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Posted: Wednesday June 23, 1999 04:53 PM

Steady As You Go  

In Montreal, a patient Mika Hakkinen showed why he's world champ

By Ed Hinton and Franz Lidz

For a journalist, the problem with having Mika Hakkinen as reigning Formula One champ (and as points leader this season after his victory in Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix) is that he does his job too quietly, with too much focus and too little flamboyance. Complains a British motor sports writer, "We've got a bloody world champion with that" -- he raps a wooden desktop -- "for a personality."

After letting Schumacher falter, Hakkinen cruised to the winner's circle. Adrian Wyld/AP

Hakkinen, 30, would have it no other way. Having nearly died after a crash in the 1995 Australian Grand Prix, a wreck that left him in a coma for a day and hospitalized for three weeks, the Flying Finn has learned "to walk a little bit slower," as he puts it, describing his approach to racing, which is to say, his life. "I learned that you don't have to rush," he said last Thursday. "People tend to forget that in their lives. They keep panicking, panicking, until one day they realize: Finished. Enough. I'm not going to do this anymore."

Never was Hakkinen's patience more evident than on Sunday, when Michael Schumacher, the most aggressive F/1 driver of this or any era, started on the pole in his Ferrari and immediately began turning blistering laps in the 1:21 range around the 2.75-mile circuit. Hakkinen said after the race that his McLaren Mercedes "was stable enough to go as quick," but he chose not to challenge Schumacher right away. "I knew that there would be a time when something would happen, either to Michael or to me. Going at the speed Michael went at the start of the race, either of us could have gone off."

Schumacher finally did go off, on Lap 30 of the 69-lap race, when he ran over the curbing on Turn 13 and slammed hard into the retaining wall. "After that I just concentrated on maintaining the right pace to win," said Hakkinen, who prevailed for the first time in eight tries at the Canadian Grand Prix and for the second week in a row. Said his boss, McLaren general manager Ron Dennis, "Of all the top drivers, including Schumacher, Mika makes the fewest mistakes." That may not make for scintillating stories, but it wins world championships.

F/1 Drivers' Lament:  
Grooved Tires Curtail Passing

Few observers will deny that Formula One races have become grand processions -- single-file promenades with a dearth of passing. Through six events this year there have been no competitive passes on the course for the lead.

A growing chorus of drivers, among them former world champions Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve, offers a solution: Get rid of grooved tires, mandated two years ago as a safety innovation to slow cornering speeds, and return to treadless slicks, which, contrary to what their name implies, provide better traction. Grooved tires make cornering on pavement about as easy as Rollerblading on ice. It's hard for a driver to pass when he's struggling to control his car. "All we want is a small chance of managing an overtaking maneuver," says Villeneuve. "That has become nearly impossible."

To date, those complaints have fallen upon deaf ears. Max Mosley, president of F/1's governing body, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), canceled a meeting to discuss the tire issue with team owners on June 2 and then told The Times of London, in essence, that the drivers should stop complaining, be content to collect their enormous salaries of as much as $41 million a year and just drive. "Because they're paid so much, they are not entitled to like or dislike [the rules]," he told the newspaper.

Meanwhile, the world's most popular form of motor racing continues to lose pizzazz.

The Americans Are Coming:  
Ford Is Buying An F/1 Team

Move over, Ferrari. Ford is about to become the first U.S.-based manufacturer to own a Formula One team outright, and -- as only Ferrari has done consistently since the 1950s -- it plans to be aggressive technologically and financially after it completes the $100 million purchase of the team owned by three-time world driving champion Jackie Stewart. The deal will not only continue the resurgence of American involvement in F/1 (the U.S. Grand Prix is scheduled for September 2000 on a new road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway) but also increase efforts to develop U.S. Formula One drivers.

American drivers have been conspicuously absent from that series. Only two have won a Formula One world driving title, Phil Hill in 1961 and Mario Andretti in '78. No U.S. driver has won a Grand Prix since Andretti's victory in Holland in '78, and none has driven in F/1 since Mario's son Michael flopped in a brief stint with McLaren in '93.

In Stewart's estimation, only one big-name American driver, NASCAR's Jeff Gordon, has the nerve, skill and lightning reflexes needed for F/1 racing. "But it wouldn't be possible for him to give up NASCAR and go to the lesser formulas of Europe [for training]," says Stewart. "I understand that."

The next F/1 driver from the U.S. will probably be someone who's now an unknown in his -- or her -- teens who will take three to five years to develop. Ford is moving rapidly to create "the best farm system" for advancing American drivers into F/1, says Dan Davis, the company's director of special vehicle operations. "We're looking for young talent, but that isn't enough. We need to have a process in place first. We could get a hundred kids tomorrow who'd be willing to begin the training. Before that, we need to develop the right selection process and then decide what it will take to get them to the top."

Meanwhile, Davis believes, Ford can stimulate American interest in F/1 by winning with Stewart's current drivers, Rubens Barrichello of Brazil, who didn't finish in Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix, and Johnny Herbert of England, who finished fifth. "Would we love to see some American drivers in there? You bet," says Davis. "If there's a way we can make that happen, you bet we'll do it."

Bobby Labonte has beaten up a few Pontiacs in his time, but he has only killed one Chevy. He was 23 and his father, Bob, had asked him to haul the family's 1978 Chevy pickup -- the one that hemorrhaged transmission fluid -- to the junkyard in Trinity, N.C., where they were living. "My older brother, Terry, and I just hated that truck," recalls Bobby. "Which is why we decided to shoot it."

So, before hauling the truck away, the Labonte boys ventilated it with Terry's .44 Magnum. Unfortunately, Bob stopped by the junkyard after work and saw the damage done. As a prank, he called Bobby and said, "Bring that pickup back home. I've got the cab sold."

Shaken, Bobby frantically scrounged around in vain for a replacement. "For two days I sweated bullets," he says, "but to sweat over a mad dad is a lot different than to sweat over passing Jeff Gordon on the final lap."

This year has been no sweat for the 35-year-old Labonte. Or very little. Labonte's fifth-place finish on Sunday in the K Mart 400 at Michigan Speedway was his sixth straight in the top 10. He has led all but one of this season's 14 races and two weeks ago won the MBNA Platinum 400 at Dover Downs International. His 2,075 points are third on the circuit, 94 behind leader Dale Jarrett and 432 ahead of brother Terry, who's in 10th place. Should Bobby maintain his current pace, he'll improve on his 1998 season, in which he finished a career-best sixth in the point standings and earned $2,648,970, enough money to replace that Chevy 1,000 times over.

Issue date: June 21, 1999

 

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