Dear Nigel,
OK, it may be a little early to condemn this years Jordan as being a complete dog, but it got me thinking. What in your opinion is the worst car ever to have won a GP?
Yours sincerely
Daniel Smith
Dear Daniel,
Boy, what a question! If I sat and thought about it for a day or two, I could probably come up with a list of bad cars which have won Grands Prix, but one which comes quickly to mind - sorry, Frank and Patrick - is the Williams-Honda FW09, with which Keke Rosberg won the one and only Dallas Grand Prix, back in 1984.
Summer in Texas meant crippling humidity, and the track was unusually quick for one through the streets. In fact, it wasn't through the streets at all, at least not in the 'downtown' sense. Situated a little way south of the city, it wound through a park, and a pretty tatty one at that.
Everyone arrived on the Wednesday, took a look at the 2.42-mile circuit, and immediately it was clear there would be problems; the drivers weren't taken with it. Bumpy, they said, and dangerous. Where were the cranes to shift damaged cars? The track was quite quick, but the run-off areas were scarcely in the Texan tradition of 'biggest and best'. On Thursday afternoon there was an explanatory one-hour session, in which Derek Warwick's Renault set the best time. Already, though, there were concerns about the track surface.
The FIA rule book stipulated that no circuit new to F1 may stage a Grand Prix without first holding a race of lesser consequences - a trial run, if you wish. But street tracks were exempt from this rule, and in Dallas the folly of that was clear to all. By Friday afternoon the temperature was 107, and the surface was breaking up, badly.
Late on Saturday afternoon, after F1 qualifying, a 50-lap Can-Am race was scheduled, and in the circumstances the organisers' best plan would have been to cancel it, for it chewed up what little remained of the racing surface. Heavy five-litre cars are unkind to tarmac at the best of times; by the time they'd finished with Dallas Fair Park, it looked like a dirt track.
"It's unbelievable," commented Renault team manager Jean Sage, after a tour of inspection. "There are places where you can lift the asphalt with your fingers..." An over-night bodge job with epoxy concrete compound proved ineffective: in the furnace heat it needed too long to cure properly. There arose rumours that the race would be postponed by a day - maybe even cancelled altogether. This last option had the support of Messrs Lauda, Prost and Piquet.
Most of the drivers stood around and moaned, bucking up only when the TV stars toured the pits. But just as Stirling Moss used to rub his hands at the onset of rain before a race, so Rosberg was in the Dallas heat. While the rest sought water and ice and umbrellas, he sat there on the pit wall, apparently soaking up the sun, chuckling at the politics and ranting around him.
Was there a feeling among the drivers, asked a local journalist with a keen grasp of the situation, that they didn't want to race? "We don't want to break bones," replied Rosberg, always to the point. "Everyone worries about pain. It's crazy to race, but what are you going to do? There's a huge crowd out there, and a lot of countries waiting for TV. There's no point in blaming anyone here in Dallas – this is the FIA's fault - and where are the FIA people? Not here, because it's too bloody hot for them.
"This sort of situation degrades Grand Prix racing, right? But we'll just have to bite the bullet. In the end, we're all whores - if the money's right, we'll do our stuff for anyone. Of course there'll be a race."
And there was. Once the decision had been taken, the drivers asked for 10 laps' acclimatisation, in lieu of the cancelled warm-up, but were told that TV schedules were too tight for more than three. Thus, they ran those, then came to the grid, and gave us far and away the most exciting race of the 1984 season.
"Look at them," grinned a spectating John Watson, as Mansell, de Angelis, Warwick, Senna and the rest stampeded by. "Show them a green light, and they can't help themselves."
Mansell led for a long way, his main opposition initially coming from Warwick, who spun into the wall while trying to take the lead, and Rosberg. After 36 laps Mansell went in for new tyres, having clobbered a wall. So Rosberg now led, in atrocious conditions, and in the most unwieldy car in the place.
The Williams FWO9 was perhaps Patrick Head's least distinguished creation, and the last Williams not to have a carbon fibre monocoque. Lacking stiffness, it was also powered by Honda's early F2-based turbo V6, whose power delivery, Keke said, was like a light switch: on or off. If ever a car were destined for the wall, it was this one.
Rosberg, though, was the great improvisor, the man who adapted perhaps better than anyone. He made no mistakes worth the name, but he couldn't long resist the advances of Prost's McLaren-TAG. Alain went by on lap 49, and began to pull away until, incredibly, he stuck it in the fence.
Five minutes later Lauda, running third, also crashed. So did 11 others. Cool in the wranglings of the morning, cool when it mattered, in the race, Rosberg put in what was probably the greatest drive of his life. In such treacherous conditions, that car really should not have won that day.