Formula One Features

Ron Dennis gets mildly annoyed when people ask him the question of which all F1 fans want to know the answer. What's gone wrong with McLaren this year? Five Grands Prix into the season, Nigel Mansell has 50 points, Ayrton Senna has eight. In the Constructors' World Championship Williams-Renault has 74 points, McLaren-Honda 16.

For four years Michele Alboreto was a Ferrari driver. He won five Grands Prix and was second in the 1985 World Championship. In 1988 his F1 career went off the rails.

Motor sport seems full of sons of famous fathers. The list is long and impressive: Ascari, Brabham, Andretti, Unser, McRae, Toivonen, Villeneuve, Stewart, Fittipaldi and Hill.

Ken Tyrrell is a pensioner but he is still hard at work in F1 circles. The team recently announced another first for the Ockham organisation - its first exclusive factory engine deal. The deal is with Yamaha Motor.

Bernie Ecclestone is the man who runs Formula 1. Grand Prix racing has made him very rich - and he has made the people in F1 rich. Today he controls a worldwide sport, with billions of television viewers - and billions of dollars.

One wonders what Guy Ligier would have made when the two Ligier of Thierry Boutsen and Erik Comas collided on lap 37 of the Brazilian Grand Prix. Whatever the case, the team was a lot more competitive - and Erik marked himself out as a star of the future.

Frank Williams has every reason to be delighted with the result of the South African Grand Prix. It could scarcely have been a better weekend, nor a better start to a World Championship. The Canon Williams-Renault team was dominant in South Africa. Nigel Mansell was the fastest in every session - timed or free - and the Englishman led the race from lights to flag, set the fastest lap and was followed all the way by team mate Riccardo Patrese.

Being a woman racing driver in Formula 1 racing means that you are the centre of attention. You have to perform or else you are quickly written off. Giovanna Amati has been struggling to show the F1 circus that she has what it takes.

Before the South African Grand Prix Karl Wendlinger's racing mileage in F1 amounted to less than 16 laps. Over the winter he did 10 more. And yet at Kyalami he was seventh on the grid in his March-Ilmor. F1 was impressed.

Andrea de Cesaris has been in Formula 1 for 12 years and despite the fact that he is still trying to win his first race he retains an enthusiasm for the job. He still wants to win but nowadays he is a realist about his chances.

There are no Grands Prix until the middle of March - so what is it that the Formula 1 teams are doing during the off-season? Well, they are gossiping, but they are busy as well getting ready for the F1 season which kicks off on March 14 in South Africa.

Cyril de Rouvre is a politician. He should know better than to upset his fellow-countrymen by hiring two Englishmen to drive for the Ligier team. The French media are up in arms. The Union Jack, they say, is now flying over the Ligier factory at Magny-Cours. De Rouvre, the mayor of Chaumont, does not care.

Christian Fittipaldi was one of the quieter stars of 1991. While Michael Schumacher overshadowed all the F1 new boys, Christian had a solid first season in F1. He has a lot to live up to, of course. His father Wilson was a Formula 1 driver in the mid-Seventies and Uncle Emerson is a legend, having won two F1 World titles (1972 and 1974), run his own F1 team and then gone racing in America and added the Indianapolis 500 and the CART championship to his curriculum vitae in 1989.

McLaren The team started the year with both Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger complaining that Honda's new V12 engine was not good enough. Senna promptly won the first four races of the year, but in the mid-season the team was unable to stem the tide of Williams-Renault.

Team Lotus has more relaunces in recent years than it has had Grand Prix victories, but the once-great team which looked like going to the wall a year ago is on the up again. In December 1990 Peter Collins and Peter Wright (both former Lotus men from the days of the late great Colin Chapman) announced to the world that they were going to run Team Lotus, with the help of German Horst Schubel. When Collins and Wright took over they found a demoralised team, with no engine, no sponsorship, no drivers and a design - the 103 - way behind schedule for the 1991 season.

Ron Dennis and McLaren International won both the drivers' and constructors' titles in 1991. It was the team's fourth consecutive double title. An impressive statistic. But Dennis is never satisfied.

Mika Hakkinen has done a remarkable job for Lotus this season. It is all the more remarkable when you realise that the Finn has come straight to Formula 1 from British Formula 3.

John Grainger is a Formula 1 fanatic. He loves Grand Prix racing so much, in fact, that he went to all 16 Grands Prix in 1991 - and paid for it all himself.

This year is Gianni Morbidelli's first full season of Formula 1. He is not the youngest F1 driver, nor is he the best-known of his generation, but in Adelaide he finished third on the road - driving a Ferrari.

Ayrton versus Nigel. It as been the story of the 1991 Formula 1 season, with the Brazilian and the Englishman dominating the year. Each, of course, is supported by massive organisations: McLaren International, Williams Grand Prix Engineering, Honda and Renault. But whn it comes down to it, at the 16 Grands Prix this year, everything boils down to the men behind the steering wheels - and each is handsomely financially rewarded for their skills.

Formula 1 is a consumer society. Everyone involved from drivers to engineers, team managers to mechanics, motor home hospitality to journalists has to deliver.

Claudio Lombardi is team director of Ferrari and, in theory at least, the man who makes decisions in the Ferrari racing team. We asked him why Alain Prost was not racing in Adelaide. This is what he had to say:

Ayrton Senna launched a bitter attack on ex-FISA President Jean-Marie Balestre after the Brazilian had won his third World Championship in Suzuka. Speaking publicly for the first time since Balestre was defeated in the FISA election by Max Mosley, Senna reiterated his 1989 allegation that Balestre had manipulated the World Championship result, following the collision between Senna and Alain Prost in the Japanese Grand Prix and accused Balestre of meddling with the championship again in Suzuka in 1990, when Senna and Prost again collided while fighting for the World Championship.

Last Wednesday in Paris Jean-Marie Balestre was ousted after 13 years as the president of FISA. Max Mosley is the man who beat him - with 43 votes to Balestre's 29 - in the election.