IN THE LAND OF BLACK GOLD - Grandprixplus

oard duly took the Schumacher bait, apparently
unaware of the fact that the last 40+ year-old
driver to have won a Grand Prix was three-times
champion Jack Brabham way back in 1970. On
the occasions when I have drawn this statistic to
Ross's attention in public, he has tended to get
a bit flushed and start blustering, almost as if he
doesn't want those generous people in Stuttgart
to discover that Fangio - who reached his peak in
his forties - was the exception and that winning F1
races is a young man's game.
There is of course no earthly reason why a
well-financed Mercedes-Benz F1 operation, with a
proven engineer like Ross Brawn in charge, should
not blossom at some future stage. It may indeed
reverse the disappointments of the last three
years, overwhelming the might of Red Bull and
the two other Big Three members. With all that
talent on board, perhaps even Adrian Newey is
beatable, and Mercedes F1 could be en route to
locking down championships on a regular basis.
Perhaps. To do it, it’s also going to need head office
to keep on patiently writing those huge cheques,
and to keep its inspirational young driver Mr
Hamilton motivated to deliver the race wins. But
as Lewis himself has conceded, none of this is
likely to happen in the next couple of years, which
means he's inuring himself to a long period in the
doldrums. By his own admission he's going to
need a high level of intestinal fortitude, a quality
which has not come easily to him so far in his
career. Personally, I would not bet on the gamble
paying off.
Historically, the closest parallel to Lewis's
step into the F1 unknown took place at the end
of 1975, when Emerson Fittipaldi, with two world
titles behind him, abandoned a well-established
winning team (it was also McLaren) and switched
to the Copersucar-financed outfit being run by his
elder brother Wilson. It was madness. The proudly
Brazilian team had been in operation for only one
season, based on an industrial estate in London
and at first staffed patriotically with all-Brazilian
mechanics who couldn't cope with the English
food and climate. The chief designer, Richard
Divila, had been snatched away from his university
engineering course by the brothers a few years
earlier, and although his first attempt at F1 had
been breathtakingly innovative (radiators behind
the gearbox), it was also hopelessly impractical.
He didn't last long in F1 but Divila's services
have been greatly in demand in various categories
of sportscar racing ever since then, with 32 races
on his schedule so far this year alone. He will never
forget the commotion which Emerson's move
generated inside the Copersucar team, which
was in the process of rebuilding itself as a more
conventional outfit, running two cars instead of
one, and was not ready for a two-times champion
as its lead driver. "When Wilson came and told
me to sit down, I guessed what was coming," he
says. "'Oh bother,' I screamed at him (not the exact
word), it's the wrong time and there's no way we'll
be ready for him'. It just threw a spanner in the
works."
Divila believes that Fittipaldi's departure
from McLaren, like Lewis Hamilton's 37 years
later, had been motivated because he didn't feel
sufficiently loved by his team and especially its
sponsor. "Emerson was miffed because Marlboro
wouldn't pay him what he wanted. Niki Lauda had
just won his second championship with Ferrari
and there was talk about Marlboro having made
him the sport's first million-dollar driver. I believe
that Copersucar paid him the same that Niki was
supposed to be getting."
In the event, it looked for a while as though
Divila's second F1 design had some promise. "It
was running bloody well in pre-season testing
at Interlagos, and we were pretty optimistic until
the week of the first race (also at Interlagos),
when Emerson managed to crack his elbow in a
charity tennis match. Even so, we were running
third for a while, and finished fifth with a misfire.
But what stuffed us that year was a change of tyre
specification from Goodyear which came in at the
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