Gilles Villeneuve, Rene Arnoux, Dijon. You’ll know that one. What Mario Andretti described as “a coupla young lions clawin’ each other”. Even if it was well before your time (heck, it was even well before my time) you’ve probably seen the footage, perhaps repeatedly. Even if you’ve not seen the footage you’ll likely have heard it referred to. It is a battle for the ages; one gone into folklore. Still 37 years on the F1 standard bearer for a thrilling wheel-to-wheel scrap. Motor racing in its purest, and most scintillating – most desperate – form.
After it Gilles and Rene leapt from their cars and fell into each other’s arms in a warm embrace. They’d banged wheels who-knows-how-many times. Rene had even run off the track entirely at one point and while Gilles ended up ahead eventually it certainly was not at all aided by his foe in so doing – no one cared. They just knew that they’d done something worth savouring.
And of course in the Monaco Grand Prix just passed we had another tête-à-tête, this time between Lewis Hamilton and Daniel Ricicardo. It didn’t have nearly the frolics of the one at Dijon – it was in Monaco after all – but it was another memorable one, perhaps again having something for the ages about it. The parallels were perhaps stronger with another famous (though not quite as famous) F1 mano-a-mano fight of yore, that of Jacky Ickx and Pedro Rodriguez at Zandvoort in 1971. Those parallels included that on a damp day and on a surface to varying degrees perfidious throughout probably the two best wet-weather drivers of the age disappeared into a race of their own for the win. An almost race-long tense and exhilarating battle, both seemingly forever walking a tight rope separating triumph and binning it. Nigel Roebuck called what happened in the Dutch dunes 45 years ago “two hours of pure inspiration from the leading pair”. He could have said exactly the same thing last Sunday in the Principality.
Not everyone was content this latest time however. Lewis at one point of the battle left the track at the chicane and returned with his lead ahead of Ricciardo intact – just. And then he employed what might be referred to euphemistically as getting his elbows out in order to retain his place.
Plenty felt that sanction should have been sent Lewis’s way. The world's changed clearly since that famous Dijon day in 1979
The stewards investigated but decided later that no further action was necessary. And in the humble opinion of this writer that was just about right. But it seems there were plenty that did not agree and felt that sanction should have been sent Lewis’s way. The world's changed clearly since that famous Dijon day in 1979.
Watching Gilles and Rene joust therefore may come to the modern senses with a hint of pathos, as had it somehow happened today instead the wider reaction may not have been quite so unequivocally positive as then. As mentioned, the cars touched each other. As mentioned too, Arnoux even took all four wheels off the track and didn’t even get out of the throttle to dutifully return the place to his antagonist. They might not even have left a car’s width to the other at all times. Penalties all round likely would have been the demand, delivered perhaps in the form of shrieking, from below the line and on social media.
As intimated penalising Lewis this time in my view would have felt harsh given the extent of his ‘offence’, but also in terms of precedent we can defend the lack of action too. As in a modern-day F1 race we see routinely cars leaving the track and almost never is a driver penalised for doing so on a solitary occasion. Sanction only tends to be applied if they gain a place from it or else exceed track limits repeatedly (as Fernando Alonso did in Sochi last year). It’s hard to argue that Lewis especially saved a place either as Ricciardo wasn’t really near enough to pass at the time, he’d lost momentum and ground having got a tank slapper on in the middle of the tunnel (though there is the beginning of a point against Lewis that he was covering the inside line somewhat before he ran off). Indeed David Coulthard’s first words in his TV commentary after Lewis’s excursion were “Hamilton will get away with that once, but if he repeatedly does that…”. So in this sense it can hardly be said that the stewards’ conclusion was outlandish.
Contrary to common perception too leaving the track in an F1 car doesn’t actually break any rules in of itself, the regs – to be precise Article 27.4 of the FIA Sporting Regulations – specify only that returning to the circuit “may only be done when it is safe to do so and without gaining any lasting advantage.” And given Ricciardo was closer to Lewis when he returned to the track than when he went off the stewards concluded therefore that no advantage was had. You can add too that even though the chicane was cut conversely the line Lewis ended up talking was much tighter than it would have been and Ricciardo got considerable momentum on him on the exit.
Which brings us to the next bit. Similar went for Lewis defending against Ricciardo’s attack as they accelerated out of the chicane. Lewis wasn’t timid; he almost certainly knew what he was doing. But again it didn’t seem quite enough for a penalty and unlike in football I don’t believe that in F1 two half offences add up to a whole one. And that he pushed things to the limit (in every sense) in order to maintain the lead of a motor race shouldn’t surprise us. While the stewards concluded in any case that crucially he’d left a car’s width for Ricciardo (a little like Alonso with Sebastian Vettel in Monza 2011, he deliberately or otherwise sold a dummy somewhat by looking like he was going to close off the space of a car’s width but didn’t actually do it).
But say the critics in riposte Lewis retained his place from cutting the chicane. Maybe so in the sense that had he returned to the track at the same point he left it Ricciardo would have been long gone. Yet it’s hard to see what the alternative is here to what we got. Ayrton Senna infamously of course was kicked out of the results altogether in the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix for, officially at least, that very reason – skipping a chicane having slid down an escape road in his collision with Alain Prost. Yet anyone who has seen the Senna film will know that it was pointed out, by Nelson Piquet of all people (I say ‘of all people’ as he was far from a fan of Ayrton), that we hardly want cars in that situation turning around and coming back towards oncoming traffic. In a braking zone.
Do we really want for every time a car leaves the track, however slightly, to cede its place pronto to any other car that might be near behind? The potential for the spectacle to get very silly very quickly is glaring
Another common retort heard is that if there had been a wall/gravel trap (delete as applicable) there then the outcome would have been very different. Well yeah. But a wall there would have meant that Lewis would have, as all the drivers would have, approached the chicane differently. It’s not a coincidence that we see cars routinely leave the track where there is a run-off area like a car park but the same drivers are (for the most part) suddenly able to stay strictly within the limits at Monaco where there are barriers inches to the outside. F1 drivers take into account how close something solid is when they set their level of margin. As is usually the case hypotheticals have limited value.
But even if it was not against most precedent it is doubtful that such advocated intervention by stewards into the action is even desirable. Do we really want for every time a car leaves the track, however slightly, to cede its place pronto to any other car that might be near behind? The potential for the spectacle to get very silly very quickly is glaring. Plus where is the line to be drawn? Do you only let a car past that is within half a second? A second? Two? Or does it depend? On the mistake? On the corner? It would become inevitably a source of rancour and contention. Another one.
Yet there is an overarching matter here also. It may be a crude assessment given no two incidents are the same but given a choice between stewards butting in and butting out, ordinarily I default firmly towards the latter. And while it’s possible that I just converse with the wrong people, in the general sense the message you tend to get from fans is that they wish stewards would butt out too. We are in an age with apparent consensus that F1 racing is over regulated; that there are too many rules; that the drivers are nannied excessively (the latter point is why we got the radio communication clampdown this year). Indeed I recall a fairly recent episode of Top Gear (pre Chris Evans of course) when they’d gone rallycrossing, and after one of Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond had cut up the other in a race the pair resolved the matter with a handshake and Clarkson then turned to the camera and declared “Bernie, that’s how you do it” or something to that effect. The studio audience cheered uproariously in approval.
We can understand why also. It all seems in keeping with an activity that likes to view itself as gladiatorial, and of having not just the best drivers in the world but among the most complete sportspeople in the world. There has to be some rules of conduct of course, to not have them would be anarchy (or BTCC, arf) but as I said as a general default it seems reasonable and preferable to let them get on with it. The drivers most probably would respond superbly too, just as they have with other extensions of their personal responsibility including that recent radio clampdown.
But then and in stark contrast it seems as soon as there is any sort of on track contretemps, even a minor one, the Pavlov’s Dog reaction you hear from many is to squeal for sanction. It certainly doesn’t square. We don’t know of course the extent that it’s the same people holding contradictory views simultaneously, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some.
It all seems in keeping with an activity that likes to view itself as gladiatorial, and of having the best drivers in the world but among the most complete sportspeople in the world. There has to be some rules of conduct of course but as a general default it seems reasonable and preferable to let them get on with it
Some of it will reflect sheer partisanship of course, wanting to aid a preferred driver or impede one they don’t care for. And as we know – and as indeed the front cover of this month’s F1 Racing magazine indicates rather gaudily – Lewis is one to elicit views at either extreme more readily than most. After all earlier in the Monaco race on lap 18 Felipe Massa similarly skipped the chicane and did so when Vettel, Nico Hulkenberg and Alonso were all queued up right on his tail. There wasn’t even the slightest peep of disapproval that I heard nor the slightest suggestion of a penalty and indeed Ben Edwards in his TV commentary noted immediately that “he won’t probably have to give the place up but he can’t do that more than a couple of times”.
Perhaps though it goes deeper and it demonstrates that just as F1 doesn’t know what it wants to be on the technical front – forever it seems in a state of self-loathing, grasping at whatever is other than what it’s doing right now – perhaps the same goes for its attitude to the sporting regs too. Not knowing what it really wants in terms of racing; grasping at whatever it’s not doing at that moment.
As Mahatma Gandhi reminded us, one should be the change they wish to see in the world. It’s not enough to call for a more laissez-faire F1. You have to live it too.