During the off season the Formula 1 writer’s existence can feel like that of a mountain goat. One has to make do somehow with only meagre sustenance over long periods. Especially these days, with not even wintry test sessions to chew on for the most part.
But there always is F1 past, and it helps that we have the turn of the year to give us a whole new round of anniversaries. Multiples of five, for neatness, are subtracted from the current year and those campaigns are scanned to see if they’re worth a historical re-tread. Sure enough, to take one high profile example, since the start of January Autosport has devoted front covers to Nigel Mansell’s crushing championship season from 25 years ago as well as to Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, McLaren and all that from 2007.
But so far at least it’s shunned one F1 year that in my view really deserves the retro focus, that we’re now into the year of its 20th anniversary. That of 1997.
Perhaps I’m maligning Autosport and it’s simply getting around to covering that season too, but whatever I’ve long found the campaign oddly underrated, and ignored, in F1 nostalgia generally. It’s not hyperbole to suggest that in 1997 F1 experienced something of a renaissance, with competitiveness not witnessed for years before and not really touched in the years since either.
It’s not hyperbole to suggest that in 1997 F1 experienced something of a renaissance, with competitiveness not witnessed for years before and not really touched in the years since either
We’re used to single team domination in the modern sport of course, or perhaps having two teams at the front slugging it out. Three of them and we talk of a classic on our hands. While the days of entering race weekends with a vast range of possible winners are confined to the history books – a peculiarity of a few campaigns in the 1970s and early 1980s. Yet in 1997 that is exactly what we got again, with the credible victors in advance of each round touching perhaps double figures. Again not hyperbole. Not entirely anyway.
Perhaps part of the explanation for the season not getting the credit it deserves is it is poorly served by statistics. For all of its close order it only had six different winners (from four teams) – numbers equalled by 1990 and 1999 (and are worse than 2003’s). But with cards falling the other way the year could easily have boasted anything up to double those numbers. Even the totemic 1982 marks of 11 winners from seven squads may have been under threat.
Again not hyperbole. Taking those over and above the six that won a race in 1997 – who were Jacques Villeneuve, Michael Schumacher, David Coulthard, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Gerhard Berger and Mika Hakkinen – Olivier Panis in the Prost (née Ligier, just bought by Alain) boosted by fine Bridgestone tyres started the year as a frequent irritant to the leaders. In Argentina Panis probably would have won had he not retired with technical problems, in Spain he might have won but for various spells in traffic, and had he not broken his legs in an accident in Canada he likely would have had more opportunities to triumph, not least in the following round at Magny-Cours where his team did most of its testing.
The year is poorly served by statistics. For all of its close order it only had six different winners from four teams. But with cards falling the other way the year could easily have boasted anything up to double those numbers
The Jordan-Peugeot was a competitive proposition in many rounds – either of its drivers Ralf Schumacher or Giancarlo Fisichella may have won in Argentina had they not contrived to hit each other, and Fisichella threatened first place elsewhere too, not least at Hockenheim when he in fact led after all the pit stops were done.
Jean Alesi in the Benetton also frequently was thereabouts – he bagged four second places as well as led from pole in Monza and only lost his first place at the solitary stops. Damon Hill in an astonishing giant-killing act in the Arrows trounced the field in Hungary and had a 34 second lead with just three laps left, before a washer got loose and lost him hydraulic pressure. Jarno Trulli – Prost’s replacement for the convalescing Panis – led the first half of the Austrian round as if born to do it, establishing a ten second plus advantage indeed, and while Villeneuve hunted him down Trulli insisted he could have won without engine problems. And Ferrari back-up man Eddie Irvine harried Villeneuve for the win late on in Argentina then in Japan handed over a sure victory to his team mate Michael Schumacher in the name of the title fight.
I’ll spare you doing the maths, and I concede it’s an extreme scenario. Yet had all of these come in we’d have had 13 different victors from 17 rounds.
We also can look elsewhere for stats that do the 1997 year’s competitiveness justice. One that does just that is that in eight rounds the top 10 qualified within a second of each other. Then in Austria – on a short lap admittedly – no fewer than 14 cars of 22 were within this mark. And this in 1997 was qualifying as nature intended: one hour, four sets of tyres each and take the fuel out and get on with it. No starting with your race fuel load, or saving tyres for the race, or any of the other gimmickry that came later, muddied the waters.
In eight rounds the top 10 qualified within a second of each other. Then in Austria – on a short lap admittedly – no fewer than 14 cars of 22 were within this mark
And if we take all those drivers who qualified on pole during this year, their lowest qualifying slots of the season read thus: Frentzen eighth, Villeneuve ninth, Michael Schumacher ninth, Alesi 15th, Hakkinen 17th, Berger 18th. And in none of those cases did they have a technical problem, or face an ill-timed rain shower, or anything else like that. In each case they simply were not quick enough.
So with all this, why is the 1997 year not acknowledged more readily? We can but speculate of course but one thing that strikes is that the season doesn’t seem to boast a piece of racing action that has been hooked in memory and repeated endlessly in highlights reels (with the possible exception of Michael Schumacher seeking unsuccessfully to win the title in Jerez via a professional foul). Indeed more broadly while the racing that year was close also the sport’s problems with dirty air were by then making themselves felt acutely and teams were almost entirely dependent on refuelling strategy for position changes.
The Monza race was a case in point. The cars were extraordinarily evenly-matched throughout – just 13 seconds covered the first seven home with no safety cars – but at no point did passing appear remotely possible. Alan Henry at the year’s end summed up the paradox, stating that the season “offered a varied and absorbing menu, even though all the tempting side dishes could not disguise the fact that the main course – namely the racing itself – was slightly tasteless”.
Worse the lack of wheel-to-wheel action applied rather literally to much of the year’s title fight. That boiled down swiftly to Jacques Villeneuve in the Williams versus Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari. And the face off had potential – a clash of disparate personalities; downbeat and unruly versus upright and professional. Someone, not entirely fancifully, likened it to James Hunt versus Niki Lauda. While the 1997 championship battle itself was an incredible see-saw affair, as well as went to the last round and there as noted even got a dramatic, twist-in-the-tale, final act.
Title protagonists Villeneuve and Schumacher never once in 1997 shared a podium. Indeed a curious aspect of the battle was that almost all of its gunfire was from long range – the pair were very rarely together on track at all
And yet. It reflected the competiveness already outlined but another astonishing statistic from the 1997 campaign is that Villeneuve and Schumacher never once shared a podium. Indeed a curious aspect of the battle was that almost all of its gunfire was from long range – the pair were very rarely together on track at all. Two-thirds of the final round in Jerez as well as the opening stints in Britain and Japan and some of the Imola race was literally your lot aside from the odd lap or two dotted around otherwise.
Possibly not helping 1997’s case either is that the season wasn’t the scene of a year-long driving tour de force. Schumi came the closest of course, but spoiled it at the last. We can surmise indeed that had Schumi won the drivers’ championship in 1997 against all technical odds, and in so doing ended Ferrari’s 18 years without a drivers’ title and 14 years without a title of any description, and to top it all off doing so in the year of the company’s 50th anniversary, things likely would have been remembered differently. But, to borrow a Murray Walker-ism: he didn’t, so it wasn’t. In doleful contrast plenty are taken instead to claiming, rather cruelly, that Jacques is the lowest rank F1 world champion of all.
There is another lingering question – of why 1997 was such an oasis in the desert in terms of a close pack? Of course such a competitive field involves an element of chance; disparate things simply coming together by coincidence. There was some at play here. Entering this year Williams-Renault was expected to be – and in large part was – the dominant force, but also was just on the beginning of its downturn. Adrian Newey had walked before the season start, and related or not the car’s inherent pace advantage was sometimes squandered by the team rather inexplicably not getting it together on certain weekends. It was further squandered by some team and, occasionally, driver errors – whatever the detail of the situation the Grove squad’s pilot pairing looked markedly less convincing than in the previous year with 1996 champion Hill replaced by Frentzen.
Williams-Renault was just on the beginning of its downturn. The car’s inherent pace advantage was sometimes squandered by the team rather inexplicably not getting it together on certain weekends
Meanwhile Ferrari and McLaren, after years of relatively paucity, were by 1997 on their respective upturns and met Williams rather halfway. The Michael Schumacher-Ferrari double act under Jean Todt, joined that year for the first time by Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne, was getting into its stride and was more than capable of making a thorough pest of itself. McLaren too, with Mercedes engines, was emerging finally from its post-Senna/post-Honda trough and started the year being an occasional front runner and ended it as a consistent one. In addition Benetton still had enough about it from its championship pomp two years earlier to be in the mix on occasion, while Jordan as noted was at last making good on years of promise (which some cynics had suggested was of the empty variety).
But it didn’t stop there. There was even with all this a sprinkling of magic dust added on top from the Bridgestone tyres, which debuted that year. For the first time since 1991 Goodyear had opposition in supplying the rubber, and likely for the first time since 1984 it had a serious threat to its pedestal position. The Bridgestone was for the most part the superior tyre, certainly the more durable. Tyre wars just as easily can work against competitiveness than add to it, but in 1997 we had the perfect storm – only nominal midfield runners at best had the Japanese product, which meant that Prosts, Stewarts (also in its debut season) and the like could, on occasion, be lifted right to the sharp end. Heck, even an Arrows as noted nearly won a race on them. And Goodyear in response sometimes got its sums egregiously wrong.
But it wasn’t all luck. F1 as we know struggles to learn on points that seem obvious to us on the outside, and one such example is that it seeks repeatedly to – in that horrid phrase of choice – ‘spice up the show’ by changing the rules (indeed it’s having its latest stab at it just now). But history tells us that it is the precise opposite, rule stability, that more likely gives us close racing in time. This is because when there is a change often a single team or if you’re lucky two of them will alone land on the right answers right away – either by good luck or good engineering – and thus leave their rivals floundering. Usually too it’s the large outfits that are best-placed to ace matters, what with their vaster resources.
Since the raft of technical changes which followed Ayrton Senna’s death in 1994 not much had changed, and now three years on the stability had helped bring the field together a beaut
But then with a period of stability teams behind learn the lessons and claw the time back, as the front runners’ learning curves are necessarily shallower. And this was also the case in 1997 – since the raft of technical changes which followed Ayrton Senna’s death in 1994 not much had changed, and now three years on it had helped bring the field together a beaut.
Yet the sport didn’t learn in 1997 either, as fundamental changes forcing everyone back to base camp awaited the following season, with the introduction of a narrower track and grooved tyres (for reasons I’ve never fully understood). This succeeded only in splitting the field apart once more. For 1998 things returned to as we’d got used to. The fun ended as quickly as it had arrived.
