Today, F1 Racing-live dot com has a very good article on evolving safety measures at Grand Prix circuits. I was going to write a little post on how things have developed in this area and knew immediately that I would need some relevant photos. But then this happened:

I was looking for a photo of Monaco to show the impossibility of having runoff areas there when I came across the picture below. At first glance it seems quite normal but then one notices some strange things about it. Since when have ordinary members of the public been allowed to sit and watch the race from the inside of the Loews hairpin, for instance?

At which point, we see the Mercedes just ahead of the two Williams and presume that this is the pace car and there must have been an incident somewhere to bring it out. Only the Williams team has caught it as yet. But then we see the parked cars before the hairpin and realize that this cannot be a race; it’s a demonstration run of some kind.

The picture was so unusual that I had to include it in this article and, while I was doing that, I decided to have a bit of fun with it:

Then, having made the guy in the pic ask the question, naturally I had to answer it with this:

It is, of course, Mansell giving Senna a lift back to the pits after winning the British GP of many years ago. Senna’s car had broken down a long way from home and “Our Nige” took pity on him on his victory lap. I am pretty sure that this would not be allowed today, just as they have long banned the practice of picking up your national flag for display on your winning lap.

Over the years, F1 has seen countless new teams arrive, compete briefly and then disappear. Very rarely does a new team survive long enough to join the list of the great ones. But there is one constructor that has hovered on the edge of the sport and never gone away, adopting a policy of making F1 cars for others but avoiding direct involvement. I speak of Eric Broadley’s Lola cars, of course.

Lola is the one constructor we would all love to see involved in F1; they have a long history of success in other forms of racing and, if properly funded, would almost certainly produce competitive cars. It will never happen now – FIA rules have as good as killed off the chances of new constructors entering the sport – but we can still dream of what might have been.

The closest Lola came to running their own F1 team was way back in 1962. For that year they produced cars for the Bowmaker Yeoman team to be driven by John Surtees and Roy Salvadori. Its potential was shown by John in gaining pole position for its very first race but results thereafter were disappointing. Lola withdrew from the project at the end of the year.

From then on, Lola kept at arms length from F1, designing and building cars for others to try their luck. They had a hand in the Honda RA300 of 1967 (which won the Italian GP that year) and there followed a long list of customers. One of the most notable of these was Graham Hill’s team sponsored by Embassy. The car showed promise but its chances were cut short in 1975 by Graham’s tragic death in a flying accident.

Incidentally, in researching for this post, I came across the entry list for the 1974 British GP. I was struck by the numbers of small constructors on the list – Iso-Marlboro (Frank Williams’ team at the time), Trojan, Ensign, Hesketh, Maki, Lyncar and Token, as well as several old works cars entered by private concerns. Most of them did not qualify but at least they had a go. The seventies really were the heyday of the little guy, all thanks to the ubiquitous Cosworth/Hewland combination.

In the late nineties, there was news of yet another attempt by Lola to enter F1, this time as a full works team. Nothing much transpired, however, as promised sponsorship money evaporated and we are left still wondering what would have happened had Lola put all their efforts into F1.

I have said before that Chris Amon was the best driver never to win an F1 race (interestingly, he drove a Lola in 1963). Could it be that Lola was the best F1 car constructor never to enter the sport?

Much of the gossip at Silverstone was about the new star of GP2, Lewis Hamilton. He is tipped for a drive at McLaren next year, although this seems unlikely in view of the team’s need to have two experienced and proven drivers to maximise the potential of the car.

It raises the point of how drivers will progress into F1, now that the Minardi name has disappeared. The team lives on in the shape of Scuderia Toro Rosso but its ethos has changed fundamentally; it is now intended to be a gateway for American drivers into F1. Perhaps the big teams will come to regret the demise of little Minardi, for it has given so many now-famous drivers their first break in the premier formula.

Consider some of the names that once drove for the second Italian team. Michele Alboreto had an early association with the team and Pierluigi Martini had a Minardi seat for many years. Then Alessandro Nannini, Gianni Morbidelli, Christian Fittipaldi and Alex Zanardi made their F1 debuts in Minardi cars. And there was a time when the team was run by a certain Flavio Briatore.

Even today, there are drivers who owe their start to Minardi; Jarno Trulli and Mark Webber are two, for a start. And then there is some guy named Fernando Alonso. With a name like that, what chance did he stand of getting into F1, had not Minardi eased him in?

So I wish Lewis Hamilton the best of luck. I hope he gets the F1 drive he so clearly deserves, but I suspect that he might have to wait a bit longer than next year before someone gives him a chance.

So Fernando Alonso has extended his lead in the Championship by winning at Silverstone. I did my best to mix things up a little by predicting a win for Raikkonen but the best he could manage was third. Such is life.

But Alonso now runs the risk of what I call “PWS” – Perpetual Winner’s Syndrome. This is the effect on many of us when a driver wins too often, creating a feeling of inevitability about the outcome of each race and encouraging us to want someone else to win for a change. I make no secret of the fact that PWS is one of the reasons why I dislike Mickey the Shoe so much – he has ruined whole seasons by the boring predictability of his wins.

Of course this is unfair but we can’t help it; that smug grin of the Perpetual Winner brings out the support for the underdog in us and we cry out for someone to spoil the party. This is especially true when we know that the win was in large part due to the superiority of the car.

It is PWS that makes me cast doubts upon the greatness of Fangio (always in the right car at the right time), Andretti (who wouldn’t have won in the Lotus 79?) and Prost (another man whose genius seemed to be in always having the best car). Compare these with the way in which Piquet and Senna won their races; they were hard-fought battles, sometimes against superior equipment, and they went to the wire. Who can doubt that they were worthy of their championships?

For illustration of my point, have a look at this account of Senna’s European Grand Prix held at Donington Park in 1993. Included is a video of the first lap in which Ayrton goes from fifth to first place.

I know that, just because a driver wins a championship in the best car, he is not automatically less than the best driver. But how can we tell, if we don’t see him win races in less competitive equipment? To give M. Schumacher his due, many of his early wins were with Benetton when they were still less than the best. So we know the man can drive; but better than anyone else? Case unproven, I think.

Alonso is now the one who flirts with PWS and, if he carries on winning monotonously, we might well transfer our sympathies elsewhere. But, for the moment, his peers are close enough for us to forgive him. The Renault is an excellent car with superb balance and good speed; yet the Ferrari is on a par with it and the McLaren not far behind. And I am being honest when I say that Fernando ran a good race and deserved to win.

Watch out if Raikkonen gets a Renault for next year, however…