Formula One Features — June 2001

Being a European is quite hard work for us Brits. For example as much as many of us wanted to, drumming up excitement over Bentley's return to Le Mans was a feat that was a little too hard to manage, by virtue of not being German.

The International Formula 3000 title race is between three men: the two Coca Cola Nordic Racing team mates Justin Wilson and Tomas Enge and Super Nova Racing's Mark Webber. At the Nurburgring, title leader Wilson went out early with a mechanical problem and so Enge and Webber made up ground. The top three are now covered by just five points with six races gone and six races still to come.

Before pit stops to refuel and change tires were reintroduced into Formula 1, there was only one race strategy, as Colin Chapman told me at my first race as a race engineer: "Go like hell at the start, and overtake as many people as possible." Nowadays the post-race talk is as much about strategies as actual car performance or on-track overtaking maneuvers.

Jackie Stewart deserves his knighthood because there are a lot of people alive today who wouldn't be if the Scot hadn't chosen to make a professional career out of motor racing. That is neither a joke nor an exaggeration.

He's still quick, as he proved while testing for Orange Arrows, and he keeps up with the intricacies of the F1 scene. So who better to give his opinion on who is doing a good job and who isn't than three-time F1 winner Johnny Herbert?

He's still quick, as he proved while testing for Orange Arrows, and he keeps up with the intricacies of the F1 scene. So who better to give his opinion on who is doing a good job and who isn't than three-time F1 winner Johnny Herbert?

The main priority for the McLaren-Mercedes team this week will most certainly NOT be a process of picking-over the events of Adrian Newey's will-he-won't-he psychological wobble last week in which it seemed as though he was going to Jaguar. And then, suddenly, he wasn't.

Jenson Button faced the glitz and glamour of the Monaco Grand Prix as the F1 driver who has everything. Apart from a competitive car.

"Goodwood's not for a while yet," said a colleague as I ambled into the Donington paddock for the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophy Meeting. Well, yes, there's no formal request to put on period togs and pretend to be Bertie Wooster at any of the other historic meetings of the year? it's just something that happens.