It being April Fools Day, one has to be a bit wary of sensational stories on the net. But here’s a bit of fun that you can take as true - a Top Gear interview with Nigel Mansell and his lap on their test circuit to see how he measures up against other F1 drivers previously tested.

I was going to call him “Birmingham’s most famous son” but then it occurred to me that he might not be - maybe there is a Brummie I haven’t thought of. Tolkien lived part of his life in or near Birmingham, for instance, but he wasn’t really a Brummie. There is always a chance that I have missed some celebrity who originated in Birmingham without my noticing (Ozzy Osborne? Nah, he can’t be more famous than Our Nige…). Any suggestions?

I see Bernie Ecclestone has dragged the F1 scoring system into the limelight again, saying that there should be a greater points difference between winning and coming second. It’s a hoary old chestnut that has been tinkered with many times in the past and most changes have made things worse, not better.

For once, however, I agree with Bernie - the gap between first and second is a bit close at the moment. But an increase to three points difference rather than two should be sufficient, otherwise we risk having championships decided by the halfway mark in years when one team is dominant. Interest in the rest of the season would just drain away.

Bernie’s other suggestion, that the championship go to the driver with most wins, would be a bad mistake, in my opinion. This puts far too much emphasis on winning instead of consistency. And 1982, a year in which the champion won only a single race, is the perfect answer to such a system. Although it is known as the year nobody wanted the championship, in fact it was the most closely-fought season ever. Incredibly, eleven drivers won races that year, Prost, Pironi, Watson, Lauda and Arnoux managing two victories each, while Rosberg, Patrese, Piquet, Tambay, de Angelis and Alboreto took one apiece.

In effect, Bernie is saying that Keke Rosberg did not deserve to be champion that year. Nothing could be further from the truth. Under Bernie’s proposal, the champion would have been Didier Pironi, on equal race wins and second places with John Watson but with a third place to swing the balance. One of Pironi’s wins was stolen in controversial circumstances from Gilles Villeneuve and was not exactly the kind of driving that deserves a championship.

Most of the other race winners shot themselves in the foot - Prost by squabbling with Arnoux all season instead of making sure that he beat him fair and square, Piquet by agreeing to take on development of Brabham’s new BMW turbo engine, and Lauda by being unable to overcome his under-rated teammate, John Watson. In contrast, Rosberg defeated whoever Frank put in the second Williams car (Reutemann, Andretti and Derek Daly were tried) and concentrated on always being near the front in a car that was not really competitive. He deserved the championship all right and it would have been an injustice to give it to anyone else.

It is too simplistic to say that race wins are all that matter. Consistency must always be an important part of the equation too, as I have argued before. And the strange thing is that, when we do get a year in which the driver with the most wins doesn’t become champion, it is always an exciting season of cut-and-thrust, nail-biting finishes and a championship decided at the last. Just ask John Surtees about that.

So I suggest you give the winner one more point, Bernie - that’ll fix it.

So far, I have said nothing about the plan to make Bridgestone identify the two tire compounds to be used in races this year by having a blob of paint smeared on one or other of them. This is mainly because I really don’t understand the whole business.

For a start, what is the point of forcing the teams to use both compounds in each race? Since everyone must do this, it seems like a pathetic attempt to introduce more artificial strategy into racing - as if we didn’t have enough already. And it will very quickly become clear whether it is best to use the soft tires at the beginning of the race or the end and all the teams will react accordingly. Not much room for nail-biting stuff there.

Then there is the silly business of whether there should be visual indication of which compound each car is using. I am told that this will make things more exciting for the fans since they will be able to see at a glance which cars are on softs and which on hards. And everyone seems to agree that this is a great idea - or it appeared so until until this morning, when I read a post on Formula 1 Linksheaven that questions the motivation behind the sorry business. I particularly liked the following statement:

The casual fan does not give a damn what compound a driver is using. The CASUAL fan can’t tell whether it’s Liuzzi or Speed gone by in the Toro Rosso. So this wont enhance their enjoyment of a race. And the hardcore fans will likely not want their beloved sport to take a further step away from being the cut-throat world that it is.

I would go even farther and suggest that the dedicated fans too will not care once it comes down to it. They understand that these things even themselves out in the race and that any excitement created by them is artificial and temporary only. What really matters to us is that there be as little interference by regulation in the races as possible - the attraction of F1 is competition between the best drivers and cars in the world and there is no need to “spice up” the show with idiotic and pointless requirements inserted by a governing body obsessed with TV ratings and convinced that we are all so moronic that only a circus will keep us amused.

As an example of just how much we care about tires, consider the British GP of 1987. Everyone remembers it as the race in which Nigel Mansell passed Nelson Piquet to win after having been twenty seconds down; some even consider it to be Mansell’s greatest race. The fact that Mansell was so far behind because he had changed his tires late in the race and that Piquet’s tires were shot is quietly forgotten. In fact, all that race proved was that a car on new tires is quicker than one on worn ones - big revelation.

No, we don’t care about tires and any attempt to re-introduce interest after having ensured that there will be no competition between tire manufacturers is a matter of wanting to have your cake and eat it. There are arguments for and against tire wars in F1 but, having decided to standardize on one manufacturer, the FIA should leave it at that, instead of monkeying about with details in the hope of preserving a vestigial interest in tires.

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Number 38 and his comments on the F1-Fanatic site. Since then, #38 and I have been in correspondence and it turns out he is actually Roy Jacobson, a man with long experience of motor racing and the occasional brush with F1. Roy is 62 years old now and still races his kart locally in Virginia - you can’t keep a good man down!

In talking with Roy about his experiences, it occurred to me that readers would be interested too and so I will be posting a few of his stories in these final few days before the season commences in Australia. Here’s a taster from early on in our correspondence:

Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix of 1983

“I had entered an M.G. powered car called a Lester-MG and was assigned to a class filled with Lotus XIs, Lolas, Porsches and Ferraris.

“In practice, I qualified well but was gridded last as the stewards didn’t know what a Lester was and didn’t expect much performance.

“Just prior to the race someone asked if I was in the right class - after all the entire field, about 20 cars, had alloy, overhead cam engines and the M.G. engine was just a ‘push-rod , lump of iron’. I replied, ‘That’s why I’m starting from scratch, don’t want to embarrass anyone.’

“In the race, I went from last to 6th. No champagne, no trophy, no ribbon but I always get a time sheet! It was a personal victory.”

Roy Jacobson

Against that sort of competition, a victory indeed. Roy’s exploits range from kart racing, amateur events driving his MG TD and hillclimbs to racing in F1 GP support events and even helping out in the Lotus pit for the 1979 US GP at Watkins Glen. Through his eyes we can glimpse not only the history of motor sport going back almost fifty years but also get a feel for the vast sweep of motor racing that goes on every year, unrecorded, unsung, and yet the scene for deeds every bit as heroic as those we see in F1.