The big question on most peoples’ minds is whether Michael Schumacher and the Ferrari juggernaut can be stopped. He has made it two out of two this year
and that is six wins back to back from last year. The record is nine, set by Alberto Ascari in the early 50s. Can Schumacher surpass this? Given the highly stressed nature of
today’s racing engines I doubt it, but if anyone can, then it is Mrs Schumacher’s eldest boy.
Interestingly, the pole position for the past three years has been won by Mika
Hakkinen, last year’s time being 1 min 14.111 seconds. I expect that this year it will be in high 1 min 11’s. See if I’m not right! Schumacher in fact has never been on
pole in Brazil. Will that change this year?
BMW Williams must be itching to get back into the fray, with Schumi junior really get amongst it in Malaysia. Williams almost had pole position, and in
fact were in that number one slot till 5 minutes before the end of Qualifying. Ralf’s dicing with Frentzen was one of the highlights of the Malaysian GP. It was racing in
F1, the like of which has not been seen for several years.
The men from Woking, Ron Dennis’ McLaren Mercedes team, have just had another
blow with their top electronics man having defected and gone to Maranello to join Ferrari. However, it would be a foolish man to write off Ron at this stage in the season. He
is a very dour and gritty character and no avenues of opportunity will be left untried. Messrs Hakkinen, Coulthard and Wurz will have been working very hard to find out what
has gone wrong this year. Having said all that, I have a more than sneaking feeling that the successes of the past few years were not “driver” brilliance, but much more
an engineering triumph. Harking back to Malaysia, Hakkinen, who set the fastest lap of the race remember, could not work out how to pass Jos Verstappen in the Arrows, yet
both Schumachers, Barichello and Frentzen managed to do it. I rest my case. On the plus side, the telecast people have not shown Erja Hakkinen at all this year - so far.
The biggest disappointment this year has been the form of the Benetton team. Jenson Button has gone from hero to zero sitting in a blue Benetton. Flavio
Briatore is not known as an all forgiving patron, and I would hate to be a Benetton designer right at this red hot moment. There is a limit to how long you can keep on making
excuses because the Renault engine is new and is a wide angled V10 etc., etc., etc. The truth is that it is too slow and unreliable to boot.
BAR are certainly “up there” this year, and Villeneuve is being given a good run for his money by Olivier Panis, back from the dead after spending 12
months as the test driver for McLaren. Likewise the other Honda powered cars, the Jordans are also at the pointy end of the field.
The race in Brazil starts at 2 p.m. Brazilian time, which I work out to be midnight our time. This means a late night at Shenanigans in front of the big
screen. I’ve managed to twist Kim’s arm, so we should be right. See you just before midnight on Sunday 1st April.
Automania Quiz
Last week I said it was an easy one. It was about Mr. Bean CBE who drove a particular brand of motor car. I asked you what was it? Goodness me, some of you
people didn’t read it too carefully, did you? Mr. Bean CBE is not Rowan Atkinson’s awkward character who drives a Mini, but Jack Harper Bean who was awarded the CBE for
war services after WWI. This chap was the MD of the Bean Car Company and drove a, you guessed it - a Bean! (Thank you Nick Deighton for making me think about the long defunct
Bean Car Company.)
And so to this week. Some of you say the questions are too hard (but not for Sean Jehan!) so here’s the easiest question you’ll ever get. Remember the
Daimler SP 250 Dart? The little V8 2548 cc all alloy engine was a lovely unit, but the total car was never a success. The Daimler Company also had to drop the “Dart”
name. This week’s question is “Why?”
For the Automania FREE beer this week, be the first correct answer to fax 427 596 or email [email protected]
Two weeks ago I asked about the Ginetta marque, founded by the four Walklett brothers and first in best dressed was Sean Jehan from the Channel Islands -
but this time staying at the Grand Sole Hotel on holidays here. When we can get our paths to cross, there’ll be a few beers owing. Sean has been the most proficient
responder to the Autotrivia Quiz questions.
While still on Autotrivia I received an email from a lady in the United States in response to an item I wrote a couple of years ago about the Hon. Mrs.
Victor Bruce who towed a petrol bowser behind her Jowett so she didn’t have to stop for petrol on an endurance record attempt. (I wonder whether it had a porta-loo as
well?) Apparently the dear lady in America is writing an article about said Mrs. Bruce and wanted to know the source of my information. So there you go, everyone reads the
Pattaya Mail!
The end of the parts warehouse concept?
I had a most interesting discussion with Chris Fenton, the plant manager of TRW Automotive out at the Eastern Seaboard Industrial Estate the other evening.
Chris’ factory supplies all kinds of suspension arms and the like to GM, Ford/Mazda and shortly to Nissan, so you would imagine that he has a damn large warehouse to cope
with this. No Siree! TRW doesn’t need a huge warehouse, despite being in the “Detroit of the East.” One of the technological advances that Chris Fenton referred to is
known in the General Motors parlance as SILS, the acronym for Supply In Line Sequence. Under this system, TRW has no warehousing of parts, but receives a call-up from GM as
the particular vehicles come down the assembly line, build the parts and ship them to GM to coincide with their need in the assembly line process. This has been a great
success for TRW, with their financial rewards going up 300% in line with the ramp-up of General Motors. Chris Fenton says, “What we are doing here is cutting edge stuff for
us. The footprint here in Rayong (ESIE) isn’t exactly duplicated anywhere else in the world.” Nice to know we are not lagging behind the others.
In fact, after talking with David Nardone of Hemaraj Land and Development and finding that he has over 50 component suppliers out there on the Eastern
Seaboard to supply the manufacturers he has on board, it makes you realise just how important the auto industry has become from the country’s economic viewpoint.
High Performance Ford
Picked up this nice little snippet from Automotive News in Detroit.
Seems Ford’s world car, the Focus needed some extra neddies for their high performance version, so they turned to Cosworth to breathe heavily on the engine for the Focus
SVT.
So what’s new about that, I hear you cry. After all, Ford Cosworth racing engines have been around for 30 odd years. What is news is that Ford only owns
the racing division of Cosworth (maker of the engines they stuff in the back of F1 Jaguars and give to Eddie the mouth to run every second weekend) and they had to go to
Cosworth Technologies of Northampton in England. Now this is where the incestuous nature of the auto bizz comes in. Cosworth Technologies is a powertrain engineering services
company that is owned by Volkswagen AG’s Audi unit. When Cosworth was dismantled and sold by Vickers PLC in 1998, Ford only got the racing division.
The brief is to build 20,000 units a year - 7,500 for the United States and 12,500 for Europe. The power-plant had to be engineered to meet both U.S. and
European emissions regulations as well as get more horsepower and torque from Ford’s 2.0-liter Zetec four-cylinder engine. Said Karl Kollin, powertrain engineer at Ford’s
Special Vehicle Engineering group, “We recognized Cosworth’s expertise with engine technology. They bring us a global viewpoint, which was important for this engine.”
Certainly is that, Karl - by Audi out of VW out of Vickers. Little did Farnk Costin and Keith Duckworth know what they had started!
