1984 Austrian Grand Prix review for Motor Sport Magazine

Matthew Lamb [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

Home advantage is an odd thing in motorsport. Nigel Mansell used to say - likely with typical melodrama - that the inspiration of his home crowd would gain him half a second per lap. Alain Prost too could barely stop winning his home round.

But there are others for who nothing it seems ever goes right in their own land. And the recently departed Niki Lauda, when he was entering his native Austrian Grand Prix in 1984, was one such. Thirteen years after making his F1 debut there, at the magnificent Osterreichring, his best home result was a distant second.

Yet that time things came right for him. It wasn't entirely straightforward, nor indeed entirely luck. Rather it owed much to Lauda's legendary cunning and racecraft - in more senses than you might think.

In my latest classic grand prix retro review for Motor Sport Magazine's website, I tell the extraordinary tale of this race. You can have a read here: https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/history/f1/never-underestimate-niki-lauda-1984-austrian-f1-grand-prix

Plus you can check out my previous classic grand prix articles for Motor Sport here, here and here.

New Motorsport Week article: The Red Bull Ring - a matter of perspective

Photo: alessio mazzocco/CC

This weekend of F1 has its latest visit to the Red Bull Ring, and it's a track that has plenty going for it. It is a favourite - some even call it a classic.

But it hasn't always been so popular. Mainly because of what it was built on top of, which was as grand a challenge that has laid before F1 drivers of any era.

For Motorsport Week I delve into the past and look at the magisterial Osterreichring.

You can have a read of that classic track's tale here: https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/18819

Red Bull Ring Preview - Mountain mist

F1 has developed a season. A season within a season if you like.

The end of the season - F1 visits the Red Bull Ring
Photo: Octane Photography

We had Montreal, then Paul Ricard. And now this weekend we have the Red Bull Ring in Austria.

These circuits have a family resemblance - lengthy straights are predominant and are separated mainly by technical turns - though like Paul Ricard the Red Bull Ring has some quicker corners too. Straightline speed, braking stability and traction are the chief discriminators.

Trouble is that even so it doesn't really help us predict what will happen this weekend. In Montreal Ferrari was well on top of Mercedes; in Paul Ricard they almost exactly swapped positions. Last year's Austrian visit doesn't help either, which was won for Valtteri Bottas's Merc but only just from Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari. There was only four hundredths between them in qualifying.

Then there's where we are. This circuit often serves up fare of the non-predictable kind.

Red Bull Ring Preview - Changing of the seasons

F1 has developed a season. A bit like the tennis calendar has a grass court season (though that phrase always amuses me given it seems to consist solely of Wimbledon and some warm-up tournaments for Wimbledon). It now is in a mini-run of tracks cut from the same cloth.

The Red Bull Ring has become a popular stop-off
Photo: Octane Photography

We had Montreal, then Baku, and the run is completed this weekend by the Red Bull Ring in Austria. These circuits each are made up mainly of straights, some long, separately almost exclusively by slow turns. Point and squirt, as we used to say. Straightline speed, braking stability and traction are the chief discriminators.

The image of the Red Bull Ring has over time shifted about as frequently as its name. When F1 first rocked up in 1997, to what was then called the A1-Ring, many struggled to forgive it for trampling the magnificent Österreichring underfoot. In sharp contrast the new version seemed then achingly tepid.

It dropped off the calendar after 2003, but then Red Bull money - as evidenced in the current nomenclature - brought it back for 2014. And we then got a demonstration that time is a great healer, or else that things are judged in their context. Suddenly the track had developed a charm in the age of the cavernous Tilke-drome (ironic as this was in fact Hermann Tilke's first F1 effort). It seems now to be a firm fan's favourite.

Red Bull Ring Preview - Last day of the season

F1, probably without meaning to, has developed a season. That is, a season within a season. A bit like tennis has a grass court season (though the phrase always amuses me given it seems to consist solely of Wimbledon and some warm-up tournaments for Wimbledon), F1 now is in the midst of a mini-run of tracks all rather cut from the same cloth.

The Red Bull Ring is the latest in a
run of 'point and squirt' challenges
Photo: Octane Photography

We had Montreal, then the new-fangled Baku circuit, and the run is completed this weekend with the Red Bull Ring in Austria. These are each made up mainly of straights, some long, separately almost exclusively by slow turns. Straightline speed, braking stability and traction are the chief discriminators. It's not a phrase I've heard in a while, but the parlance once called such challenges 'point and squirt'. So therefore it seems we are now reaching the last part of F1's point and squirt season. Doesn't really have a ring to it, admittedly.

Also showing how things can change, the image of the Red Bull Ring has over time shifted about as frequently as its name. Which is a lot. Of course, many of those of a certain age (which sadly I just sneak into) struggled for a time to forgive the place. Not so much for what it was, but rather - as was the case with the 'new' Nurburgring also - for what it replaced. In Austria's case it was the magnificent, undulating and fearsome Österreichring that graced the F1 calendar between 1970 and 1987, that was trampled underfoot by the new creation. While the beautiful Styrian scenery remained of course the A1-Ring - as it was re-named when the sport returned in 1997 - in contrast was achingly up-to-date, sanitised and standard. If only they'd built the new track somewhere else, we thought, perhaps up the hillside as ironically enough they did when the Österreichring itself was created in the stead of the even older Zeltweg venue.

Looking back: the Austrian Grand Prix of 1986

Now 30 years on we presumably can expect a few retro features. There is a consensus that the 1986 F1 season is an all-time classic, and it brings many familiar things to mind to even the fan who was not around at the time to witness it.

This includes not least its extraordinary finale, encapsulated by the oft-repeated footage of Nigel Mansell's exploding Goodyear - the vast shower of sparks and all - on Adelaide's Brabham Straight which helped Alain Prost to a long shot drivers' championship. A title that, still three decades on, is arguably the last claimed not in the best car. Whatever, it was an achievement about as extraordinary for The Professor as the finale that delivered it.

The McLaren team, seen here at Brands Hatch,
was one of the major players in 1986
"McLaren pit 1986 Britain" by Phil - mclaren in
brands hatch pits. Licensed under CC BY 2.0
via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McLaren_pit_1986_
Britain.jpg#/media/File:McLaren_pit_1986_Britain.jpg

It's also viewed more broadly as a golden age: rip-snorting turbos and a stellar cast of drivers to tame them. Mansell and Prost we've mentioned, but you can add to it Nelson Piquet and a young Ayrton Senna. It also was a season with a strict in-race fuel limit and many resultant economy runs - some comical last gasps of races too as various cars ran dry - but best not spoil the moment.

One could argue also that competitiveness or variation at the front beyond these names weren't the season's strongest boasts either. That year many spoke of a 'Gang of Five' with Prost's McLaren team mate Keke Rosberg variously added to the quartet mentioned, though perhaps 'Gang of Four' would have been more fitting as Rosberg was the least regular presence among them at the sharp end by a way. Almost never would anyone else beyond this five get a look-in. Yet in among the 1986 rounds was an extraordinary outlying weekend on this front. That in Austria.

Even compared with the later round in Mexico where alone that year one of the usual suspects didn't win, even compared with that finale in Adelaide, this was the weekend of the season that really turned the order onto its head. Though you wouldn't necessarily know it from the result, which in its victor at least looked slightly ordinary. Perhaps that's therefore led to it being forgotten. And a winner whom you'd have got long odds on at the weekend's outset was denied, cruelly, as well as by an unlikely (perhaps absurd) source. Someone would have to remember to purchase a new car battery

Being won over by the Red Bull Ring

Regular readers of this particular site will know by now that I've not always been the world's greatest fan of the A1/Red Bull Ring. To say the least.

The A1/Red Bull Ring returned - and I actually thought
it was pretty good
Photo: Octane Photography

This is not because I consider anything especially objectionable about the track in itself - which is perfectly acceptable within the modern Zeitgeist - it instead is due overwhelmingly to what it replaced. Namely the wonderful, fearsome Österreichring - all fast corners, blind brows, plunges and climbs. Had they only built the new track up the hillside or something (as ironically they did with the original Österreichring which usurped the previous 'Zeltweg' track) then you probably wouldn't hear a peep out of me.

Having watched over the weekend just passed a re-run on TV of the highlights of the last Grand Prix at the old place, from 1987, it brought home that the modern formula is in some ways unrecognisable even compared with that relatively recent history. Of the fearsome fast corners referenced all but one had literally zero run off, instead being lined on the outside by barriers. And curiously much of the track looked built on something of a ha-ha, which meant that leaving the track even where there wasn't a barrier would probably result in gravity sucking your car directly to meet something solid. One was put in mind of Stirling Moss's analogy of doing a tightrope walk two feet above the ground as opposed to doing it over the Grand Canyon. The skill is the same; the challenge is not.

Red Bull Ring Preview: Long time, no see

What we have this weekend is very different. And not just because what is now known as the Red Bull Ring in Austria represents one of only two countries on the this year's F1 calendar not on the 2013 one.

F1 returns to what is now known as the Red Bull Ring
after an absence since 2003

It is also because in this modern age it is habitual that a change to the itinerary involves pitching up at a gleaming new Herman Tilke-designed facility. It often too is in an uncharted territory (literally) for the sport; new European rounds have become as rare as hen's teeth. And equally habitual is that when the fraternity turns its back on a venue for whatever reason it slams the door on the way out and never so much as considers a backwards glance let alone a tail-between-legs return.

Even on the rare occasions that the sport reacquaints with an old partner it has tended to involve a heavily revised layout; the sport rocking up to Fuji in 2007 after 30 years away, to find a very different track, is one such example. Indeed even before the peculiarities of the age in which we live it tended to be the case that any circuit returned to was revised heavily compared with the one left: see Buenos Aires, Interlagos, Spa, Nurburgring, and even this Austrian circuit itself in previous life forms.

Österreichring - a matter of perspective

There is a joke that psychologists like to tell. Two psychologists, who are old friends, happen upon each other in the street. Psychologist one asks psychologist two: 'How's your wife?' Psychologist two replies: 'Compared to what?'

I won't give up the day job.

But there is a reason that psychologists like to tell this joke. In psychology, as in everything, all is a matter of perspective, a matter of relativity. Nothing can be judged in a vacuum; everything must be judged in comparison with what is around it.

And so it is with the A1-Ring (or the Red Bull Ring to give its latest moniker), which the Red Bull company announced recently is to return to the F1 calendar next year. In itself, the A1/Red Bull Ring is a perfectly acceptable motor racing venue of the modern sort. It's set in fine, scenic surroundings; there is plenty of welcome (and perhaps increasingly rare) use of gradient. The Austrian Grands Prix it hosted between 1997 and 2003 tended to give us diverting races, with rather a lot of overtaking, in an age which usually didn't give us much of either. And set as it is in central Europe it is within relatively easy reach of large numbers of much of the sport's latent following - a following that's had the sport turn its back on it to a rather absurd extent in recent times, in preference for venues wherein local interest can be meagre. To be a little more brutal however, while the A1-Ring wasn't a grand feast of a track perhaps if you're used to a diet of workhouse gruel something a bit more appetising than that will always be welcome.

The A1/Red Bull Ring is back by the looks of things,
but I'm not too excited

And judging by the views of F1 fans that I've spoken to as well as those discerned from reading internet comments the track's return is a welcome one, I'd imagine for the reasons outlined above. But I've never been at ease with the A1-Ring entirely. I'd much rather, if it had to exist, that they'd built it somewhere else. Because when it was created it trampled on something really rather wonderful, about as grand a feast as the sport has offered in its long history. This was a track known as the Österreichring, which itself had been an F1 stop-off between 1970 and 1987.

Sadly, the creation of the new-fangled Austrian circuit meant the magnificent Österreichring was consigned to the history books and film reels forever. And, rather like the new Nurburgring and very much unlike the new Spa, the new layout - mainly straights separated by second and third gear corners - didn't begin to capture the spirit of the old (though at least they didn't commit the same act of heresy as the Nurburgring and give the Ersatz version the same blimming name).