice until I got to the Rhine. I crossed the river near Speyer and rain began to fall as I climbed up the hill to go through the Pfälzerwald, the forested area between the Rhineland and the French border at Saarbrucken, where the US military has a big presence. It’s a pretty bleak area on a wet day. It was not a fun moment because there are always dangerous idiots who are driving without lights in the spray, or others who think that it is logical to be going 60km/h in the fast lane in such conditions. When it comes to road safety, the world still has a lot to do.

As the rains began to fall, the German radio station I was listening to decided to play “Love is all around”, by Wet Wet Wet, which seemed entirely appropriate. German radio stations love to play 1980s hits endlessly and so I drove through the October weather listening to the likes of Tina Turner, Supertramp and James Taylor, with the occasional local hit, although most of these sound like the awful British football team singalongs that used to be produced before big matches.

The rain continued right through to the French border at a place they call Goldene Bremme, named after a tavern on the old road.

I didn’t see blue skies until I reached the Argonne Forest, a scenic spot to the west of Verdun. Once this was famed for its highwaymen and later for violent battles during World War I.

And, of course, there was a racing circuit there too. But that’s another story…

Red Bull review rejected

The FIA Stewards have rejected Red Bull’s application to review the Silverstone stewards’ decision, on the basis that : the evidence presented to the Stewards was not “a significant and relevant new element [that was] discovered which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned”.

And so to Qatar…

The word in the Middle East is that a deal has been struck for a Formula 1 race in the final part of this season at the Losail International Circuit in Qatar. The news is yet to be officially confirmed.

The race would be an addition to the calendar to replace Australia, for financial reasons rather than to help F1 get around quarantine problems. At the moment Qatar and the UAE (Abu Dhabi) are both on Britain’s red list. Saudi Arabia is not.

This means that the best course of action would be to have the Jeddah race as the last event, so that the majority of the 10 days after leaving a red list country would be spent in Saudi Arabia, which is on the amber list.

This would not be important if the World Championship is settled before the last race, but Abu Dhabi is believed to pay a premium to host the final event. Having the three races back to back on Nov 28/Dec 5/Dec 12 would guarantee three high-paying races, without quarantine problems if F1 people stayed on for a couple of extra days after the last event.

F1 must wait to see if the British shift some countries from red to amber next week when revisions are due. This is also important with regard to the Brazilian and Turkish GPs, as both are still on the red list. However if both have a race in a non-red list country a week afterwards, the quarantine requirement can be largely avoided. At the moment Japan is scheduled after Turkey but we don’t yet have any event that fits the bill for Brazil.

With Qatar, however, F1 would get the 23 races it wants.

Qatar has long had ambitions to host a Grand Prix, but Bahrain and Abu Dhabi have monopolised the Middle Eastern dates on the F1 calendar. The arrival this year of regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia seems to have changed the landscape somewhat, and the inclusion of Qatar is particularly interesting given the problems in recent years between the country and its Gulf neighbours, which led to diplomatic relations being severed in 2017. A settlement was reached to normalise the situation only in January this year.

Qatar has been hosting MotoGP races since 2004 and held the first MotoGP night race in 2008, but its biggest sporting coup was winning the FIFA World Cup soccer competition back in 2010. The World Cup will take place at the end of 2022 despite claims that the process was conducted in a corrupt fashion. These claims and legal actions pertaining to them continue, but it looks like the tournament will go ahead as planned. Qatar will be the first Arab nation to host the World Cup.

It is not unusual for countries to turn to F1 after other big events such as the Olympics and the World Cup, in order to maintain their international profile, with Barcelona and Sochi being good examples of this concept. Thus it is quite likely that a 2021 race could be a precursor for a bid for a permanent place on the F1 calendar, which might explain Qatar’s sudden willingness to join the party.

This would suit F1 as it seeks to boost the number of World Championship races each year – and the annual revenues of the sport. It could also help other Middle Eastern races as it might boost interest in F1 in the region and generate more spectators at each event, although none of them currently requires ticket sales to pay the race fees.

Dutch doubts

The Dutch government has decided to ban large-scale festivals in August because of an increase in case numbers a result of the COVID pandemic and specifically of the Delta variant, which is causing trouble across much of Europe. The government says a decision about the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort, scheduled for September, will be made on August 13. If the track is not allowed a full crowd the race will be cancelled as it cannot have a financially viable event.

A big calendar revamp coming?

The calendar at the end of the F1 season is still to be finalised, but there is an interesting announcement coming out of Texas in the recent hours with the confirmation that the Rolling Stones will be playing at the Circuit of the Americas on November 20, the weekend that was going to host the Australian Grand Prix.

At the moment the United States Grand Prix is scheduled for October 24, but there has been talk of the date being moved and of a second race being added. COTA boss Bobby Epstein told me a while ago that he had a big music act booked but could not announce it until the details were finalised with the band.

Could it be that Brazil will move forward and be twinned with Mexico (to get around the red zone status in the UK – the home of most of the F1 teams) and that Austin would be pushed back to November 21. One can imagine that Brazil would move forward to October 24, going back-to-back with Mexico (on October 31), which would solve the red zone problem, and then a two-week break before a race in Austin on November 14, followed by a second on November 21, with The Stones playing on the Saturday evening. This would also allow for two different kinds of race weekend at COTA, with the normal format one weekend and the Sprint format on the second.

It could just be that there is a stand-alone Rolling Stones concert, but the twin races would greatly help F1 in its efforts to grow the sport in the United States, which is what F1 wants to do, more than anything.

It’s not definite but this scenario makes a lot of sense.

Jean-Pierre Jaussaud 1937 – 2021

Jean-Pierre Jaussaud has died at the age of 84. The Norman driver, born in Caen in 1937, was the son of a grocer and a wine merchant. When he was 10 his father taught him to drive on the airport runways at Caen.

In his early twenties he saw his first race at Rouen and decided that he would become a racing driver and began karting. His father put him in charge of the company’s fleet of vehicles and the first racing car Jaussaud drove was an AC Bristol, which he volunteered to collect from an airport and take to Caen on the back of a truck. However he found a way to give it a short run.

It was not until 1962 that he discovered from reading a racing magazine that there was a racing school run by Jim Russell at Snetterton. He went with a friend and was immediately hooked on the sport. Not long afterwards Jim Russell opened a racing school at Magny-Cours and Jaussaud took part and won the Volant Shell, a prize that won him a Cooper-BMC F3 car, although he destroyed it quite quickly in an accident.

He managed to keep going and in 1965 was taken on by Matra in Formula 3 and did well. There were opportunities to go to F1 and he hoped that Matra would take him into Grand Prix racing, although in the end he was overlooked by Matra and quit.

He joined Tecno and won the Monaco F3 race against top notch opposition. A few months later he was injured in a fiery F2 crash at Monza which didn’t help. In the years that followed he enjoyed success in both F3, winning the French title in 1970, and F2, finishing runner-up to Mike Hailwood with a Shell Arnold March in the European Championship in 1971. He was then 34 and too old for F1 but he joined the Alpine Renault team in sports cars and won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1978, partnering Didier Pironi.

The following year he won the French Production Car Championship in a Triumph Dolomite. He also took part in a British Championship Formula 1 event in a Surtees. In 1980 he was a test driver in F1 for Renault but also joined Jean Rondeau for Le Mans and won the race a second time.

In the years that followed he raced French production cars, took part in the Paris-Dakar, and then had a season of French Formula Ford! He also competed in rallycross and ice racing. A great all-rounder he continued to compete until 1992, after which he became a racing instructor.

Green notebook from the fog

When I was a kid, half a century ago, I recall vividly a broadcast on my grandmother’s Roberts R200 radio each morning in the kitchen of her bungalow in Frinton on Sea. Grandma was a rather severe Edwardian lady, who had lived through two wars. As a teenager she had won a gallantry medal for doing something very brave, involving Zeppelins, bombs and glass-roofed buildings. The citation, lost long ago, was framed and on the wall in her bedroom, but no one can remember exactly what it said – and because it is a complicated business tracking down such things we have not yet been able to discover more.

She loved to listen to the shipping forecast on Radio 4 and I well remember the strange lists being read out: “Low, Dogger, 987, deepening, expected Fisher, 972 at 07 hundred tomorrow”. The names seemed wildly exotic: Rockall, Fair Isle, Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Humber, German Bight, Biscay, Trafalgar, Lundy, Fastnet and so on, but I had no idea what it all meant.

It is said that this broadcast was the source of a famous quotation: “Fog in the Channel: Continent isolated” back in the 1930s. Perhaps it was. Later the Nazis used this in their propaganda to highlight what they saw as British arrogance as the inhabitants thought that the group of islands off the coast of Europe were of such importance that the Continent could be cut off from them, rather than vice versa. The expression did appear in print in 1957, but this was The Times having fun, using the apocryphal phrase to make a dull story more interesting.

I was reminded of all this when I woke up after a doze on the ferry on the way back to France on Monday evening after the Grand Prix. When I got on the ship – the MS Seven Sisters (named after the chalk cliffs on the British side of the channel, the sister ship of the MS Cote d’Albatre – literally the Alabaster Coast – which is the name for the chalk cliffs on the French side) it was a bright sunny day, but in the Channel there was quite thick surface fog. This meant that the Seven Sisters sailed more slowly than usual.

The thought “Continent isolated” made me chuckle because there is an element of truth in the expression in the psyche of some Brits. I guess it goes back to the days of empire, when Britannia really did rule the waves, but it persists these days in the minds of those who think themselves superior to “Johnny Foreigner” and don’t want to mix with outsiders. Now Britain has gone its own way with Brexit, much has changed and while Europe remains cautious of the pandemic, Boris Johnson and his followers who rule Britain today have embarked on a bizarre policy to open up the country from COVID restrictions and seem willing to accept the consequences, in the name of economic progress.

Thus, F1, hidden behind its ever-present masks and regular PCR testing, took part in a four-day festival involving more than 150,000 people (the 356,000 figure given out is four-day attendance figure). They all had a good time, without masks, social distancing and other such limitations. In theory everyone there had to show that they had been double vaccinated or had had a negative lateral flow test within 48 hours of attendance, but I have no idea how (or if) this was policed, because I drove in each day without ever being asked for anything and there did not seem to be any worse delays than usual (except on Friday night when the late Qualifying session resulted in hours of grid-lock), I assumed no-one was stopping to rummage around for paperwork.

Time will tell whether this was all a good idea, but it is worth noting that Ross Brawn’s post-Silverstone column specifically made the point that the event was done under British government permissions. “We had a full house, which was permitted by the UK government pilot event,” he wrote. Or, to paraphrase it slightly: “if it all goes wrong, it was their fault”.

Still, the British Grand Prix could not have happened without the race having the status as part of the Event Research Programme (ERP), a scheme designed to examine the risk of transmission of COVID from attendance at events. When one boiled it all down, therefore, there were 150,000 guinea pigs in the grandstands on Sunday, all happily communing in support of Lewis Hamilton. There were virtually no Dutch because of the complications involved with quarantine when returning to the Continent.

And yet, it was great to see a large number of people again and they were treated not only to drama and a Hamilton victory (number 99) but they also got to watch the new Sprint format in qualifying. This was all cheery stuff following England’s defeat in the UEFA Euro 2020 soccer competition the previous Sunday. The trophy went home to Rome and Britain agonised. Pirelli decided that it would make a small point about this and so flew the Italian flag outside its motorhome all weekend. Such is sport.

Soccer faded from the national consciousness as the week went on and Lewis showed signs that perhaps he might defeat Max Verstappen, after five consecutive Red Bull Racing victories. The new format made for a better weekend, of that there is little argument. It provided action on all three days, which meant better fan engagement. Things were a little less predictable than normal as teams had less time to practice and that seems to have had a significant impact on the weekend. The Red Bull is still the better car but the team chose to run more wing than might normally have been the case and so lost its advantage on the straights, while Mercedes chose a low-drag approach, which gave it more speed, but made the cars more skittery. These two elements combined to create an interesting battle on Saturday when Verstappen blasted away and dominated The Sprint and on Sunday when Lewis knew that he had just a lap or two to get ahead to avoid the same thing happening again. And, boom!

Max ended up in the wall with a 51G impact that proved that Bernie Ecclestone’s remarks about Lewis losing his hunger were a million miles wide of the mark. Lewis showed on Sunday that he is very much the fighter that he always has been. In fact, I would argue that he showed a little more than that. There was something inevitable about the clash, which we have been expecting for some time.

I think this one was a racing incident because the contact between the two cars was minimal, but with big consequences. Max came steaming across in front of Lewis and almost did it right. There wasn’t much Lewis could do to avoid an impact at that point, although I am also sure that he ddn’t want a collision. Amid all the noise after the crash, few seemed to pay much attention to the FIA Stewards’ decision – and they largely missed the point that Lewis was also given two penalty points. The cars, the stewards said, “entered Turn 9 with car 33 in the lead and car 44 slightly behind and on the inside. Car 44 was on a line that did not reach the apex of the corner, with room available to the inside. When car 33 turned into the corner, car 44 did not avoid contact and the left front of car 44 contacted the right rear of car 33. Car 44 is judged predominantly at fault”.

The last phrase is significant. The stewards clearly felt that that Lewis should take most of the blame, but the word “predominantly” indicates that there was also some fault involved with Verstappen. There was no penalty for the Dutchman as the implications of an accident – while not considered in the discussion of blame – are treated as punishment in such circumstances.

So, in effect, the stewards were saying that both drivers had some responsibility in the crash.

I’d call that a racing incident…

You can argue as much as you like about it but it’s irrelevant. Max paid the price for his aggressivity – which he has always had – and Lewis paid the price for not getting out of his way. The key question beyond all the yapping and griping is whether Max will do the same again if the circumstances occur, or whether he will have learned that Lewis is not going to be shoved out of the way.

A line was drawn in the sand, if you like…

If Max does not take that onboard, I fear we will see some more incidents this year because Hamilton is still a lion by nature and cuffing troublesome cubs only works so many times before a bite is required to get the message across.

The weekend also saw the launch of a full-scale model of the 2022 car, as envisaged by the F1 group. The one shown in the F1 Paddock was painted with a curious livery of red and silver, with the latter producing rainbow reflections, which may fit in with F1’s current equality messaging, but always reminds me of Barbie packaging (for some reason). The car itself is very long and hefty-looking: more of a valkyrie than a nymph, which is a shame because F1 cars should be light and sleek and not battle wagons…

Anyway, the paddock and the grid were filled with people profiling (albeit in masks), with Hollywood stars, tennis and football players, minor royals and politicians, if they were not self-isolating following the positive test of the Health Minister (ironic, huh?).

It was all rather galling for those who use the grid to work, but are currently not allowed to go there, for reasons that don’t make much sense when one is allowing high-risk celebrity types to stomp around the cars. Yes, perhaps having smaller numbers of people is a good idea but, as they proved in the Silverstone coverage, pictures of Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford standing in a pit are just as good as them standing on the grid.

The jibberjabber in the paddock was fairly limited as there is little left for 2022. Sergio Perez will get the Red Bull unless he says something rude about Dr Helmut Marko and the Red Bull drink itself – and Sergio is smart enough to know what not to say. The other things that might mess it up is if he asks for too much money, because if the Mexican cannot think of a number that will be fine for him and fine for Red Bull, there is no shortage of drivers ready to form a disorderly queue to take the second Red Bull seat.

Valtteri Bottas will probably – but not definitely – end up at Alfa Romeo, where the team wants a name driver to replace Kimi Raikkonen and the owner of the team – a man called Finn – appears to be fond of Finns. It remains to be seen who will get the second seat at Alfa Romeo, but one possibility is Ferrari test driver Callum Ilott (which would be wise to keep engine supplier Ferrari happy) while Russian F2 driver Robert Shwartzman (another Ferrari protege) could have a chance if he wins the F2 title. Alfa Romeo is an Italian firm and might not wish to been seen to be replacing the only Italian on the grid, but these days the car company is run by the French folks at Stellantis, who want more performance and don’t give a monkey’s about the nationality.

Williams will have a drive available once George Russell packs his bags and goes to Mercedes and this might suit Bottas nicely, except that it probably won’t pay as well as Alfa Romeo and would be a move back to where he started in F1, rather than joining up with a big manufacturer. Williams would prefer to have a driver with experience alongside Nicolas Latifi and so it will be looking at the likes of Dani Kvyat, Alex Albon and Nico Hulkenberg, although Mercedes might be keen to have Nyck de Vries in the team, as it needs to consider what to do when Lewis eventually retires.

The other chatter was all about the F1 calendar and you can expect to see the Brazilian GP being pushed back a week and going back-to-back with another race now that Australia has been called off again. The logic is simple enough. If Japan falls over (which could happen), there will be two races in Austin and a third in Mexico. So Brazil needs to move back to avoid a quadruple-header, as teams will not do four weekends in a row. However Brazil is on the UK red list and so it needs to have another race immediately afterwards so F1 folk can go to the other venue rather than going back to the UK and sitting in a government-mandated hotel for 14 days at considerable cost. I heard that Dubai might be an option… but it is still early yet. In mid-November the options are somewhat limited because of the weather… although southern Spain or Portugal might be possible.

Aside from that I hear that the success of the Netflix series means that US entertainment types are getting excited about F1 as likely to be a new cool thing in the US and there are all kinds of talks going on about F1 fiction drama series that could be made in the future by streaming services, which are all in search of great content.

When you consider what Downton Abbey did for stately homes, one can imagine that Formula 1 would benefit from a successful idea. But then, with the wrong script, it could also be less exciting than the shipping forecast…

Carlos Reutemann 1942 – 2021

Carlos Reutemann had the talent to be a World Champion, but his chance to take the title, which came in 1981, resulted in a strange uninspired race in the finale in Las Vegas, which left the title in the hands of Nelson Piquet. It was one of the great mysteries of that era, but that was Reutemann, a class act, a great talent – but a bit of a mystery.

He won 12 Grands Prix of the 146 he contested between 1972 and 1982. He had raced in Europe from 1970 when the Automovil Club Argentino paid for him to race in F2 team and he fought Ronnie Peterson for the European title in 1971.

In 1972, taken on by Bernie Ecclestone for F1, he qualified his Brabham on pole position for his first GP, to the delight of his home crowd in Buenos Aires and he seemed set for a stellar future. Disappointingly, he never really made it. With Brabham he was good but the cars were never quite good enough. When Niki Lauda crashed in 1976 he was taken on by Ferrari as the Austrian’s replacement but Niki had the measure of him. In 1978 he might have won the title but Team Lotus was dominant thanks to ground-effect. With the brilliant Gilles Villeneuve as his team-mate, Reutemann jumped to replace the late Ronnie Peterson at Lotus, but the car was off the pace in 1979, when Ferrari win the title with Jody Scheckter, his replacement. In 1980 Reutemann took up an offer to join Williams, alongside Alan Jones. It was not a happy relationship, largely because Carlos disobeyed team orders in Brazil and the two drivers spent the rest of the season scrapping against one another, which allowed Nelson Piquet to grab the title. The feud impacted on his motivation and he wavered about returning in 1982. In the end he decided to go on but early in 1982 quit just before the outbreak of the Falklands War, which made it impossible for him to continue with the team, as Britain and Argentina went to war.

It was ironic that Keke Rosberg won the the title that year with Williams with just one race victory.

After retiring from the sport Reutemann used his fame in Argentina to go into politics and became one of the leading politicians in the country as governor of the Sante Fe province and later as a senator.

Handsome, talented and intelligent, Reutemann had it all, but it never quite worked out.