Further comment here on the separation of Formula 1 from the rest of motor sport (but in particular sportscar racing – of course). Ian Wagstaff reflects on how Formula 1 drivers live in a world that no longer overlaps any other disciplines.
There are those who assert that Ayrton Senna was the greatest racing driver of all time. I would disagree. He may have been the Greatest Grand Prix driver, but not greatest racing driver. You see, Senna only ever raced a sportscar on one occasion (Joest Porsche 956, Nürburgring 1000km, 1984).
The Senna supporters will no doubt, and with some reason, contend that his performances at the wheel of a Grand Prix car indicate that he would have been equally great in a sportscar but this argument is similar to that of journalist Denis Jenkinson when he wrote that there could be a taxi driver somewhere in London who would be quicker than Stirling Moss. It is not a proven point, as the career of another contender for the ‘greatest’ accolade, Juan Manuel Fangio would indicate. Despite coming to notice during gruelling ‘Gran Premio’ races in South America, which made the Mille Miglia seem like a sprint, the Argentinean never seemed to match his Grand Prix successes in sportscars. During the time that Moss was with him at Mercedes-Benz, it was almost as if their roles of master and pupil were reversed when it came to sportscars. Moss’s manager, Ken Gregory went as far as to say that Fangio had trouble in any car with enclosed wheels, pointing to the 1954 British Grand Prix, at which he was present, as proof. (That day Fangio scattered marker barrels to the four winds with his ‘streamlined’ Mercedes W196 on his way to a ‘mere’ fourth place.) By contrast, my own contenders for the greatest ever title, Tazio Nuvolari and Jim Clark, could jump between types of car and still perform at the very highest level.
Regrettably, we can no longer make such comparisons. Current Grand Prix drivers just do not get into sportscars. Even if they wanted to, the Formula One calendar, and probably the drivers’ contracts, make it impossible. It is a sad reflection on modern motor racing. Just imagine if Mercedes had entered Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in the 2013 Le Mans 24-hours. Even then it would have been a pale imitation of the Fangio/Moss pairing that went to La Sarthe in 1955. At that point they were the two leading drivers in the world. (Gregory said that, before agreeing to sign for Mercedes that year, Moss had insisted that he be paired with Fangio for Le Mans.) Just look at the driver line up at Le Mans in 1955. It also included Hawthorn, Collins, Frére, Musso, Kling, Salvadori, Simon, Trintignant, Schell, Maglioli, Castellotti, Macklin, Mières, and Perdisa, all of whom competed in Grands Prix that same year. To their number can be added a World Champion, Phil Hill and another multi-Grand Prix winner, Tony Brooks, whose time was shortly to come. There have been years when the early laps of Le Mans, with drivers frenetically trying to prove a point despite the length of the race, have been called a ‘Grand Prix’. It was very much so that year with, prior to Pierre Levegh’s catastrophic accident, the two main protagonists being Fangio and Hawthorn, who were to win six F1 World Championships between them.
Today, you appear to need no awe-inspiring talent but just the backing of a South American republic to secure (not just) a number two seat in a Grand Prix team. Thus, the fact that Formula One drivers no longer compete concurrently in endurance racing does not mean that the World Endurance Championship front-runners are necessarily inferior when it comes to driving skill. Who knows what would have happened to the career of Allan McNish if an independent Scotland had used North Sea oil money to back him? Anthony Davidson is another case in point as having been a potential GP winner. Amongst his Toyota team mates at Le Mans were three Grand Prix refugees, Wurz, Nakajima and Buemi. Although Audi fielded one extra car, only two more of its drivers had raced in Formula One – di Grassi and Gené. Despite 40 Grands Prix between them, neither McNish nor Davidson ever had the chance of real success before they got behind the wheel of an endurance racer. Now Allan is a World Champion in his own right.
For the Grand Prix driver of recent times, sportscar racing is a place to go when you are on the way up (Michael Schumacher in Group C being a prime example, although most will get to Formula One via a single-seater only path), if you have failed to make the grade or if your Grand Prix career has ended. We have seen high profile examples of the latter. For a brief while it looked as if Jacques Villeneuve might be the first former F1 World Champion to win Le Mans for a many a long year, and now we have the case of nine times Grand Prix winner Mark Webber taking on the 24-hours with Porsche. The Australian has been to Le Mans before, spectacularly so in 1999, but that was before his days a Formula One driver.
We live in an era where championships, perhaps sadly, tend to mean more than individual races, however, ‘classic’ they may be. An aspiring Formula One world champion cannot take his eyes off what he sees as the ultimate goal for a minute. By contrast, said Ken Gregory, Stirling Moss used to go ‘pot hunting’. On the same day he might be driving a Lotus 18 F1 and a Lotus 19 sports car. The fact that he won 10 BRDC Gold Stars, which were important to him, proved the worth of this approach. (It would not have affected his chances of winning the F1 title, as his rivals were equally peripatetic.)
In addition to winning at Le Mans in 1933, the incomparable Tazio Nuvolari was also victorious in the Mille Miglia (twice), the Targa Florio (twice) and the RAC Tourist Trophy (twice). Most of these wins were achieved with an Alfa Romeo although the 1933 TT, a handicap race in those days, was won with an MG K3 Magnette, Nuvolari working with sign language for he knew no English. That should be good enough for most people but remember during this time the Mantuan was also busy winning front rank Grands Prix for Alfa and Auto Union. His defining performances were across the board. Moss was another to win the Miglia Miglia, Targa Florio and TT, the latter a magnificent seven times. These, and others like them at the time, were racing drivers in all senses of the word, not simply specialists.
Many of them also seemed to enjoy sportscars as much as single-seaters, John Surtees admits that he was to become one such. His initial car racing career, from when he first jumped off an MV Augusta into the seat of a Formula Junior Cooper-BMC, seemed more like that of a modern Grand Prix ‘wannabe’ in that he concentrated on open wheelers. It was only when he arrived at Ferrari that he learnt of the joys of the sportscar, eventually becoming the inaugural Can-Am champion in 1966 with a Lola T70. Prior to this title he had won the Nürburgring 1000km twice, the Sebring 12-hours and the Monza 1000km…and the F1 World Championship.
Some folk might contend that the early days at Le Mans saw few Grand Prix drivers competing. The ‘Bentley Boys’ were hardly known in the GP arena although ‘Tim’ Birkin did his best and Jean Chassagne had finished third, for Sunbeam, in the 1913 French Grand Prix. However, once you get into the 1930s you start seeing names like Chiron, Wimille, Benoist and Nuvolari, all of whom were (or in the case of Wimille, were to become) GP winners. After the war, Le Mans became a GP winners’ playground, Gonzalez, Trintignant, Hawthorn, Phil Hill, Scarfiotti, Bandini, Rindt, McLaren, Gurney, Pedro Rodriguez, Ickx and Graham Hill (to which perhaps ought to be added Indianapolis 500 five times winner A J Foyt) all coming first. Four of those were, or were to become, F1 world champions. In recent times any increase in the number of those who have won both Grands Prix and Le Mans has trickled away to nothing. Their disappearance mirrored the rise of Formula One as a separate ‘sport’ and the concurrent demise of endurance racing, as already discussed on these pages. Jochen Mass and Johnny Herbert were almost the last to achieve this ‘double’ followed only by Michele Alboreto in 1997. Even then it had been three years since the Italian had last raced in a Grand Prix.
The fact that endurance racing has its own stars, arguably superior to many on an F1 grid, probably means that the lack of current Grand Prix drivers competing at Le Mans and in the rest of the WEC is irrelevant to the true aficionado. However, think of the attention the outside world would give it if Vettel, Alonso, Button et al announced that they would be racing at Le Mans next year. Sorry, but it ain’t going to happen.
Ian Wagstaff
