Green Notebook from Gaillon

So finally Formula 1 had a real news story with James Allison moving back in to the race team at Mercedes, which they hope will turn around the fortunes in Brackley. I must admit that I was a little surprised as James seemed to be done and dusted with F1, but I guess the challenge of turning the situation around appealed to him. In the overall scheme of things, it is not really surprising because, as mentioned in a previous Green Notebook, much change is expected in teams in the months ahead following Red Bull’s dominant start to the year. Such domination always leads to earthquakes.

In truth it has been pleasant to have an Easter break, albeit inadvertently, thanks to the Chinese GP being cancelled. It was a bonus that F1 folk are not used to having. Seeing the spring happening is quite a new experience for us, as we are usually anywhere but at home at this time of year.

It is the second time in three years, we have had the pleasure (given the enforced inaction during the pandemic of 2020) and it is a joy. Yes, seeing the cherry blossom in Japan is an experience, but time at home is valuable.

People sometimes have funny ideas about F1 journalists, but I understand why. We are living out the dreams of some of our readers who think that they would like the same lifestyle. It is nice to escape real life, work, mortgages and all the rest of it. Motor racing is escapism, a way to tunnel out of the drudgery to a place where anything can happen. It’s Alice going to Wonderland, Dorothy dancing down the road to the Emerald City, or running away to join the circus… We are dream salesmen (and women).

Fans (quite rightly) don’t want to hear that between races we do normal things. We go to the supermarket, we mow the lawn, we get the car serviced and we get stuck in traffic jams.

People imagine us to be hanging out on Pacific beaches, drinking kava (a strange but legal slightly narcotic drink made from the crushed root of a Polynesian shrub called the yaqona, which makes your mouth and tongue go numb). And, of course, it must be delivered by sultry island girls, although if your lips are numb, it kind of ruins the story…

I do my best to live up to these expectations by living in the French countryside, one of those romantic lifestyles for those who wonder “what it” when the afternoon is dragging a little. There is much to commend it, but it is not all hammocks and sipping rosé… Rural areas do not have many people, which means that if you are looking for specific things, you have to look a long away. Shoe repair shops or an operating railway station both require half an hour of driving. In France, one always has to contend with strikes (clichéd, but true). And then there are the mindless local bureaucrats, or fonctionnaires as they call them.

I was looking forward to receiving the Gunther Steiner book, but the publishers sent it to me by registered mail. It was addressed to Joe Saward and so the bloody-minded post office lady refused to let me have it because I have no official photo document that lists my name as Joe. At first I politely explained that Joe is a diminutive and showed her various photo IDs with that name. But these were not official documents. Even an FIA permanent F1 pass would not impress this small-minded individual. In the end, I lost it, and told her exactly where to stick the book (Gunther would have been proud of me). I departed hoping that the post office would burn down and that her pet hamster would be turned into a pavement pizza by a very large postal van. I will have to wait to read the book. She will have to wait to have a life…

Anyway, if it had been delivered to my home by the usual postperson, this would never have happened, but when they came by I was out and about. I’ve been out and about a lot in the last week and was rather shocked when I added up the kilometrage, which included a trip to Bordeaux and back on family business and then a day-trip to the UK, followed by a quick visit to Paris to pick up a visa. It all added up to 2,300km… the equivalent to driving from London to Marrakesh, or New York to Wichita, Kansas.

So I could have written this Green Notebook from any number of places: from Rouen, where the British burned Jeanne d’Arc (who was probably a troublesome postal worker) to the Pays de Bray, where they make heart-shaped cheese in Neufchatel. It could have been from Moyenneville (literally average town), near Abbeville. It could have been from Le Mans, or Brands Hatch or even from Bexleyheath, where Bernie Ecclestone grew up and ran his first motorcycle shop. It might have come from Villeperdue (Lost Town), to the south of Tours, or from a camel farm on the banks of the Garonne (Yes, there really is one).

In the end, I chose Gaillon, where I spent half an hour on the way back from Paris. Readers will know that France is rich in racing history while Britain had rules to stop racing on the roads, so the British were years behind the French in terms of automotive development. The Brits could only go racing at Brooklands, while the French raced on dozens of public road circuits. When I am pottering around I like to visit to see what is left.

The Seine valley played an important role in the world of the automobile, from the very first race that ran from Paris to Rouen in 1894.

If you jump in the Seine at the Eiffel Tower (something I now recommend for all French postal workers), the river will take you lazily downstream, looping around. If you’re a good swimmer you might still be afloat when you pass Boulogne-Billancourt, the home of Renault.  A while later (as a corpse) you will float past the massive Stellantis (read Peugeot) works at Poissy. Away to the right is the world’s first hillclimb course at Chanteloup-les-Vignes, which dates from 1898. Some claim that La Turbie came first, although the climb from Nice to La Turbie was really only a part of a much bigger event in 1897, and not a hillclimb in its own right.

After that you will bob past Flins, a huge Renault factory and then you will be out in the country. You will pass Giverny, where Claude Monet used to paint waterlilies, and Vernon, where half a medieval bridge juts out (oddly) into the river. If they hook your body out of the river at Courcelles-sur-Seine, they will probably take you to nearby Gaillon. Turn right there, on to the old Nationale 15, and the road will begin to climb, gently at first and then more steeply. It rises 88 metres in one kilometre, a nine percent climb. These days any old hearse will get up the hill without a problem, but back at the very end of 1899 this little bit of road was a real challenge. The hill had featured in the aforementioned Paris-Rouen race and made an impression on those who puffed and panted to the top. It was a real test and so five years later they went back. In the first year there were 73 entries and on a foggy December day, a Stanley Steamer, driven by a Mr G Debacker, took 1m45s to climb the hill. Such as progress in that era that five years later the record was taken down to 33.6s by Louis Rigolly in a Gobron-Brillié. The British turned up, having nothing better to do, and in 1906 Algernon Lee Guinness’s Darracq went up the hill in 25s. That year the Paris-Le Havre Express stopped at the local station to bring spectators and Monet turned up to watch his son competing. It was a place of many firsts: the famous photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue tooks some famous shots there and the hillclimb played host to Grand Prix cars and land speed record machinery until the end of the 1930s when it faded away, no longer being the great challenge it had once been. Still, in 1928, Madame Janine Jennky, admittedly the only driver in a Bugatti Type 35, set the fastest time, albeit way off the hill record, although a woman winning the event was still big news. The hillclimb died in 1932 – but the road is still there.

At the top of a hill is a new roundabout with a turning into a vast secret Renault test facility, hidden in woodland that was once the hunting ground of the Chateau de Gaillon. Take a look on Google Earth. It’s impressive…

While I’ve been gallivanting and ranting, the F1 teams are no doubt busy trying to figure out how to catch up with Red Bull, but there has been a fair bit of desperation in the media coverage of the sport.  We had Stefano Domenicali going to Hanoi, when he did not. We’ve had a bunch of chatter about Malaysia and South Africa, both of which seem thoroughly dead stories. Adrian Newey leaving Red Bull is about as likely as a penguin winning a crossword competition and there have been Harry Potter levels of fantasy about Lewis Hamilton going to Ferrari, which can only be true if Lewis has truly lost his marbles.

McLaren produced one real piece of news by announcing that it intends to have a new young driver scheme. This is good news although most of the newest talents are under contract with rivals. You have to start young these days, if you want to grab the good ones. Emanuele Pirro is a wise choice to lead the programme, as he was not only a multi-faceted driver, having raced in F1 where he was in the right place at the wrong time. He then played a much underestimated role as McLaren’s test driver in the glory years between 1988 and 1991 while also enjoying a hugely successful career in other championships, notably sports cars, as a five-time Le Mans winner. His list of wins is very impressive. In recent years, feeling the need to give back to the sport that looked after him well, he has worked as an FIA Steward in F1 and other series. He will know how to spot good youngsters and is well-equipped to help to guide them.

What else? There have been some strange attempts to get the FIA to change history and award World titles to Felipe Massa, Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Reutemann because there is nothing else to write about. There has been some idle speculation, emanating from Red Bull (funnily enough) that several teams might be in breach of the budget cap. There have been the usual Formula E and IndyCar drivers taking pot shots at F1 because they never made it.

The daftest story of all seems to have been in a German publication which produced an interview with Michael Schumacher created using artificial intelligence. This can only be described as a bizarre (and very bad) idea. I have not read the piece and do not intend to. There is still much to be written about Michael and his career, but artificial interviews are not going to help. One day there will come a moment when this complex individual can be properly explained. But not yet.

The only good thing about all this is that it wasn’t the usual dull stuff. One of the problems that F1 needs to be careful about in the years ahead is “news management”. I don’t know what they teach in public relations classes but I think Formula 1 offers a very good illustration of the right and wrong. PR people have increasingly anaesthetised the sport. Drivers say what they are told to say. Everyone has briefing notes before they go into press conferences. They all say the same rubbish: “Things didn’t work out today as we had hoped. We’ll keep working hard to get better” and “the team back in the factory is working so hard”. It is all very worthy but inspires no interest at all.

To be fair to the PR people, they are just doing what they are told to do and trying to protect the team for which they work. The obvious conclusion is that the real problem comes from the owners and team bosses who want only warm fuzzy air in their incubated lives and shy away from cold blasts of reality.

Actually isn’t just F1 that suffers from this sort of thing. In recent days we have seen a couple of spectacular examples of vapid and dishonest PR. The SpaceX explosion was described as a “rapid, unscheduled disassembly” while Florida’s Emergency Alert System sending out a screeching alert at 04.45 was a situation that “isn’t ideal”.

The point that is being missed in all of this is that real people like real people. Grannies, vicars and PR people may tut-tut at his language, but Guenther Steiner is the single most popular figure in Formula 1 these days, thanks to Drive to Survive.

How can that be? Because he’s real. Real people swear. Real people call a vanker a vanker.

Which brings me back to the lady in the post office…