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August 1997 - Hungary
and Spa
 The last two races have been very good for
me. After having some Grands Prix where we could have
done well but didn't finish, third in Hungary was
especially good for morale within the team. It helped
being ahead of the Ferraris!
It was pretty fortunate
that the car was good on tyres there, but it was still a
race where you had to look after them, as you could
easily have blistered them if you wanted to. I was a
little bit surprised that Michael was quite hard on his
tyres. Even on the second set he didn't change the way he
was using them, he just went hard on them. So it was nice
to be ahead of him at the end. Again, it was probably
because I was a bit more thoughtful about the tyres.
Spa was in some ways better, because we had more of a
fight with other people, especially during the early part
of the race. Before the start, I wasn't aware of the
safety car being used. There was a message on the radio
that they were going to explain the procedure, and that's
all I heard. I saw the engineers nodding their heads, and
I just thought it was a procedure for what they did after
the grid had gone or something!
Even Gianni didn't know at first. Apparently, we had a
problem with the radio, and when they explained the
procedure it didn't come through to us. His engineers
said, "Did you get all that?", and then they
told him. But I didn't hear a thing. I went round, and I
was on the radio saying it was damn wet. I was coming
into the Bus Stop and I could see these orange lights up
ahead. I thought, hmmm…
Then we came past the grid. It still didn't hit me,
but all the market boards were up and no-one was
stopping. Ahhh! So I thought I'd better not stop either.
It was surprising how much spray there was, and once
we got going I wanted to be a bit careful. I was on
intermediates, so I took the first lap relatively easily,
making sure I didn't aquaplane or shunt. Then I started
to push more.
It had to be intermediates. I couldn't really
understand why people put wets on. The only reason to do
that was if it was going to rain again. But on the
formation lap on the grid you could see the clouds
coming, and beyond that was blue sky. It seemed that it
would clear, and I knew we had a report that it was
showers, not rain. Spa is one of those places where it
dries out very, very quickly when all the cars are
running. To run wet was a silly thing to do.
The first few laps were quite busy. Frentzen was
holding everybody up at one stage, and then I had
Coulthard in front, and the Damon and Diniz. There was a
battle with Heinz-Harald, and when they got past I got
past him, and then when Diniz passed Damon I got Damon as
well. The Diniz passed David and I got David at the same
time. It was a good little race, and there was quite a
lot of overtaking going on from where I was sitting.
When we first changed to slicks it rained a little bit
round the back of the circuit, but the car seemed to be
working well even when it was slicks with a wet track. I
gained a lot of time, and I was able to catch up with
Mika Hakkinen. Then Alesi came in for a pitstop and I
lost contact with Mika because he got in the way. Towards
the end I was pushing as hard as I could, and I was
trying to be consistent, and I was able to stay ahead of
Villeneuve for fifth place.
After testing, Monza looks like it's going to be very
close, but then it should be, because it's not exactly
full of corners! I think we'll be okay in the race, but
my biggest concern is always qualifying, because it
doesn't work for us at the moment. To actually get a lap
together is damn difficult, because the car is really
"alive" without the fuel. It's always much,
much better when we've got the fuel in it. So it could be
a hard qualifying, and then hopefully a better race. It's
always a race where if you get to the end, you'll be in
good shape for points. I have good memories of 1995!
It's nice to be secure for next year. You always think
that if you were a free agent, maybe you could move on to
somewhere else. But in my situation I'm perfectly happy
where I am.  Knowing what's happening next year means I
can fix myself on what I'm doing from now until the end
of the year. It's interesting to see where people are
going and ending up, or not ending up. I'm just trying to
find out who the hell I'm going to get as a team-mate.
With thanks to Johnny, Red
Bull Sauber-Petronas and Bob Herbert
Photographs on this page used by kind permission of Sauber.
This page prepared 4th September 1997. All rights reserved.
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