New Motorsport Week article: Forty years on – the brief rise of Ligier

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As we are often told with varying degrees of efficacy, things in the F1 past were very different.

And so it was if we jump back four decades almost to the day. Try to imagine a team known mainly as wayward midfield plodders turning up at round one and jumping clean over allcomers; starting the year with two easy victories. Then try to imagine that after that things about as quickly got difficult again, and the team sank from championship contention.

For Motorsport Week I look back to the 1979 season and the very brief rise and subsequent fall of Ligier, as well as analyse what explains the two sharp shifts.

You can have a read here: https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/21085

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.

Johnny Herbert at Benetton, by Ibrar Malik

The upcoming book details what can be learnt about the 1994 Benetton controversies whenever other drivers sat within the car, like Johnny Herbert. So what was the Grand Prix winner's view of driving it?

Johnny had been tipped for F1 stardom before sustaining serious leg injuries in a horrific multi-car pileup during an F3000 race in the summer of 1988. Despite not having fully recovered, the Englishman bravely returned to racing at the beginning of 1989 with the Benetton Formula 1 team and astonished onlookers by finishing a brilliant fourth on his debut.

Herbert arriving for his first Formula One test in 1989. Whenever he was buckled up within the car, painkilling injections were stabbed into his legs. Herbert's injuries still affect him today.

Determined as he was, Johnny's performances progressively got worse throughout 1989 as his leg injuries hindered him on circuits which required heavier braking. This led to a political battle over Herbert's future, between Peter Collins (Benetton's team manager) and Flavio Briatore (Benetton's newly appointed Commercial Director). Collins, having spent three years supporting Johnny through the junior categories was adamant the Englishman should remain, but Briatore insisted on replacing him with a fellow Italian. After failing to qualify for the Canadian Grand Prix Herbert was promptly replaced by Emanuele Pirro (an Italian) and Collins left the team a few weeks later.

The Day Schumacher Drove a Ligier, by Ibrar Malik

The upcoming book details what is learnt about the Benetton controversies when Michael Schumacher tested a Ligier for one day in December 1994. For instance was the German as impressive when not driving a Benetton?

Before we answer this let us remember the background surrounding this test. In early 1994 the Ligier team was in financial trouble following its team owner, Cyril de Rouvre, having been jailed on fraud charges. Benetton directors, Flavio Briatore and Tom Walkinshaw, bought the struggling French outfit in May 1994 following months of conveyancing. Within this transaction, they were partly acting for the Benetton family - their paymasters - who wanted Ligier's prized supply of Renault engines having failed to acquire them via more conventional means during 1993. This was because their rivals, Williams, had stopped Benetton advances towards the French engine supplier by giving Ligier assistance with gearboxes etc throughout 1993. Williams' strategy was to keep Ligier competitive enough to maintain Renault's interest in it rather than Benetton. Following the 1994 acquisition, Walkinshaw owned a minor stake in Ligier but dreamt of owning the whole team and bringing it Grand Prix success with Ross Brawn. While Briatore, another stakeholder, was simply happy to be a sleeping partner and saw the Liger purchase as just another of his investments.

Walkinshaw (left) and Briatore of Benetton. Neither were strangers to controversies, therefore many people consider Benetton guilty of the 1994 accusations simply because of their association.

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."

Retro F1: 1996 Monaco Grand Prix

Hello you. The first Retro F1 in a while took place yesterday. And we had a great race to watch, the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix. It's a race that has lived long in the memory due to its drama and surprise result.

For those who don't know, Retro F1 is watching a classic F1 race in full on YouTube and chatting on Twitter with like-minded F1 people as we go using the #RetroF1 hashtag. All are welcome! The highlights of yesterday's Twitter chat are below.

Here’s the Retro F1 YouTube link: Now clicking play :)

It’s in several parts, it's a playlist so it should automatically move onto the next part when one ends.

The 1996 Monaco Grand Prix was a dramatic and memorable one
Credit: Steve Gregory / CC

Not much of a backstory to this race. This is race 6 of the 1996 season, Damon Hill in the Williams has won 5 out of 6 races so far, and leads the table by a country mile. Indycar champion Jacques Villeneuve, arriving in F1 to be Hill’s team mate, is next up, winning the other race.

The Phoenix: Williams rises from the ashes

There was a time when Frank Williams was a joke figure in F1. Yes, seven world drivers' titles, nine constructors' titles and 113 Grand Prix victories later it seems an odd assertion. But for years Frank Williams was perceived as a forever struggling, stumbling presence in the paddock with cars invariably near the back of the pack.

He had success in his first year in the sport in 1969, claiming two second places running a privately-entered Brabham with Piers Courage driving, but after that point it appeared that Frank, year after year, was condemned to salvaging what he could from the latest failed project.

Piers Courage in a Brabham entered by Williams in 1969
Credit: Lothar Spurzem / CC

As everyone prepared for the start of the 1978 season there seemed little reason to re-evaluate that judgment. Recent form wasn't encouraging: in 1976 even with access to Canadian oil millionaire Walter Wolf's cash success for Frank's team was meagre, with no points scored. Further, after Frank was sidelined the Wolf team went on to claim three victories and finish in second place in the constructors' table the following season. And while this was going on Williams, starting again with his own operation, again scored no points competing with a private (and what turned out to be a long in the tooth) March.

His designer for the new season, Patrick Head, concurs: 'You've got to remember that Frank's reputation from his early efforts was not great. He was known as "W*nker" Williams...everybody thought his cars were just there to fill up the grid'.

Looking back: F1 wizards' first visit to Oz

As you're no doubt aware by now the Bahrain Grand Prix has been postponed, possibly to be shoehorned back into the calendar later this year. The season's opening round will instead take place in Australia on 27 March, around the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne. Seems something much more appropriate about that.

The Australian race is one of the most eagerly anticipated rounds of the season, such is the atmosphere and local enthusiasm it always engenders (it's a pity therefore that it currently seems to be under threat). F1 was nevertheless fairly slow to discover the potential of an Australian race, with the first visit there as late as 1985. What's more, anticipation of the initial visit was accompanied by considerable scepticism from the F1 circus. But on arrival this gave way rapidly to huge enchantment, probably of an even greater intensity than the Melbourne round currently enjoys.

When the first Australian Grand Prix, to be held around a street circuit in Adelaide, was placed as the final round on the 1985 calendar misgivings were widespread. F1's recent record at the time on newfangled street tracks was far from good: the Dallas round of the previous year wherein the track had fallen apart over the weekend, and there were several other organisational difficulties, was fresh in the memory, as were similar problems at Detroit and Las Vegas. Indeed, the record of such rounds even going ahead was somewhat patchy, such as the Flushing Meadows street race in New York which had been on the calendar for three years in a row and had yet to become a reality (and it still hasn't).

Looking back: 1981 - F1's strangest season

The recently ended 2010 season is commonly accepted as a great one. When thinking of great F1 seasons some readily spring to mind, such as the dramatic championship finishes of 1964, 1986 and 2008, or the competitiveness of 1974, 1997 and 2003, or even the drama and controversy of 1976 and 1989. The season of 1982 however tends to rise above others in such debates. It after all can boast no fewer than 11 different winners (for seven different constructors) in 16 races, no individual winning more than two of them. This all was alongside multiple acts of drama on and off the track, conducted in an atmosphere of extreme acrimony. Such is the myth that surrounds 1982 that it even had a specialist book about it written and published a quarter of a century later, by the sadly recently-departed Christopher Hilton.

However I feel that the season which preceded 1982, 1981, is somewhat forgotten about, and has a strong claim as a memorable and dramatic season. It can certainly match 1982 for controversy and acidity. Indeed, much of the 1982 politics were simply a continuation of those in 1981! The 1981 championship battle was tighter and went to the wire to a much greater extent than 1982's did. Plus the on track racing action (easy to forget in all of this) was generally much more diverting in 1981. It seems to have been lost in time somewhat that most of the races in 1982, i.e. the hour and a half on a Sunday, were soporific spectacles. And 1981 isn't far off 1982 in terms of variation of winners, no driver won more more than three races, the world champion totalled but 50 points, and in the final drivers' table no fewer than five drivers were within seven points of the top of the table. Eat your heart out 2010.

Even if one maintains that 1981 was not among the sport's greatest seasons, it certainly has a claim to being one the sport's strangest. It started with a race that never was in South Africa, attended by only 19 cars, the races were participated in by a field of cars, for the most part, in flagrant breach of the rule makers' flagship regulations, and it ended in a car park in Las Vegas, wherein the three contenders stumbled disastrously over the line, and Nelson Piquet claimed his first World Championship by a point, almost in spite of himself.

Looking back: 1979 - not the march de triomphe for Ligier

OK, I'll admit it. I first had the idea to write something on Ligier's 1979 season sometime after the Brazilian Grand Prix this year, in which Red Bull had refused to 'nominate' one of their drivers for the championship or to impose team orders. It was to be a cautionary tale of a frontline team with two competitive drivers losing out on a championship by allowing them to race each other, to the point that they damaged each other's hopes.

The Red Bulls then inconsiderately won both the drivers' and the constructors' titles. But the story of Ligier in 1979 is sufficiently compelling to be worth recounting nevertheless, and the lack of team orders is but part of it.

To cut a long story short, the Ligiers ran away with the opening two races of 1979, before gradually fading to become also-rans by the season's end with, on the face of it, an unfathomable rate of decline. As is usually the case in F1, the reasons for this decline are not straightforward.