Schumacher wins U.S. Grand Prix
INDIANAPOLIS, IND.—Michael Schumacher overcame David Coulthard’s strong start with a wheel-banging pass, then took such command of Sunday’s United States Grand Prix that even his own late spinout couldn’t prevent him from a decisive victory that was also worth the overall Formula 1 points lead.
“Some people asked me to make a bit of a show this weekend,” said Schumacher. “I hope that was good enough.”
It was, enthralling a huge crowd estimated at 200,000 to watch the return of Formula 1 racing to the U.S. after a nine-year absence, and to watch the first race conducted at the 13-turn, 2.606-mile road course the has been constructed along two turns of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and twists through the infield of the legendary oval.
Brazilian Rubens Barrichello, Schumacher’s teammate, finished second to give Ferrari its third 1-2 finish of the season. Germany’s Heinz-Harald Frentzen was third in a Jordan/Mugen-Honda, with Canada’s Jacques Villeneuve fourth in a BAR/Honda, Coulthard fifth in a West McLaren/Mercedes, and Ricardo Zonta sixth in the second BAR/Honda.
But the show belonged to Schumacher, who is much thinner and more diminutive than he might appear on television. He said he was overwhelmed by the support shown by the fans, many of whom waved gigantic Ferrari flags or German flags — both of which were in support of Schumacher. He came into the race two points behind twice-defending champion Mika Hakkinen, and left Indianapolis eight points ahead, 88-80, with two races remaining in the globe-hopping series.
Asked if he could feel that this race, at this place, was historic, Schumacher, always gracious, said: “I don’t think it’s up to me to judge that.”
He can, however, judge what the victory means to himself and Ferrari in the individual and manufacturers’ competition for world championships, but he wasn’t about to celebrate anything prematurely. “It’s very important, because now I can finish twice second and still win the championship. But I still have to finish twice second. I’ll start to think about the championship once it’s over, not before. You can see what can happen.”
What can happen, did, to Hakkinen, who was a strong second and gaining on Schumacher after 25 of the race’s 73 laps, cutting into the lead with several of the race’s fastest trips around the circuit. But his Mercedes engine blew on the 26th lap, and he coasted to a stop with flames trailing from his engine compartment.
“What caused the failure, I do not know,” said Hakkinen, who now must rally from behind to bring the third straight title back home to Finland. “I think I could have won it. I was gaining every segment. We have two races to go now. It’s very, very difficult indeed and getting tougher.”
At the start, Schumacher’s concerns were with Coulthard, Hakkinen’s teammate. Rain that lasted until nearly the 1 p.m. race time had left much of the track wet and the teams all mounted rain tires. On the standing start, Schumacher, having won the pole, had a slight advantage on the staggered-start grid. When the starting lights were about to go out, Schumacher seemed to inch forward ever so slightly, then stopped again. Coulthard, also anticipating the start, lurched forward similarly, and just kept on going — zooming past Schumacher on the inside to take the lead as the field hit the brakes and cut sharply right into Turn 1.
He led Schumacher for the first six laps, while race officials determined that Coulthard must make a stop-and-go pit stop for 10 seconds as a penalty for jumping the start. “I knew I jumped the start. It’s unfortunate. I planned to get the better start and be leading out of the first corner, but not with a jump-start. I moved, then tried to stop, but then the lights changed so I went.”
Before Coulthard went in for his penalty stop, however, Schumacher wrenched the lead away on Lap 7. He came up hard on the outside as the two streaked down the main straightaway — running clockwise on the normally clockwise portion of the Indy oval — and circled on the outside as he cut into Turn 1. The two were side-by-side, with Schumacher inching ahead, when they bumped going into the sharp left Turn 2. Coulthard’s left front struck Schumacher’s right rear. Both cars continued, but Schumacher’s red Ferrari was in front to stay.
“David did hold me up in the infield, to let Mika catch up,” said Schumacher. “Obviously, the two are teammates, and that’s perfectly legal. On the overtaking side, I think he really tried a little bit too much. I passed him on the outside of Turn 1, and I went really, really wide to leave him as much room as possible. But when we were going into Turn 2, I don’t think he took a line to avoid contact.”
On the start of that seventh lap, Hakkinen had ducked into the McLaren pits to change from wet tires to dry, as the course was drying sufficiently. After Coulthard made his stop-and-go pit stop on Lap 8, he came right back in on Lap 9 to also put on dry tires. That left Schumacher in the lead by 14.4 seconds over Frentzen, and he stretched out that lead as the other cars stopped for tires. By the 16th lap, Schumacher had a 43.5-second lead over Hakkinen, and he made a pit stop for fuel and dry tires — all in 7 seconds flat — and he got back out still leading by 16 seconds.
Hakkinen then clicked off some very impressive laps, cutting the lead all the way down to 5 seconds by the 24th lap, while turning several consecutive quickest laps, including a 1:15.773 on the 25th trip. But the long straightaway means the F1 engines are run flat-out for over 20 seconds — the longest of any F1 circuit — and the strain showed when Hakkinen’s engine blew one lap later.
While various other interesting duels came about back in the field, particularly between Villeneuve and Barrichello, and then Villeneuve and Frentzen, Schumacher’s only challenge thereafter came from himself. On Lap 69, with only four laps remaining, Schumacher rounded a curve too casually, hooked the right front tire over the edge of the asphalt, and spun around a time and a half. He caught it, straightened out, and kept going, while the only damage was to his pride, and to cut his lead in half, to 16 seconds, over Barrichello.{IMG2}
“I wasn’t concentrating any more because I was just cruising,” Schumacher confessed. “I caught the tire on a bit of grass, which was still slippery, and it spun. The team mentioned that I should keep my concentration, and I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m awake now.’
“All I was thinking about was to bring the car home. These cars are built to take being driven hard, but you want to make sure you don’t stress it. You take it easy, and you start to talk to your car.”
Someone asked Schumacher what he said to his car. “Luckily, it didn’t talk back to me,” he said.
Schumacher wins U.S. Grand Prix, takes over Formula 1 lead
INDIANAPOLIS, IND.—Michael Schumacher overcame David Coulthard’s strong start with a wheel-banging pass, then took such command of Sunday’s United States Grand Prix that even his own late spinout couldn’t prevent him from a decisive victory that was also worth the overall Formula 1 points lead.
“Some people asked me to make a bit of a show this weekend,” said Schumacher. “I hope that was good enough.”
It was, enthralling a huge crowd estimated at 200,000 to watch the return of Formula 1 racing to the U.S. after a nine-year absence, and to watch the first race conducted at the 13-turn, 2.606-mile road course the has been constructed along two turns of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and twists through the infield of the legendary oval.
Brazilian Rubens Barrichello, Schumacher’s teammate, finished second to give Ferrari its third 1-2 finish of the season. Germany’s Heinz-Harald Frentzen was third in a Jordan/Mugen-Honda, with Canada’s Jacques Villeneuve fourth in a BAR/Honda, Coulthard fifth in a West McLaren/Mercedes, and Ricardo Zonta sixth in the second BAR/Honda.
But the show belonged to Schumacher, who is much thinner and more diminutive than he might appear on television. He said he was overwhelmed by the support shown by the fans, many of whom waved gigantic Ferrari flags or German flags — both of which were in support of Schumacher. He came into the race two points behind twice-defending champion Mika Hakkinen, and left Indianapolis eight points ahead, 88-80, with two races remaining in the globe-hopping series.
Asked if he could feel that this race, at this place, was historic, Schumacher, always gracious, said: “I don’t think it’s up to me to judge that.”
He can, however, judge what the victory means to himself and Ferrari in the individual and manufacturers’ competition for world championships, but he wasn’t about to celebrate anything prematurely. “It’s very important, because now I can finish twice second and still win the championship. But I still have to finish twice second. I’ll start to think about the championship once it’s over, not before. You can see what can happen.”
What can happen, did, to Hakkinen, who was a strong second and gaining on Schumacher after 25 of the race’s 73 laps, cutting into the lead with several of the race’s fastest trips around the circuit. But his Mercedes engine blew on the 26th lap, and he coasted to a stop with flames trailing from his engine compartment.
“What caused the failure, I do not know,” said Hakkinen, who now must rally from behind to bring the third straight title back home to Finland. “I think I could have won it. I was gaining every segment. We have two races to go now. It’s very, very difficult indeed and getting tougher.”
At the start, Schumacher’s concerns were with Coulthard, Hakkinen’s teammate. Rain that lasted until nearly the 1 p.m. race time had left much of the track wet and the teams all mounted rain tires. On the standing start, Schumacher, having won the pole, had a slight advantage on the staggered-start grid. When the starting lights were about to go out, Schumacher seemed to inch forward ever so slightly, then stopped again. Coulthard, also anticipating the start, lurched forward similarly, and just kept on going — zooming past Schumacher on the inside to take the lead as the field hit the brakes and cut sharply right into Turn 1.
He led Schumacher for the first six laps, while race officials determined that Coulthard must make a stop-and-go pit stop for 10 seconds as a penalty for jumping the start. “I knew I jumped the start. It’s unfortunate. I planned to get the better start and be leading out of the first corner, but not with a jump-start. I moved, then tried to stop, but then the lights changed so I went.”
Before Coulthard went in for his penalty stop, however, Schumacher wrenched the lead away on Lap 7. He came up hard on the outside as the two streaked down the main straightaway — running clockwise on the normally clockwise portion of the Indy oval — and circled on the outside as he cut into Turn 1. The two were side-by-side, with Schumacher inching ahead, when they bumped going into the sharp left Turn 2. Coulthard’s left front struck Schumacher’s right rear. Both cars continued, but Schumacher’s red Ferrari was in front to stay.
“David did hold me up in the infield, to let Mika catch up,” said Schumacher. “Obviously, the two are teammates, and that’s perfectly legal. On the overtaking side, I think he really tried a little bit too much. I passed him on the outside of Turn 1, and I went really, really wide to leave him as much room as possible. But when we were going into Turn 2, I don’t think he took a line to avoid contact.”
On the start of that seventh lap, Hakkinen had ducked into the McLaren pits to change from wet tires to dry, as the course was drying sufficiently. After Coulthard made his stop-and-go pit stop on Lap 8, he came right back in on Lap 9 to also put on dry tires. That left Schumacher in the lead by 14.4 seconds over Frentzen, and he stretched out that lead as the other cars stopped for tires. By the 16th lap, Schumacher had a 43.5-second lead over Hakkinen, and he made a pit stop for fuel and dry tires — all in 7 seconds flat — and he got back out still leading by 16 seconds.
Hakkinen then clicked off some very impressive laps, cutting the lead all the way down to 5 seconds by the 24th lap, while turning several consecutive quickest laps, including a 1:15.773 on the 25th trip. But the long straightaway means the F1 engines are run flat-out for over 20 seconds — the longest of any F1 circuit — and the strain showed when Hakkinen’s engine blew one lap later.
While various other interesting duels came about back in the field, particularly between Villeneuve and Barrichello, and then Villeneuve and Frentzen, Schumacher’s only challenge thereafter came from himself. On Lap 69, with only four laps remaining, Schumacher rounded a curve too casually, hooked the right front tire over the edge of the asphalt, and spun around a time and a half. He caught it, straightened out, and kept going, while the only damage was to his pride, and to cut his lead in half, to 16 seconds, over Barrichello.
“I wasn’t concentrating any more because I was just cruising,” Schumacher confessed. “I caught the tire on a bit of grass, which was still slippery, and it spun. The team mentioned that I should keep my concentration, and I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m awake now.’
“All I was thinking about was to bring the car home. These cars are built to take being driven hard, but you want to make sure you don’t stress it. You take it easy, and you start to talk to your car.”
Someone asked Schumacher what he said to his car. “Luckily, it didn’t talk back to me,” he said.
Schumacher’s Ferrari wins USGP pole over McLaren stratregy
INDIANAPOLIS, IND. — Michael Schumacher’s fast-lap standard held up despite a final team-oriented challenge by West-McLaren teammates David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen, giving the Ferrari driver the pole position for today’s United States Grand Prix.
“It’s a good feeling going ’round the banking, but because our entry speed is not so great, we don not experience being on the limit,” Schumacher said, describing his fastest laps on the 13-turn course that uses two of the speedway oval’s turns. “With the wall so close, I don’t want to experience it. We Europeans are probably more chicken than the Americans!
“I was surprised at the great reception from the spectators who were cheering us on. I hope we will give them a good show tomorrow.”
Regulars at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway had to be fascinated by the Formula 1 qualifying strategy, because drivers are limited to a maximum of 12 laps during the one-hour session, and the quickest lap counts for the grid. So the fastest racers generally try to establish a good time, then return to the pits, saving some laps in case they are challenged by faster foes.
The new 2.6-mile road course, set within the Indy 500 oval, appears to be starting out with good weather luck, same as the tradition of the 500, as overnight rain left the trank damp for the two morning practice sessions, but threats of drizzle held off until a light shower that came within a minute of the end of the hour-long qualifying session. Formula 1 cars run in the rain on rain tires, or in threatening weather on intermediates, but nobody wanted to run the intriguing qualifying session on anything but the grooved dry tires.
“I was hoping it was not going to rain at the start of the session, when I stayed in the garage,” said Schumacher, the German two-time Formula 1 champion who goes into today’s race two points behind Hakkinen, the two-time defending champion from Finland. “When I saw a few drops on my visor, I pushed harder to finish the lap.”
Schumacher and Ferrari teammate Rubens Barrichello were 1-2 in speeds early in the session, with Schumacher turning a 1:14.492, then they parked their cars. Halfway through, they came out again, running with each other briefly, and Schumacher ran his 1:14.266, at an average speed of 126.265 miles per hour, to further distance himself from the field. Barrichello couldn’t improve on his earlier 1:14.900, and it slipped from the No. 2 spot when Hakinen ran a later 1:14.428, improving from 1:14.689.
At the very end of the session, Hakkinen came out again, right behind Coulthard, and passed him on the first lap, by prearranged plan to have Hakkinen establish an aerodynamic tow for his teammate. It worked, as Coulthard ran a 1:14.392 (126.051 mph) to take second, bumping Hakkinen to third.
“Basically, I ran out of laps and ended up with only two left, which was not enough to do another qualifying run,” said Hakkinen. “Therefore, I was able to help David. It’s better to have two cars in the top three than only one. I’m confident that we’ll give the American fans a good race tomorrow.”
Coulthard was grateful for his teammate’s help. Car designer and team tactition Adrian Newey suggested the move. “Adrian asked me whether I would be interested in getting a tow from Mika on my last run,” said Coulthard, an Englishman. “It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I appreciate Mika’s help. As a result, I was able to gain additional speed at the end of the straight and managed to put in a good performance to secure second place.
“There was a great atmosphere today and I’m really looking forward to the race.”
Schumacher said: “We played team tactics, just like the others did at the end, except that we did it differently so that we both got a run.”
Schumacher set his fast time on his turn with the draft, but Barrichello said he had a bit of understeer and couldn’t take advantage of his part of the team plan. “It’s great racing here in front of this very enthusiastic American crowd,” said Barrichello, a Brazilian.
Indy fans among the anticipated 250,000 spectators will be similarly fascinated by today’s 1 p.m. start. Unlike the Indy 500, where the field comes around accelerating to high speed as they take the green flag, Formula 1 cars do a fairly hard warm-up lap, then park on the straightaway just short of the start-finish line. A string of red lights hold them in place, while the drivers rev their exotic engines to ear-piercing RPM shrillness, and when the lights go out, a massive drag-race starts as the field hurtles toward Turn 1.
While all 22 starters are hoping to win, most of them are realistic and suggest that either a Ferrari or a McLaren will win today. Another fascinating part of Formula 1, however, is that all teams try to do their best, and outdo other teams they regard as their closest competitors at whatever strata.
“It’s going to be, for sure, a race between Ferrari and McLaren,” said Jarno Trulli, who qualified fifth in his Jordan/Mugen-Honda. “Hopefully for Jordan, we can find Williams and everybody else behind us.”
Jacques Villeneuve spun off the course on his last attempt, because, he said, simply, “I tried too hard.” Villeneuve qualified eighth, behind Schumacher, Coulthard, Hakkinen, Barrichello, Trulli and Jenson Button, in a Williams/BMW. Jaguar teammates Eddie Irvine and Johnny Herbert struggled, with Irvine 17th and Herbert 19th on the grid.
“Eddie and I are close together,” Herbert said, “but at the wrong end of the grid.”
Formula 1 drivers enjoy first, fast trips around Indy road course
INDIANAPOLIS, IND.—The auto racing world got its first glimpse of its newest baby Friday, and the best race drivers in the world pronounced the site of Sunday’s United States Grand Prix a welcome addition to their prestigious, globe-trotting venues.
It cost $50 million to carve the new 2.606-mile road-racing course on and in the infield of the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval, and the stars of Formula 1 got their first actual contact with the pristine new 13-turn layout during two Friday practice hours. Ordinarily, the two opening practices are just to check settings in F1 before the usual Saturday qualifying sessions, but this time they were unique sessions, because no drivers had actually driven around the circuit.
“It really does seem a lot tighter from a car than it did when I walked ’round the circuit yesterday,” said Jaguar driver Eddie Irvine. “As a track for Formula 1, this place can be right up there with Monaco. Like Monaco, Indianapolis is a special place. The potential here is phenomenal. The basic circuit could be better maybe, but the actual venue is second to none.”
Englishman David Coulthard, who drives for Team McLaren, set the day’s fastest lap time, clocking 1:14.561 for the 2.6 miles, an average of 125.766 miles per hour. Coulthard, who is pursuing teammate Mika Hakkinen and Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher in the F1 points chase, said he liked the track, because the road-racing layout also has “a touch of American racing with the two turns” from the 2.5-mile Indy 500 oval.
Heinz-Harald Frentzen, a German who was the first driver on the track when 11 a.m. came, and while he and most drivers came around and immediately pitted to revise their cars’ settings, Johnny Herbert completed the first full lap. Three minutes into the session, Michael Schumacher set his first of four consecutive “fastest” laps in his Ferrari, and later in the one-hour term he came back to reclaim fast-time three more times, finally holding it with a 1:14.927, an average of 125.152 mph.
Schumacher’s teammate, Rubens Barrichello, was second (1:15.707), ahead of Hakkinen (1:15.707), and Williams driver Jenson Button (1:15.741), while crowd favorite Jacques Villeneuve, the 1995 Indy 500 winner, was fifth at 1:16.429 in that first session.
After an hour break at noon, the second session commenced and the McLarens asserted themselves, with Coulthard’s 1:14.561 clocking best of the day, and Hakkinen second at 1:14.695. Schumacher was unable to improve on his first-session time but held third, with Barrichello fourth, and Frentzen, Ralf Schumacher in a Williams, Jarno Trulli in a Jordan, Button’s Williams and Minardi driver Mark Gene all under the 1:16 level.
“The circuit is basically fun to drive,” said Frentzen. “The characteristics are difference. The long front straightaway is adding entertainment to the race. Technically, it’s tight in the field, no different than anywhere else.”
What is different, however, is running on the banked turns that represent Turns 2 and 1 of the Indy oval. While the banking is nothing like at most U.S. superspeedways, it remained an attraction to the F1 pilots, who never run with any banked turns. When asked if the banking allowed the high-powered and light F1 cars to be propelled through those turns absolutely flat out, Frentzen shrugged and said: “Sure.”
Villeneuve said he didn’t like the two slowest corners in the infield as being “annoying,” but added that “Overall, the track is quite nice. They’ve done a good job. It seems to be a high standard.
“Just out of the main straight is where the heavy braking is,” said Villeneuve. “The rest of the track is just trying to get the car to flow through the corners. It’s very difficult. Just if we could get rid of the two slow corners, it would be a nice course. It is going to be a physically tiring race because apart from the straight line, you’re working the rest of the lap, which is a surprise — I didn’t expect it to be like that.”
In the Italian Grand Prix at Monza two weeks ago, there was an enormous, chain-reaction crash at the first turn because the cars all had to slow dramatically for a tight first turn. A course worker was killed by flying debris in that incident. Somebody asked if this track’s fast straight and tight first turn might be a similar problem.
Frentzen said: “After Monza, that’s a natural concern, because both tracks have a very quick straight and then braking to the first corner. But the first corner at Monza is much tighter. In Formula 1, you can’t guarantee safety, but this circuit has been designed as safely as possible.”
“There is a lot more space here than at Monza,” said Irvine. “Here, if you brake too late, there is lots of room to run wide and still get back.”
During practice, several drivers overshot Turn 1, and continued down the straightaway to turn in at a later spot and reenter the track. After the sharp right at Turn 1, the course turns sharply back to the left at Turn 2, then makes a sweeping right at Turn 3, and another sweeper at Turn 4, which the drivers took fairly wide, in order to set up for Turn 5, another righthander followed by a short chute into the hairpin left at Turn 6.
Jean Alesi spun his Prost off the track at Turn 4, whirling out into the middle of a sand-trap runoff area. He killed the engine and had to walk back, while a crew removed the car. Irvine spun his Jaguar off at the same spot, but he kept it running and trundled back onto the course. Joe Verstappen also spun at that spot in his Arrows, and he, too, was unable to get back.
Today’s two morning practice hours, and the pressure-filled one-hour qualifying term at 1 p.m. will lead up to Sunday’s 1 p.m. race, but after only two hours of one day, the Indy GP course was a unanimous success.
“You can think of the drivers and teams sort of like actors on a stage, and there’s no question we like to perform before large audiences,” said Ron Dennis, McLaren team manager. “Hopefully, the crowd on Sunday will be happy to see the drivers competing, and the emotions that I anticipate we’ll be sharing on Sunday is something that will be quite unique on the Grand Prix calendar.”
World’s best racers come to Indy as U.S. Grand Prix returns
Many of the absolute best, elite athletes from all over the world — Germany Finland, Brazil, Canada, Italy, England, etc. — are all gathering at one location this weekend to put their incredible skills on display.
The Olympics? Nope. I’m talking about the return of Formula 1 auto racing to the United States.
The U.S. Grand Prix will run Sunday at Indianapolis. It may be the most significant motorsports event in U.S. history. Running on a road course laid out in the infield of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and using the main straightaway and Turns 1 and 2 of the Brickyard oval, has already sold out all its 250,000 tickets. Maybe there are that many F1 purists out there, or maybe they’re just curious to see why F1 is the ultimate form of motorsports.
The last time Formula 1 ran at a U.S. Grand Prix was in 1991, at Phoenix. Then it disappeared from this country’s scope. The only way you could live in the U.S. and see a Formula 1 race for these past nine years was to travel to Canada, or to Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Brazil, or any of 10 European countries to watch live, or at least to get up near dawn on selected Sunday mornings and find the right cable broadcast.
There are a couple of delectable ironies involved here. One is that Indianapolis in general, and both the Indy 500 and the Brickyard 400 are definitely mainstream, compared to the the more sophisticated and elitist road-racing, and Formula 1 is at the pinnacle of road-racing. That makes this an invasion by the champagne-and-escargot crowd straight into the midsection of beer-and-burger territory.
The other irony that the 2000 U.S. Grand Prix should be run at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Track president Tony George, you recall, set down the rules five years ago that forced exclusion of the extremely good race teams from CART from the Indianapolis 500. In so doing he stressed that the Indy 500 should be something middle-America circle-track racers could aspire to, rather than for foreign drivers who are road-racers, driving exotic, extremely expensive cars. Five years later, just as the Indy 500 has lost so much luster that the Brickyard 400 for NASCAR stock cars has perhaps surpassed it, George brings in Formula 1 — which consists ENTIRELY of foreign drivers who are road-racers, in cars that are much more exotic, and much more-expensive than CART’s.
NASCAR, with its enormous success, is limited to somewhat primitive pushrod-and-carburetor V8 engines with their distinctive, low roar. CART allows costly 2.65-liter V8 multiple-valve and turbocharged engines. The IRL has 4.0-liter, nonturbo motors. In Formula 1, each team builds its own chassis, even though they have evolved to great similarity, and factories such as Honda, Ferrari, Mercedes, BMW, Ford-Cosworth and Renault build specialty V10 engines with comparatively tiny cylinders, to a total displacement is 3.0 liters. These are normally-aspirated (non-turbocharged) engines, but they can rev to an ear-splitting 18,000 RPMs. Horsepower is estimated at over 800, from an engine about half the displacement of NASCAR engines, in cars a couple hundred pounds lighter than CART. They could top 225 miles per hour on the main straightaway at Indy, even though they’ll only use part of it.
The fastest cars are probably going to be the two blood-red Ferraris, or the two silver-and-black McLarens. There is no question that the competition and escalating prices are off the scale of reason, but all those exotic, expensive machines are in the surgeon-like hands of fantastic race drivers. Defending series champion Mika Hakkinen of Finland, driving the West-McLaren powered by Mercedes, currently leads the series with 80 points, while Michael Schumacher of Germany is second with 78 in a Ferrari. Hakkinen’s teammate is Britain’s David Coulthard, who is third at 61, Schumacher’s teammate is Rubens Barrichello of Brazil, who is fourth at 49 points. There are a whole batch of other skilled drivers, such as former Indy 500 winner Jacques Villenueve, Heinz-Herald Frentzen, Giancarlo, Fisichella, Jean Alesi, Ralf Schumacher (Michael’s younger brother), Mika Salo, and others.
Many are hardly household words. But remember, during the past decade Michael Andretti spent a year driving as Ayrton Senna’s teammate in Formula 1, and was simply uncompetitive. Nigel Mansell, a former F1 champion, came to CART and nearly won the Indy 500 and did win the season championship. Alex Zanardi was clearly the best driver in CART, winning back-to-back championships, then went off to F1 and was uncompetitive, and, in fact, is not driving this year. And Juan Montoya, the CART champion as a rookie last year, and Indy 500 winner this year, used to be a “farm system” driver and test driver in F1 and is expected to return to the Williams team next season.
Come to think of it, with all the weird sports now being accepted into the Olympics, maybe it’s about time auto racing became an Olympic sport. Actually, let’s hope they don’t. Formula 1 already is the Olympics of motorsport, it runs 17 times a year, rather than every four years, and now it’s back in the USA.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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