This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: Jaguar's Monkey Talk Arrows in the Cold

Jaguar's Monkey Talk

Either the man is a genius, or totally misguided, but it seems that Niki Lauda seems intent on reducing the worth of his personal stock.

Lauda has been particularly outspoken in recent years about the continual involvement of technology that, apparently, makes the driver's role easier, leading to his conclusion that a trained monkey could make a good fist of driving the car. Add into the balance the enormous ego required to win three World Championships, and the opportunity for a free drive of last year's Formula One car, and it's easy to see how the Austrian ended up testing a Jaguar.

The test itself presented few surprises: Lauda had a go, which was commendable, spinning twice in doing so. He was a long way off the pace, and spent a significant part of his time on the track playing with the traction and launch controls, rather than attempting to set a quick pace (the spins had seen that off pretty quickly). And give or take palming the blame for the spins on to Pedro de la Rosa - who advised him where to brake - he did, in fact, manage to complete the objective of the excursion.

Nothing special in all that, then: the man was never going to be in the shape he was for his last Championship, eighteen years ago, in 1984, and has put in no serious time at the sharp end since retiring a year later. Eddie Irvine and de la Rosa must have been quietly confident of the outcome, if not the margin, when the inevitable comparisons came.

That is not all, however. Lauda also said: "Now I know what words like launch control, traction control, engine braking and brake balance mean. I can follow meetings better. When I was listening before, the software-related problems I didn't understand, now I will be able to."

Given the depth of his past experience, the advisory role he maintained with Ferrari (incidentally keeping him current on Formula One development) before joining Jaguar, and the expectations he has put on his employees, it has come as something of a shock to the designers of his new car, who are now asking, exactly, what is he up to speed with? As it was commonly believed his appointment in the Ford Performance Division was due to a full and current understanding of the modern sport, rather than just knowing the right man at the right time, confidence in him has taken something of a hit, to say the least. Now, rather than concentrating on looking at the new car and ensuring its smooth development, half his staff is wondering what other misconceptions their leader is operating under, and how to fix them.

On the bright side, there is finally a conclusion to be drawn against the "any monkey can drive a modern car" comparison to Lauda's day. The very fact that even a triple World Champion came nowhere near a competitive time at least ensures all myths that Mrs Smith's 90-year old grannie from down the road can handle a Formula One car, have finally been put to rest.

Picking the Battle Ground

Tracing the path of Ferrari's return to form is a perfect illustration of the importance not only of speed, or reliability, but consistency, in the modern Formula One team.

The lesson is plain to see. When Schumacher joined the team in '96, the car was clearly very fast - it was qualified in the top four all year, and if he finished, it was a good finish (three wins, three second places, two thirds and a fourth) - but reaching the finishing line was the problem for the other seven races. Over the following years, reliability was relentlessly pursued. Absolute speed was built on in the same fashion, and now, Ferrari have back to back Championships.

What was important from the observation, is that success did not come from just building a reliable car, but from making the processes that go to designing, testing and installing the individual components that make it up were properly, and rigorously, defined. Not only for the chassis, but for every aspect of the package, from the engineering to the assembly and testing. To the point, the process has been one of building continuously, improving each weakness in turn.

Looking at the remainder of the grid, whilst the racing philosophy is apparently largely the same as Ferrari's published approach, "making it last, then make it fast" - with notable exception being McLaren, who generally opt for "build it fast, then make it work." But apart from the front five, it seems that the philosophy stops before implementation.

From those five, for the season coming, Williams, Sauber and Jordan are, essentially, running an evolved version of last year's car. Williams' evolution might seem revolutionary, considering they are packaging the revised, wider angle BMW engine, but by their standards, the new car is, apparently, just a very solid evolution. Sauber, meanwhile, are not looking to change last year's winning formula too much, in case they can't recover it. All of these teams are expecting a solid season, and based on their approach, they should each show a comfortable performance - and reliability - step forward against last year.

On the other hand, this year, both BAR and Jaguar designed a completely new car. Each of them knows that last year's just wasn't good enough, and a serious step forward is required; meanwhile, Arrows and Minardi have new engines that require significant changes to last year's car. Renault have discarded last year's dud almost completely. Revolution can offer significant gains, but even McLaren's engineering resources, arguably better than those available to anyone other than Ferrari or Williams, have demonstrably proven insufficient to guarantee reliability.

Then again, under the threat of a worldwide recession, with sponsorship expected to be tight for at least the next year, gambling for speed against reliability (also risking, like Benetton last year, a car that's not as quick as the previous model) might be the only way for any of these teams to be sure of an effective budget to compete in 2003.