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THE TENSION WAS ALMOST TANGIBLE
The pressure was on. The legendary Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli was due to visit the team at the British Grand Prix, as was Luca di Montezemolo. There was no room for mistakes. Being placed under this kind of pressure would be enough to make even the most experienced mechanic nervous. After all, Agnelli is one of the most influential men in Italy, far more important than the transitory prime ministers who come and go at regular intervals. And Montezemolo is his man and their chief.
It is in this type of situation that Schumacher comes into his own. His focused, Teutonic nature allows no interruptions during Grand Prix weekends. He refuses to do any interviews outside of the official FIA interviews which take place at prearranged times over the race weekend. He undertakes only minimal sponsorship activities such as brief appearances for Shell and Asprey to meet their guests. His attitude is that he is paid to race and win, and his energy must be concentrated on this task.
To this end he does not allow disturbances in the garage, and that includes the presence of bosses. If he thinks Agnelli or Montezemolo are making people nervous he will ask them to leave. Exuding the determination and confidence of a double World Champion, no one questions him. As John Barnard has said, ‘Schumacher’s ability to impose calm on the team has been vital.’ Never more so than at Silverstone.
The team stayed at The Saracen’s Head hotel in Towcester, which has been team headquarters for a number of years. The only problem is that it overlooks the road. Schumacher was not impressed. He arrived at the reception desk to complain about the noise. The receptionists were equally unimpressed by the double and current World Champion. They had regular guests who had already booked in to quieter parts of the hotel. A stand off situation was reached, which was only relieved when the Italians (as ever) found a compromise and moved another couple of people around to allow Schumacher to have a quiet room in which he could sleep.
It was at Silverstone that Edward Asprey realized what it meant to be part of the most glamorous, adored team in Formula One. ‘I was walking through the gates to the paddock, when a young boy came up and thrust his autograph book at me, along with a picture of Ferrari for me to sign. I was taken aback and said, “But I’m not part of the actual team.” He just said, “But you’re part of Ferrari”, and I realized what it meant to be part of the mystique, power and image that is Ferrari.’
At 10.50 am on the Friday morning, Montezemolo walked into the Ferrari garage and greeted everyone. At 11.10 am, 10 minutes into the practice session, Claudio Berro and Giorgio Ascanelli took their places on the pit wall. There was still no sign of Gianni Agnelli, who was having trouble getting through security! Bernie Ecclestone and co. introduced a new system for the 1996 season, which involved everyone with pit and paddock passes going through a machine turnstile, into which they would swipe special cards, like credit cards, which recorded their arrival and departure. It was designed, with valid reasons, to stop people from handing passes through the fence once they had got into the paddock. But it was having an off day.
Eventually, Agnelli was allowed through and he walked onto the pit wall at 11.20 am with his VIP party. Todt remained in place studying the monitor in front of him. The tension in the air was almost tangible. Agnelli is rather like an agnostic Pope, in that he has absolute power. This is demonstrated by his ability to manipulate and achieve his will through quiet manoeuvres, rather than the usual Latin way of noisy, overt demonstrations of police escorts and loud exclamations. A presence such as his is rare to see. Even the normally, contentious media are respectful and quiet, and uncritical.
After his few, succinct words, he duly faded into the mists, leaving Montezemolo to take over. Montezemolo ate with the team on Friday evening and stayed until after the qualifying session on Saturday. He was also determined to impose calm and order on the team. Despite the problems, everyone was looking to the future and Schumacher was a key element. ‘We are extremely pleased with Michael Schumacher and it is important to know that he is pleased with Ferrari. I’ve told Todt to start to talk to him about renewing his contract. I like the idea of having Schumacher for three years.’ In the end Schumacher signed a four-year contract up to and including 1999.
At Silverstone Schumacher qualified third behind the two Williams cars. But there was more than a one-second gap between Williams and Ferrari. Schumacher explained that he had tested various new parts – a gearbox and suspension – at Monza and worked on improving the aerodynamics, all of which had promising results. However, as Ross Brawn was later to remark, ‘Change for change’s sake is not good for team progress.’ The most important thing is to make a change because you are absolutely 100 per cent sure it is an improvement.
Jean Todt was less than happy. Under pressure from the media he exclaimed, ‘I feel like I’m on trial in a court.’ It wasn’t an exaggeration. The media love scapegoats, and Todt and Barnard were in the front line – although both men remained supportive of each other and refused to attribute any blame for the team’s misfortunes on one person. Todt declared, ‘We are part of a team, it’s our fault as a team, not one person’s fault.’
After saying that the French Grand Prix was the blackest day of his life, Todt could not have imagined that things would get worse. They did.
Schumacher lasted three laps before suffering mechanical failure from a dry brake fitting. Irvine lasted only another two laps before he was forced to retire with a broken differential bearing. Schumacher was bemused rather than angry. ‘We did a race distance in the last two tests, running reliably on Friday and Saturday. And then we do just three laps today. There is just no logic to it at all.’
There were cries of sabotage and foul play. However, the truth was somewhat different. A combination of the pain of evolution as the team struggled to bring consistency to a car that was not only Late but also completely new, plus the dregs of problems that had begun in the past and not been completely resolved by the old guard, was to blame.
The technical debriefing meeting at Maranello the day after the Silverstone race was tense and lasted over three hours. Montezemolo needed to get to the bottom of the problems and one of his innovations was to make all the technicians responsible for their own jobs. This included sending a weekly report to Jean Todt giving details of what they had done and what they intended to do.
John Barnard was at the meeting and had come to his own conclusions. ‘Irvine’s differential bearing failure was a modification that hadn’t been done, as it wasn’t expected that this type of differential would be used again. We discussed ways to solve the problem as there was a titanium-steel bearing on the differential support which needed changing. It wasn’t done and so when the original differential turned up in a race, it caused a problem.
‘Schumacher’s hydraulic fitting was not tightened properly at Silverstone. There is no answer to this. It must have come loose in some way. It was something that had been run many times before and had never given us any problems. You simply have no answer to things like that.
‘In France, Irvine’s car had the wrong valve fitted. Due to the vibration problem there had been a problem with the gearbox moog valves. There was another valve which was of a special variety with specially strengthened parts inside to make it resistant to vibration. Apparently this wasn’t fitted; instead the standard valve was fitted. The control went on the gearbox and it was history.’
‘After Silverstone, the general feeling was, “How far down can we go?” and the general response was, “We can’t go any further”. Well, of course you can; you can fall out of the next race. The big thing after Silverstone was the total incomprehension about the loose hydraulic fitting on Schumacher’s car. Everyone who worked on it – from the guy at the factory who put it together to the gearbox mechanics at the track – insisted it had been tight. What can you do? It remains a mystery.’
