ATLAS F1   Volume 6, Issue 37		Email to Friend   Printable Version
		The Tide Turns Again
		by Richard Barnes, South Africa

Monza has never been a place for the faint-hearted. At the 1971 Italian Grand Prix, Peter Gethin piloted his BRM P160 to the narrowest of victories, just one hundredth of a second ahead of Ronnie Peterson's March - with the next two finishers less than two-tenths of a second behind. In the elation of his first (and only) Grand Prix win, Gethin probably didn't realise that he had just completed the fastest Grand Prix in history, at a whisker over 242km/h average speed, a record that still stands to this day. And this on a circuit where, exactly one year earlier, Jochen Rindt's death had stunned the Formula One world. Gethin was the only podium finisher on that day to escape Formula One unscathed. Third place finisher Francois Cevert would die at Watkins Glen in 1973, and runner-up Ronnie Peterson became another Monza victim seven years after the epic race of 1971, succumbing to injuries sustained in an horrific first-lap pile-up at the 1978 event. Since then, Monza has continued to produce a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows. Schumacher's stirring scarlet triumphs in 1996 and 1998, the infamous Hill/Schumacher shunt in 1995, and the delirium of the tifosi when Berger's Ferrari scotched the expected McLaren season whitewash in 1988. Thankfully, death had played no part at Monza or anywhere else on the Grand Prix tour since Senna's passing in 1994. For just over six years, it seemed that the FIA's exhaustive efforts to make the sport safer were reaping solid rewards. Yet there is no way around the obvious - a Formula One car, travelling at over 300km/h, is a lethal weapon. Even a minor item like a nut or bolt, released from a car at full throttle, becomes in effect a speeding bullet. And on Sunday, Monza once again counted the cost of Italy's passion for high-speed racing. Fire marshal Paolo Gislimberti's death was doubtless avoidable - if he hadn't taken up station at that exact point, if the marshals were given a reinforced 'safe area' from which to operate, if the current flag regulations didn't call for the marshals to be so close to the action - if, if, if. The authorities, drivers, team owners and track officials can legislate for all they're worth. Usually, they will merely be shutting the stable door. For all its benefits, reactive legislation will always be one step behind the contrivances of physics, fate and Murphy's Law. Sunday's mass pile-up at the second chicane illustrated just how far Formula One has come in terms of drivers' safety. Chassis stayed intact, none of the fuelled-to-the-gunwales cars burst into flames, and all of the drivers escaped unhurt - in de la Rosa's case, miraculously so. David Coulthard too must be wondering just how much longer his guardian angel can provide such unprecedented levels of protection. The gouge in Rubens Barrichello's helmet will serve as a reminder of how close he came to serious injury. Yet despite the impacts, flying debris and general chaos, the drivers themselves showed one universal instinct - to sprint back to the pits and hop into the T-cars in time to make the expected restart. Little wonder they're often viewed as emotionless robots. The wheel tethers proved largely ineffective, but that is to be expected. In single-seater racing, there is simply no way to effectively tether a wheel to the chassis. In order to resist the forces generated in a high-speed collision, the tethers would have to be so rigid that they would probably overcome the chassis integrity. We've seen too many accidents like Martin Donnelly's at Jerez, where the driver is dislodged completely from the disintegrated chassis. As tragic as flying wheels and other debris can be, they are a distant second to the danger of chassis disintegration. Hopefully the Italian legal system will not use Monza 2000 to embark on another witch-hunt. Formula One will never be completely safe, and it is unfair to apportion blame where none can reasonably be found. It is already traumatic enough for Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Rubens Barrichello, two of Formula One's less robust psyches, to know that a marshal died as a result of their collision on Sunday. Pursuing the matter further will only compound the sense of loss and suffering. Sunday's collision was the fourth time in five races that a Ferrari has been shunted from the rear for 'early braking'. At Austria, Jarno Trulli hit Barrichello and Ricardo Zonta took out Schumacher, with both following drivers claiming 'the Ferrari's braked too early'. One race later, Giancarlo Fisichella was at it again, destroying Schumacher's race and his own with a rear-end first corner collision. At Monza, it was Barrichello's turn to be victim, and Frentzen's to claim 'the Ferrari braked too early'. Neither Schumacher nor Barrichello are known as early brakers, and it is enlightening that each of these incidents happened on the first lap, when brakes and tyres are still not up to optimal operating temperature. It seems unlikely that Ferrari have a brake system which takes longer to get up to temperature, yet the rear-end trend suggests that they are braking early, at least over those first few corners. The season-opener at Australia revealed that Ferrari had fuel-consumption issues. Are the scarlet cars starting each race stuffed to the limit with fuel, and consequently having to brake slightly earlier than other cars? It's also noticeable that Ferrari's previously lightning-quick pitstops are now longer than McLaren's. It's usually only a second or so, but that would be enough to make up the fuel shortfall because of a thirsty engine. A third point was Martin Brundle's observation during the ITV coverage, soon after the safety car had left the circuit, that Michael Schumacher's Ferrari was throwing out a lot more brake-dust than Hakkinen's McLaren immediately behind him. Clearly the Ferrari's brakes are working to the absolute maximum, and yet less efficiently than the McLaren's - Coulthard's braking efficiency at France was nothing short of astonishing. Nevertheless, Ferrari can take renewed confidence and hope from their Monza performance. The result may prove to be a false dawn. Ferrari's big problem is tyre degradation, and despite Ross Brawn's satisfaction at Sunday's tyre performance, Monza is notoriously light on tyres. Still, this is the first year in recent memory that Ferrari have outperformed McLaren at Monza. In 1998, the Scuderia were handed the win courtesy of a blown Coulthard engine and brake problems on Hakkinen's car. Last year, even the lamentable Williams showed them a clean pair of heels before Mika Hakkinen lost control, both on and off the track. If last season's form is anything to go by, Sepang should belong to Schumacher, with Hakkinen similarly dominant at Suzuka. With only two points between the championship protagonists, that leaves the upcoming United States Grand Prix as the key deciding event. For Formula One in general, and the American organisers in particular, it couldn't have been scripted better. In less than two weeks, on a circuit steeped in racing history, we can expect another classic chapter in the Indianapolis legend.

Richard Barnes	© 2000 Kaizar.Com, Incorporated.
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