New Motorsport Week article: When Jordan and Heinz-Harald Frentzen partied like it’s 1999

By Paul Lannuier from Sussex, NJ, USA -
Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Jordan Mugen-Honda), CC BY-SA 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4296965

Almost exactly 20 years ago something extraordinary, ever so briefly, looked a genuine possibility. A Formula 1 world championship for Jordan and Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

This from a proper independent squad with a customer engine - and one routinely dismissed as a 'party team'. And from a driver who'd arrived washed up and derided.

Of course, for the title to be on it needed extraordinary circumstances as well as an extraordinary effort. The 1999 campaign provided both.

And with but a few cards falling another way they would indeed have scaled F1's ultimate peak.

For Motorsport Week I tell the tale. You can have a read here: https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/24229

Lehto at Benetton, by Ibrar Malik

1994 was supposed to be the year JJ Lehto became one of F1's top drivers, but the season ended his Grand Prix career. How did such a golden opportunity turn into a poisoned chalice?

Coming into that year Lehto was considered a rising star having tested for Ferrari and secured an incredible third at Imola 1991 driving for unfancied Scuderia Italia. 

After beating former race winner Michele Alboreto to the second Benetton seat for 1994, Lehto would have been forgiven for thinking regular podium visits were just around the corner. This was the Finn's first top F1 drive after five years within F1 and the new Benetton proved extremely quick in Michael Schumacher's hands. But that was as good as things got for JJ because on the 21st January 1994 he was lucky to survive a massive neck-breaking accident while testing the B194 at Silverstone. This month, therefore, marks the 25th anniversary of that. Few realised Lehto's girlfriend had just become pregnant only days before that accident. So you can imagine thoughts of not wanting his unborn child to grow up without him might have been circulating within Lehto's head as he laid in the hospital recovering.

Funny Stories from an F1 Mechanic, by Ibrar Malik

Paul West worked for Williams throughout the 1990s and is a massive contributor towards the upcoming book. This blog is therefore dedicated to him.

A very drunk Paul West giving it the thumbs up after Damon Hill's 1996 Championship victory.

Paul has many enjoyable stories from his time within F1 including how he inadvertently contributed towards the rules. "The cars were kept for an hour after the race (for scrutineering purposes), it was allowed for two guys per car to clean them but nothing else, this happened until the 1997 Japanese Grand Prix. At this race some of the guys at Benetton suspected that Ferrari had a movable front wing so they got me, like an idiot, to put some pressure with my foot to see if it moved. There were some Ferrari mechanics watching and they reported to Nigel Stepney what I'd done, he came down and spoke to Dickie Stanford our team manager who asked me if I'd done it I said yes and I think because I was honest Stepney didn't have anything done to me but from then on no personnel were allowed in parc ferme."

In Retrospect: The 1999 European Grand Prix, by Steven Critchley

F1 action will return to Baku's treacherous street circuit on 25 June, after a successful hosting of last year's European Grand Prix, which returned to the calendar after a three-year absence. This time, it will be host to the inaugural Azerbaijan Grand Prix, once more testing the technical abilities of constructors in a more diverse way, while also forcing drivers on the circuit to time their overtakes to perfection.

As a street circuit, Baku offers little margin for error from anyone, regardless of how experienced or decorated they may be. Another battle of Ferrari versus Mercedes is expected, but the negation of the disparity that once existed is reflected by Mercedes's Valtteri Bottas being priced at 28/1 on bet365's F1 betting odds to win this year's title. However, the unpredictability that typically characterises a new F1 circuit was in full evidence last year, when Sergio Perez enjoyed a rare moment in the sun in an unfancied Force India car and finished third.


19 June 2016: Drivers speak to press after the inaugural F1 race in Baku. 

Looking back: 20 years ago - the calm before the storm

1994. In F1 terms it even twenty years on is a campaign considered barely to have a redeeming feature; a rancid low point. It is viewed as a season of rancour, bitterness, tragedy.

It was a year of persistent and acidic controversy, both technical and sporting; race bans were frequent and the success of the champion Benetton team - the target of much of the contention - even today from many perspectives still festers rather like an uncleansed old wound. It was a year of sickening violence. Most traumatically two drivers, Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, did not survive the campaign, others had their careers at the top in effect ended by injury, and there were plenty of near misses besides in which widespread injury and death was avoided only by chance. It was also a season lacking in competitiveness, featuring several soporific races in which the cars at the back, indeed in the midfield, barely belonged in the same formula as the cars at the front. And, almost appropriately in the perverse sense, in the final round the destination of the drivers' title was resolved in the most unsatisfactory manner, with Michael Schumacher's stricken Benetton via whatever explanation coming into contact with the Williams of title rival Damon Hill, thus ending both of their races and settling the championship in the German's favour. In many ways, in comparison with the 1994 season start by the climax of the harrowing campaign the sport appeared rather more than a year older.

But less well-remembered is that, fleetingly, the season promised rather different. Roughly twenty years ago at that very campaign start, the opening round in Interlagos in Brazil, it appeared that just maybe 1994 was instead to be the scene of the sport's renaissance, however laughable that concept seems to hindsight.

Ayrton Senna was expected to dominate the year
Credit: Instituto Ayrton Senna / CC

It appeared so unexpectedly too, as in advance not many looked forward to the season with a great deal of relish. For one thing the world championship looked bought and paid for before anyone had turned a wheel. The Williams cars had been insultingly dominant for the previous two years and now for 1994 it had triangulated much of the opposition that remained by seizing as its own its main, perhaps its only, irritant in this time. Ayrton Senna despite battling against much superior Williams machinery throughout 1992 and 1993 had won eight races (one in four) in that time somehow, and a few of these drives were of sufficient quality so to go into folklore. Now for 1994 Williams had Senna signed up all for itself and the logic seemed irrefutable: best driver, best car, best engine should equal sweeping all before them. Most foresaw a year of demonstration runs.

Kaleidoscope shaken: implications of Lewis Hamilton joining Mercedes

In F1, as in life, everything is connected to everything else. Every action has a ripple effect throughout the pitlane; every gap created has to filled.

Indeed, in the case of the movements of Lewis Hamilton, one of the biggest beasts of the F1 plains, one is put in mind of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's celebrated quote on Canada's relations with the USA: 'Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.'

Lewis Hamilton - not in McLaren
colours for much longer
Credit: Ryan Bayona / CC

And unless you've been living in a cave these past couple of days, you'll be aware by now that Lewis has decided to shake the kaleidoscope, not only of his own career but of contemporary F1, by announcing that he'll be leaving McLaren for Mercedes at the year's end. It's the first time since the off season of 2009/2010 that a major driving player in a major driving team has switched employers. The ripple effect of this switch will be felt throughout F1, most heavily at the McLaren team he's leaving and the Mercedes team he's joining but also felt much further potentially. It only remains to be seen where the kaleidoscope pieces settle, and when, both for Lewis and for everyone else.

There has been a lot of speculation as to what encouraged Lewis to reach his decision, and in reality it's likely that no one aside from Lewis himself and a few close to him know the real reasons. It cannot be denied that on competitiveness grounds the move is hard to justify, at least in the short term (though Lewis may be looking a bit further ahead, for various reasons).

But while it seems the basic retainers on offer at McLaren and Mercedes were pretty similar, at his new abode he'll have much more freedom to develop 'brand Lewis' (and he must be interested in this, he wouldn't have signed up with XIX Management in the first place if he wasn't). Many auxiliary reasons have been touted too: that he feels constrained at the 'paternalistic' McLaren and, rather like kid who grew up, is keen to flee the nest and prove himself 'on his own'. The sporting challenge of building up a team that's all potential but currently struggling may also be tempting (as Michael Schumacher was tempted by the Ferrari challenge in 1996), as might the possibility of making a team very much his team, as Fernando Alonso has done so transparently at Ferrari.

Looking back: 1997 - an underrated classic

A F1 season in which grids and races were tight and we'd enter weekends with no idea who would be on top; it could have literally been anyone from more than half of the grid. It was also a season with a close championship battle. And one in which tyres would often fall apart quickly and would have to be nursed through a race stint.

No, it's not now. It's fifteen years ago: the year of 1997.

When classic seasons in F1 history are discussed I often think that 1997 is curiously rarely-mentioned. It was an underrated classic. While much of F1 in the 1990s was characterised by only a small number of likely winners at any given moment, and often one team dominating, 1997 represented something of a renaissance. Perhaps part of the season's not getting the credit it deserves owes something to its being poorly served by statistics. For all of its competitiveness, it can only claim to six different winners (from four teams) in 17 races. But with cards falling the other way it could easily have boasted anything up to double those numbers.

Jacques Villeneuve,
some years later
Credit: Rick Dikeman / CC

In this year Williams Renault was the dominant force, but the Schumacher-Ferrari double act, joined this year for the first time by Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne, was getting into its stride and more than capable of making a thorough pest of itself. Then there was McLaren who, with Mercedes engines, was finally emerging from its post-Senna/post-Honda trough and was an increasingly consistent front runner as the year went on. Benetton and Jordan were both credible contenders for wins on occasion.

And further was the variable brought in by the Bridgestone tyres. For the first time since 1991 Goodyear had opposition in supplying F1 teams, and it could be argued that for the first time since 1984 (when Michelin left the sport) Goodyear had a serious threat to its pedestal position. If anything the Bridgestone was the superior tyre, certainly the more durable. And in this its debut season it could only count midfield runners at best among its customers: Prost (née Ligier, just bought by Alain), Stewart (also in its debut season) and the like; but the Bridgestones could, on occasion, bring these guys right to the sharp end. Heck, even Arrows nearly won a race on them. And Goodyear in response sometimes got its sums wrong, the resultant gumball rubber meant that 'blistering' and subsequent pace variation returned to the F1 parlance with a vengeance.