Читать книгу Green Races Red - Maurice Hamilton - Страница 10

Not many people know this, but I was almost called Stirling Moss Irvine. My father, Edmund, was a massive fan of motor sport. I remember seeing a picture of Stirling Moss after he had won a race – I think it was in North America, at Watkins Glen or Mosport – and there’s my Dad standing beside him with an arm around his shoulders. He was quite serious about naming me after his hero. You can hear it now: ‘Stirl Irv.’ My mother stopped him, thank God!

It was only natural that Dad and I should go to the races together. We regularly went to Kirkistown, our local circuit about twenty minutes away on the Ards Peninsula, and we would make frequent trips ‘across the water’ to Ingliston in Scotland and Croft in County Durham. The highlight each year would be the British Grand Prix; our summer holiday would revolve around that. We would visit my cousins in Durham and go ice skating, and then motor down to either Silverstone or Brands Hatch.

I much preferred going to Silverstone because it was harder to sneak into Brands Hatch! I have never paid to get into a Grand Prix. One year, my cousin and I were caught digging a hole under a fence at Brands Hatch. Two policemen told us to move on but, when they walked off before we did, we took that as meaning we had full permission to proceed!

Our family ran a scrapyard and Dad would buy and sell cars. I remember one time he took in a Ford Capri and had it resprayed. I cleaned it and when I had finished, this car looked like new, it really did. It was worth £800 and we swapped it for a Crossle 32F single-seater. It was a brilliant deal for us because the guy wanted £1,400 for the Crossle. That was a reasonable price for a 32F. Suddenly, we had a racing car in return for a Ford Capri.

The previous owner had only done a couple of races in the Crossle. He had put in new brake pads just before the start of the second race, got to the first corner – and went straight on. The radiator was damaged, but very little else.

I had a driving license as soon as I reached seventeen. I drove the Crossle a few times but, before I had the chance to race it, we switched to a 50F. This car, which was newer than the 32F, looked a lot better, but it was actually a load of rubbish. I went slower in the 50F than in the 32F. It may have been a very good deal, but to be honest it wasn’t the best career move.

Mondiale, a company based in Bangor, my local town, had brought out new cars for the 1984 season. Wealthy Irish businessmen were either driving or running these Formula Fords. There was a major Championship meeting at Mondello Park, near Dublin, and I qualified fourth or fifth, ahead of all the Mondiales and just behind the Irish Champion. So Mondiale approached me and said they would like to do a special deal!

The plan was to use my engine, gearbox and other bits and pieces, and they would supply the chassis. I put my new car on pole for the next race but Alan McGarrity, a local driver, and I had an accident at the first corner. I went to the next race, won pole position again and led all but two laps. McGarrity had been punting me up the backside every time I braked. Eventually he got past me and I finished second. I would have liked to have won but, I must admit, I was pleased with the result. At that stage, I had no thoughts about going into motor racing full time. It was out of the question because we had no money. I was racing purely for fun – or the ‘crack’, as they say in Ireland.

When I left school, I had started dismantling cars in the scrapyard. On a Sunday, the place would be closed, but I would go in and mess about with starter motors. If three didn’t work, I would make one good one out of the three. It was my business in effect because I looked upon it as my Dad’s ‘factory’. I really enjoyed it.

I worked hard when I was there. My grandfather, who was still involved with the business at the time, said I was the best worker in the place. He would try to wind me up, but I was just as bad as him and I knew what he was doing. Unfortunately my cousin Stephen, who also worked in the yard, took Grandad too seriously and allowed himself to be wound up very easily. Grandad would be giving Stephen a hard time – telling him he was a lazy so-and-so – and winking at me at the same time.

It was good fun, except in the winter when it tended to be very cold and wet. You could bet it would be a day like that when someone would ask for a starter motor from a car which was under four or five other cars. I would have to get the crane and lift everything off.

I worked with Stephen and a friend, Derek, who lived down the road. The crack was great. When stacking cars we would save time by having Derek, who hooked up the cars, take a lift across on the crane’s hook rather than climb down one pile of cars and then clamber up the other. I remember walking down the road one day with a couple of friends and seeing Derek swinging above the rooftops. It was a big crane and Stephen had Derek hanging onto the hook. He was being swung from side to side and then Stephen would lower the jib, but not before jamming on the brake and jerking the line. If Derek had fallen off, he would have broken his neck. But we were laughing our heads off at the time.

The procedure in the scrapyard was that all the good bits would be removed from the car. Then we would throw in some old tyres and put a match to them. You wouldn’t get away with that now. It was like the oil fires in Kuwait at the time of the Gulf War. We would wait until the wind was blowing away from the neighbouring clothes lines, and up she would go. Sometimes the wind would turn. But once tyres start burning, you can’t put them out. The neighbours would be up in arms.

Then my job would be to crush what was left – but I had to be careful. Grandad would rip all the copper wire out of the cars once they had been burned, but he made a habit of not saying when he was coming in to work! I was up in the crane one day when I caught sight of Grandad’s dog running round the outside of a car I was about to crush with a three-ton weight. He was inside, doing his bit by removing the copper wire...

There was a very good market for the bits and pieces we removed but, even so, we didn’t have enough spare cash to go motor racing properly. The most we ever spent in a year was £7,000. Mondiale put forward a deal for me to race in England with Murray Taylor, a New Zealander and former journalist who ran a team. Mondiale asked for £7,000 on the understanding that they would pay the rest. My father and I thought this was the way to go.

Dad arranged an overdraft and paid the money. I finished third in my first event and everything was fine for about three or four races. But then I started slipping back. Reflecting on it now, the Mondiale just wasn’t good enough and the engines were poor. The chassis probably wasn’t stiff enough and that affected the engine. I’m pretty sure that’s what caused the drop-off in performance; the chassis loads up the engine, which means the engine can’t work.

It is a terrible feeling knowing that you are going to a race and the car isn’t going to be competitive, no matter what you do. It doesn’t matter if it is a Formula Ford or a Ferrari. I was to be reminded of that struggle when I went to Argentina for the third round of the 1996 World Championship.

The only way to remember the weekend in Buenos Aires is to talk about the two points I collected for finishing fifth. Everything else was a bit of a disaster – starting with qualifying. The car was awful. It was badly affected by the bumps on the track and wouldn’t turn in to the corners. I didn’t know what the F310 was going to do next because it depended on whether I hit the bump with the front or the rear of the car. It was on a knife-edge all the time. I was to discover that such problems do not seem to affect Michael Schumacher as much as everyone else, and that didn’t make me feel any better.

I had been really looking forward to racing in Buenos Aires. I like the city; it’s a brilliant place, really beautiful. The girls are perhaps not as pretty as everyone claims, but they definitely have a certain something. They’re very attractive, and they add to the warmth generated by a city which is very cosmopolitan; ‘Italians who speak Spanish and think they’re British’ was one interesting interpretation which is probably quite close to the truth.

On the Wednesday evening, a few of us were invited to President Menem’s residence. He had some lovely paintings from artists no one had heard of, but they were very nice works of art. I thought Carlos Menem was a bit of a cool dude. His daughter is a ‘babe’, very warm and happy, quite laid back. We had pizza and Coke, which was a nice way to do it; very informal and relaxed. President Menem is a motor racing nut. He’s been there and done it; he knows what he is talking about. His daughter is the same, and they’ve both got a sense of humour, unlike most politicians and dignitaries you meet.

Michael was there, as were people from Shell and Marlboro who support the Ferrari team. There were a number of Argentinian businessmen present and one of them was the country’s biggest wine exporter. He said he had an agent in Oxford and promised to send me samples of their best wine. I said I would be only too pleased to do my bit for Argentinian exports. In fact, by the time practice and qualifying had finished three days later, I was ready for a bottle of something pretty potent.

The Buenos Aires autodrome is a circuit I like; I had qualified fourth for the previous year’s Grand Prix. But now, because of all the problems associated with the Ferrari, I was afraid of the car. I was almost scared to turn the wheel.

That’s the difference between a good car and a bad car, it doesn’t matter what Formula we are talking about. When you can arrive at a corner and just turn in without any worries, that’s when the car is good. That’s when you do respectable lap times. If you can’t do that, then you haven’t got a good car. End of story. I could see the difference between myself and Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in the Williams-Renaults. They could turn into the corners with confidence because the Williams was very predictable. It has a roll-on effect because that sort of thing makes you think you are on top of the job and driving well.

It’s amazing the difference it can make. For example, you could be driving all day during a test at somewhere like Snetterton in Norfolk and the car isn’t as you like it. You think you are driving like a plonker and you wonder if it’s you or the car. Then you make one change to the setup and go half a second faster almost immediately. All of a sudden you are driving well. You think you are good again, and the car is doing all the work.

The only positive thing to be said was that Argentina was the sort of circuit where you could probably get away, to a lesser degree, with having such difficulties because there were no high speed corners which would really highlight the problem. Even so, it was so difficult to drive that I couldn’t see where I could pick up any more time; I just couldn’t go quicker.

I qualified in tenth place. I was a bit annoyed because I had been held up during my fast lap and we could tell from the read-out that my predicted time for that lap would have been worth sixth or seventh place. I had Coulthard ahead of me and he pulled out of the way to let me through. Damon, who was immediately in front of David, didn’t see me and he was slowing in order to try and get a clear piece of road ready for a quick lap. I was briefly trapped between the two cars and that was enough to screw up the lap. It was a bit of a shame, but these things happen.

Michael had qualified alongside Hill on the front row. You could understand why he gets paid so much money. He’s on the pace every time, whether the car is good, bad or indifferent. He has the ‘Senna Factor’; in other words, even if the car is bad, he can drag it onto the front of the grid. They can make changes to the car and, okay, Michael may say it feels better as a result. But, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what the car is like, he will simply find the lap time from within himself. That was very evident in Buenos Aires.

From my point of view, things seemed to go from bad to worse during the warm up on race morning. I did a lap and then the car broke down. It was an engine-related problem and I had no option but to park by the side of the track and watch everyone do their thing. We had made some changes to the set-up: softer on the rear springs to try and make the car more forgiving on the entry to a corner; more front wing in order to try and help the front of the car turn in to the corner.

Not having had an opportunity to try the changes during the warm-up, I managed a couple of laps before going to the starting grid. The car suddenly felt much better. It was the first time such a thing had happened at this stage in a race weekend. Usually, the car felt at its best with less fuel on board. This time, it actually felt better with more fuel. I approached the race feeling a lot more confident than I had before.

I made a good start. At the second corner, I was trying to go round the outside of Villeneuve when he moved me wide and put me onto the grass. To be honest, I would have done exactly the same thing had I been Jacques! Heinz-Harald Frentzen passed me as a result; then I got back in front of the Sauber again. And that was it. Stalemate. I was stuck there.

Barrichello, running in seventh place, was holding everyone up and it became clear that the only way positions were going to change was through different refuelling strategies and faster pit stops.

For instance, I was holding ninth place and running right behind Mika Hakkinen when he pulled into the pits to refuel. Since I was not due to stop for another eight laps, he had been running with less fuel than me, so the Ferrari was therefore quicker. I knew that, if I could push hard for the next few laps, I would eventually get ahead of the McLaren once my first stop had been made. I caught Barrichello quite quickly but, unfortunately, he was on a one-stop tactic, which explained why he was so slow. That, in effect, wrecked my plan because, with overtaking being next to impossible on this circuit, my pace was being dictated by the slow Jordan. Realising that I was going nowhere, the team told me to come in for my first stop – which turned out to be a bit slow – and I rejoined behind Frentzen. I was going backwards!

Then came another twist just before half distance when the Safety Car suddenly appeared and the field had to form up behind it. A car had overturned and the marshals needed to work on it in safety. Just as they were about to sort that out, there was another emergency when a Ligier, which had just made a pit stop, caught fire in a big way and spun off.

The driver, Pedro Diniz, was lucky to escape with burns to one hand but I thought The Sun produced the headline of the year when the following day’s paper had the words ‘Diniz In The Oven’ above a picture of the Brazilian sitting in his blazing car. Otherwise, this affair was certainly no joke.

A refuelling valve on the side of the car had not shut properly and the Ligier was brim full of fuel. It doesn’t need much fuel to spill onto the hot car before you have a big blaze. I had been through a similar experience when my Jordan caught fire during the previous year’s Belgian Grand Prix.

I really can’t see what refuelling adds to a Grand Prix; if anything, it screws up the racing. The whole thing has become too complex with teams trying to work out their strategy, while outguessing everyone else. The spectators haven’t a clue what’s happening; it’s just plain stupid.

This is supposed to be Grand Prix racing. We should fill up the cars and go for it. That way, there is more skill involved because the driver has to look after his tyres while running with a full load of fuel; he has to think about that aspect much more. He’s actually got to overtake the guy in front rather than rely on pit stop tactics. Granted, he might be able to overtake during a tyre stop, but the chances of that happening are less, which is as it should be. Motor racing is not about overtaking in the pits.

But, having said all that, the most serious problem with refuelling is the threat of fire. The sport is dangerous enough, without having that extra risk. I would like to see a referendum carried out among the informed people in Formula 1. I know what the answer would be. And so, I suspect, do the people in charge. Just ask any mechanic who has to stand there, waiting for a red hot car to come into the pits with up to 100 litres of fuel under pressure just behind his shoulder. Refuelling has its place at Le Mans; it’s necessary, a genuine part of endurance racing. But it seems totally false in Formula 1.

As I said, Diniz was lucky. And it was fortunate that the accident happened while the Safety Car was already out on the track. It meant we were stacked up behind the official car for three of four laps and, during that time, my water temperature rose to a critical point, something which would play a part later in the race.

It is the luck of the draw when the Safety Car appears. In this instance, it worked in Barrichello’s favour because he was able to make his single stop and lose very little ground while the Safety Car was out. The rest of us, meanwhile, knew we would have to make a second stop once the race was under way.

When the Safety Car pulled off, I got behind Frentzen and dummied to go down the inside of the Sauber. He pulled across to block me – and lost control at the braking point for the next corner. Round he went and into the gravel. I was pretty pleased with that! Once the final pit stop had been made, I chased after Coulthard and harried him for the next few laps. Eventually he made a mistake and I nipped into fifth place. I knew I could take it easy during the final ten laps. Jos Verstappen was sixth in the Arrows but, even though he was closing, there was no way he could catch me. Or so I thought.

With four corners to go on the last lap, my car became stuck in sixth gear. It seemed as if I had actually stopped, because whenever I braked, the engine just went ‘blauggghhh’. I thought, ‘Oh shit! That’s it. Four corners from home and two points gone.’ I was gutted after such a good race; I had really enjoyed it after the trials and tribulations of practice and qualifying.

Verstappen caught me very quickly. I was pulling at the paddle on the steering wheel, desperately trying to select a lower gear. The problem was that the exhaust had broken and that, in turn, had overheated the part which makes the transmission change gear. It was seizing up. Eventually, I got it to change down through the gears.

Verstappen came alongside me – and outbraked himself! He ran wide, and I pushed the Arrows even wider to help him on his way. In reality, I didn’t really need to do that because he had got himself into a lot of trouble. He had screwed up so badly, that he dropped right back. I don’t know what he did exactly, but I was able to take off in first gear and head towards the line.

Now I was stuck in low gear, waiting for Verstappen to come blasting past. But he never appeared. I made it to the flag in fifth place and, two corners after the finish, the car stopped completely. I was really pleased to get two points out of an eventful race which hadn’t promised much.