Formula One Features — November 1993

Jean-Pierre Jabouille is back in Formula 1. In the late 1970s he was one of the stars of the sport but after a huge accident in Canada in 1980 which left him with two badly broken legs he drifted away from Grand Prix racing, unable to drive F1 cars competitively. He did a bit of racing in France and ran a restaurant in Paris.

"I came to Adelaide to try as hard as usual and try to win the race. In fact I was probably trying harder than usual in qualifying so as to have the best car possible for the race on Sunday.

Mercedes-Benz is one of the great names of motor sport, the Stuttgart company's involvement in racing going back to 1900 when the Austro-Hungarian consul in Nice Emil Jellinek asked Gottlieb Daimler to build his a run of 36 new racing cars. Daimler agreed that these could be called after Jellinek's daughter Mercedes. Success was immediate and at regular intervals the company has appeared in Grand Prix racing, won and then disappeared again.

A new era is dawning in Formula 1, regenerating the sport and producing a new age. The hugely paid mega-stars of the greedy 1980s are now thin on the ground. These are men who have made perhaps US$60 million in their careers, which have lasted 10 years or more. Formula 1 is not as dangerous as once it was and so they have stayed longer and look at the sport as a business rather than a sport.