Formula One Features — July 1993

In the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the two outlaws are pursued by a group of law men who they cannot identify and who don't give up. Motor racing folk feel the same way about the FIA World Motor Sport Council, which decides the rules of the sport... Who are those guys?

After his Peugeot 905s finished 1-2-3 at Le Mans, Peugeot Talbot Sport boss Jean Todt packed his bags and at the French Grand Prix in Magny-Cours "Napoleon" joined the Ferrari Formula 1 team. It was not to be one of the great debuts for an F1 team chief, Jean Alesi retired with engine failure and Gerhard Berger struggled home with an evil-handling car to finish 14th.

In her book A Different Kind of Life, Ginny Williams, Frank's wife, remembers when she first met her husband.

Jean Alesi used to be a pane-beater. Some say that his knowledge of this trade taught him that no matter how many dents you put in a car, they can always be knocked out later. Formula 1 cars don't dent these days, but the spirit of the panel-beater-turned-racer lives on in Jean Alesi's lurid F1 driving style. Show Jean a kerb and he'll drive over it. Give him a gap and he'll put a Ferrari through it. Ferrari number 27 is driven with the same kind of brio that it was in the days when it was driven by the late Gilles Villeneuve.

A couple of years ago the Arrows Formula 1 team disappeared. Instead there was a team called Footwork. In fact nothing much changed apart from the name. The team was still the same beneath its pseudonym.

Ask a Formula 1 marketing man why companies are involved in Grand Prix racing and before you can say: "Positive interface situation" they are firing tracer bullets of jargon at you. They talk of "corporate motivation" and "image transfer", of "synergy" and "global brand awareness" and of "positioning in the market place", just like they used to do with stalls in vegetable markets.

It was in December that Frank Williams decided that Damon Hill should partner Frenchman Alain Prost in the Williams team in 1993. Hill had raced in only two Grands Prix for Brabham but he had completed 18,000 miles of testing in his two years as the Williams test driver.

Damon Hill was on his way to victory in the German Grand Prix when the left rear tyre on his Williams deflated suddenly with only one and a half laps to go. Hill had dominated the race, taking the lead at the start and running away while Alain Prost tried to fight his way back after yet another bad start. Hill's cause was helped by a dubious 10 sec stop-go penalty imposed on Prost, but even before that, Damon had been well in control. He was over 10 seconds ahead of Prost and running to the finish, not forcing the pace, when the first sign of trouble came.