"Don't crack under pressure." This was the title of a famous Tag Heuer advertisement that included the likeness of Ayrton Senna in deep concentration during a qualifying session and appeared in many magazines. Apparently Damon Hill never saw this advertisement. If he had, he wouldn't have done what he did last Sunday. And, don't dismiss his performance, or anything else as an accident.

From my point of view there are at least three items concerning this year's Grand Prix of Italy that merit discussion. The first one is the quality of the William's drivers. The second is Ferrari's (and especially Alesi's) luck. And, the third is safety. Let's take these in order.

What's with the Williams team and its drivers? By almost any standard, it is clear that Team Willy has the best cars on the track this year. But it doesn't have the best drivers, as it once did, and should. Thanks to the retirement of Alain Prost and the untimely and tragic death of Ayrton Senna, Frank Williams went from having the best to the next best drivers. When David Couthard joined the team everyone thought he could be champion. Almost immediately, however, it was evident that he still had improvements to make and experience to gain, so Hill was given priority in the team--priority that not long before was just one of his wildest dreams. To me, the best car should be manned by the best driver. Imagine, if you will, how awesome it would be to have Micheal Schumacher in a Williams car this year. To be sure, the most recent event at Monza would have been different, and more interesting. One Williams car sat on the pole, and its less-than-championship-calibre driver couldn't keep it on the track for so much as a warm-up lap. The second Williams car started on the second row, and its number one driver couldn't tell his right foot from his left and the brake from the accelerator, and took out the most superior driver since Senna. The mistakes made by the Williams drivers are simply incredible, but not as incredible as the actions of Frank Williams himself and the criteria he used at choosing his drivers.

Williams could learn some lessons from the late Enzo Ferrari. Come to think of it, the Ferrari team of today could also learn something from the genius whose intellect dominated Formula One for more than 40 years. The legend once said that was useless to attribute everything to luck, good or bad. For every victory, every fastest lap, every pole position, every mechanical failure, and every accident there is clear responsibility somewhere. It could be attributable to a mechanic, a driver, a team manager or whomever. So I don't want to hear anymore about the bad luck of Jean Alesi and of the whole Ferrari team. I want to see more control, more testing, and more hard work. We all await the start Schumacher's tenure at Ferrari--a new era full of victories and championships. Hopefully, we won't be disappointed, especially with the number two driver. Two names have been mentioned in regard to that seat, Barrichello and Coulthard. Please, Jean Todt, take a lesson from your counterpart at Didcot; sign the Brazilian not the Scot. It would be the safe thing to do.

And, speaking of safety, everything done in the name of safety during the past two years is useless if the FIA continues to allow devices such as videocameras to be mounted in precarious places on race cars. I don't know if all the television networks showed what Italian TV showed after the Monza event, but I doubt it. For those of you who didn't see it, here's the scoop. The cause of Gerhard Berger's suspension failure was not a structural defect, but a mechanical problem caused by the detachment of the in-car camera on Alesi's car. The camera broke of and flew directly into Berger's left anterior suspension causing the damage. Where this not bad enough, consider what would have happened if the camera would have hit his helmet. Are action shots from one car worth the life of a driver? I say, no. After all, it is the race itself that is the show, not the images caught from a special view. The flying camera might be seen by some as a freak accident. I disagree, and so would Enzo Ferrari. Someone is responsible. Anything else you hear, or see, is an illusion.