"Sauber's Unsung Hero"

David Tremayne interviewed Johnny at the Charity Karting Challenge in November 1997 for the following article, which appeared in the 4th December 1997 issue of the UK's weekly motorsport magazine, Autosport. It is reproduced by kind permission of David Tremayne and Autosport.

For split seconds in Melbourne, Johnny Herbert's fans envisaged their hero fighting for the lead of the Australian Grand Prix, until Eddie Irvine's lunge down the inside of the field at the first corner helped Herbert and Jacques Villeneuve into the early trudge home. Sauber had just cemented its deal for Ferrari engine supply, and Herbert's super-quick start seemed to presage good things - but that incident somehow came to summarise what became a season that failed, largely, to deliver. Plenty of promise on paper, but much of it unrealised.

Herbert ponders his season calmly, as karts drone in the background at The Raceway at King's Cross during his annual charity bash. He's relaxed, in an element he has always enjoyed since childhood. When he talks of the year, he does so without rancour or implied criticism; just telling it like he sees it. It's clear that he remains confident that Peter Sauber's team has the potential to do the business.

"Hungary (where the Englishman placed third) was a good result at the end of the day - our best of the year," he begins. "But the car still wasn't that competitive. I actually thought some of the earlier races were better. Imola looked like being my best race, as far as the actual driving was concerned, until Spa. Barcelona wasn't too bad. I drove sensibly with the tyres in Barcelona, Canada and Hungary. The latter was another case of looking after the tyres, not an out-and-out race. I did well in all the races where you had to be sensible and look after the tyres! But, overall, I guess Spa was probably the best race. It was a good one."

It seemed that every time Herbert got a decent result, somebody else did something better and got the limelight. In Barcelona Jacques Villeneuve's tyre-conserving victory won the plaudits; in Montreal, David Coulthard's near-miss and Olivier Panis's accident overshadowed him; in Hungary, it was Damon Hill in the Arrows; and at Spa, people only had eyes for Michael Schumacher, though they both started on intermediates. Herbert smirks when you ask him if it annoys him that he didn't often get due credit.

"Well, it's always the same, really" he shrugs nonchalantly, well beyond being hurt emotionally these days. "When I read the Spa reports, Michael was the only one on intermediates. Nobody else. But he wasn't the only other one, there were a couple more. And I didn't know anything about the safety car!

"The first lap was quite had because it was damn wet, but the second was marginally better. But you had to be very careful, although it cleared up quite quickly. But that's normal at Spa! Jacques was a second quicker than 1 was, but I was still quick. I held up Heinz (Harald Frentzen) for a bit early on. The car wasn't bad. It was a more competitive race, but we'd had too many races where we'd been better than we were in others. But at the time of Spa, we were generally struggling quite badly, so I was pleased to go so well there. I think the last properly competitive run we'd had was Silverstone, really.

"What Spa gave me was the best satisfaction of a job well done, because of those tricky early laps on the intermediates, and choosing them in the first place - I certainly wasn't aware of what the pace car was going to do. I just thought that had to he the best way because at Spa it never normally rains twice. It just rains once and then when it starts to dry up it means it's going to blow over. You could see the blue sky coming. And yes, it was nice to beat Jacques. Perhaps that proved something, I don't know."

But there were low points.

"Yeah, Australia was a disappointment, of course, but we were competitive so I wasn't particularly worried that I'd lost a race,' says Herbert. 'Monaco was a bit that way too, but again we were still going well at that point. However, when we went to Austria we really struggled, and I qualified somewhere like 15th on soft tyres. Terrible! Fortunately, in the race, I again looked after the first set of tyres and was quite quick, relatively speaking halfway through on the old tyres that were blistered! That was probably the lowest point, on a circuit where we should have been okay because there are very few corners."

Herbert shouldered a lot of weight for the team as it struggled with a succession of second drivers, but it only made his relationship with Sauber even stronger.

"It's been good, and as usual everyone tried so hard," he says. "I had that with Heinz, of course, and that had always been my one worry when I went to Sauber, after my time with Michael (Schumacher) at Benetton. They make me feel wanted, which is important.

"They had difficulty because they had all the to-ing and fro-ing with the second driver, which didn't help the team or me because there was too much emphasis on trying to organise what was going on there at times. The thing we all know we have to learn next year is that the development has to carry on. We lost out on developing the car a bit, because we never had any of the braking things, and we only had the 3-D throttle system that modulates the torque of the engine right at the end."

The arrival of Jean Alesi puts Herbert at an interesting crossroads, but he says he isn't bothered about heat from a quick team-mate. Perhaps, as was the case when he and Mika Hakkinen traded qualifying honours together in their Lotus days, it's what he needs.

"It's never bothered me, and so long as things stay fair, which I know they will, I don't have a problem. I'll get along with anyone," he says.

For his part, Alesi is looking forward to the partnership, and the Frenchman couldn't have found a better replacement for Gerhard Berger. "If Johnny is the man I'm told he is, "Jean says, "I really can't see us having a problem. Everyone says he is not political."

Indeed he is not, but like most F1 drivers Johnny has mixed views on the 1998 regulations.

"During the last big test at Silverstone I tried an interim Sauber C16, with the narrow suspension and grooved tyres, and it was an interesting experience," he remarks. "The car felt pretty much as I had expected it to, very loose and nervous, but it was much easier to drive than the current cars. By that I mean that you seem to have so much more time to set it up into a corner.

"Normally you do everything in a corner in a very short space of time - that's what an Fl car should be about. It should be hard mentally and physically. You should be able to brake late and downshift and then go through the corner very fast. That's what sorts the men from the boys.

"The problem with the new cars, in my opinion, is that they give you far too much time, and they're too easy to drive as a result. They're quite fun, but the braking distances aren't that much different to the 1997 cars and I don't think they're going to make much difference in overtaking opportunities, either.

"The cars drift like Formula 3000s, but they will only go to a certain angle," he adds. "Once you get beyond that angle you go beyond the point at which the undertray works. So the cars are very snappy because of the aerodynamic effect and will spin quite easily. But that's probably something the designers can sort out with the pukka '98 cars, rather than with this year's models modified.

"I think when it comes to racing the '98 cars it's going to be much easier physically, and sadly I think a lot of the challenge for the driver will be missing because of that. I hope I'm proved wrong, but I don't think I will be. I'm looking forward to 1998. In some ways I think the grooved tyres may benefit me, and it could benefit the car. But I still don't think it's the way Fl should he going. But, of course, I'm going to be quite happy if we're quick."

Herbert also shares the view of the majority of drivers that FIA president Max Mosley got it wrong when, in explaining the 'futility' of banning Schumacher for 1998 after his display in Jerez, he said that he didn't think there was any point because there is not a driver out there who would not risk a ban for 1999 if he thought he could win the 1998 World Championship by, effectively, resorting to skulduggery. Herbert thinks about the situation for a while before venturing an opinion.

"Well, it's something that, at the end of the day, people have been able to do," he says. "You know, we had the thing in Suzuka in 1990 with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost." More thought. "But I don't think I would do that. With me, it would only be something where I would, say, take a risk to overtake. I wouldn't actually drive someone off the track, nothing deliberate or blatant. Not like Jerez."

Nothing instinctive then, let alone premeditated. He pauses again, thinking the point through.

"You know, I would have disagreed that Michael's driving there was deliberate, except that if you look at it, the very, very first movement is turning away, and then he decided to do it and turned into Jacques. He actually made a big mistake to leave that gap! Jacques did a good move because he was actually a long way back."

Nor is he sure that the punishment was apposite.

"In some ways I agree that you can't ban him. The public wants to see drivers like Michael. But starting the year on minus points say 10 points down - might not have been a bad idea. That in some ways wouldn't have been a bad way of doing it. I mean, losing second place in the World Championship was no big deal, was it? Not to a man who only wants to finish first anyway."

So apart from not pushing other drivers off the track, what other aspirations does Herbert have for 1998?

"Well, I think it will be quite good for me," he begins, with understated confidence, "because there will be that little element of having to look after the tyres, though it all depends what Goodyear comes up with. I have a feeling the tyres will be too hard to let drivers slide the cars around, which will again suit me.

"To me the tyre fight will be all about what happens if Bridgestone is quicker than Goodyear. If so, Goodyear will have to make the tyres softer - but when they wear out they will go to sticks quicker, even though the FIA says the tyres must not be better in that state. So if it gets to that stage they'll stick another groove in and we'll end up with slicks again! I don't know, it's going to be an interesting story on the tyre front.

"Overall, I guess my expectations are basically similar to what they were in 1997, which is to be in the points and consistently on the podium," Herbert concludes. "I'm not looking at winning at the moment. Once you are consistently on the podium, then you can be looking winning. I think that's a realistic enough outlook to start with."

Herbert still keeps in touch with karting via his charity Challenge

There's something fitting about the Johnny Herbert Karting Challenge, held annually at The Raceway, Kings Cross, in aid of SPARKS (Sport Aiding Medical Research for Kids). Karting gave Herbert his start, and steered him towards high earning capacity and the Monegasque lifestyle. Like most race drivers, he still looks good on one of the little tubular racers, and to watch him out on the track is to appreciate the racing art. A week fast Saturday Herbert staged the fourth Challenge, an event in which members of the Johnny Herbert Fan Club can turn up and take on their hero, wheel-to-wheel, after making a suitable donation to SPARKS. If they're lucky, they can also pitch a few so-called celebrities off.

But why do it? Johnny smiles.

"It was my father, Bob, who first mentioned the idea of doing something for the Fan Club and letting people have the chance to come and race me. It's always done around the time of the BRDC dinner, because all the other drivers are over. And it's good for charity, because I don't have the time to do these sorts of things during the season. Everyone enjoys it.

"It's relaxing," he adds. "It's not highly competitive. And it's a good way to give something back to the sport. Karting is where I started, with Bill Sisley down at Buckmore Park, and I owe a lot to the sport.

"The Challenge now has a really good reputation and karting is a very, very good thing for young kids to start in. Or even adults.

"These advanced safety courses, to me, are a complete waste of time because the way they teach you to drive is a complete nonsense as far as I am concerned. I watched something the other day on TV where they were simulating a chase, and the way they we re feeding the steering wheel - they still drive that way! - is dangerous. When you read about police drivers having crashes, I'm sure that 99% of it is through shuffling the wheel! Whatever they say, you can't do it. If you could, we would have been shuffling the wheel in racing cars years ago."

This uncharacteristic rant is finally punctuated by the typical Herbert laugh:

"Karting is good. It gives you a sense of control. It's similar to a car, but in some ways more difficult because it is more precise and the steering reacts quicker Even for people who don't want to be racing drivers, it gives them the chance to enjoy themselves."

The above article is reproduced by kind permission of David Tremayne.
This article may not reproduced, in whole or in part, without permission.
© David Tremayne and Autosport. All rights reserved.
This page prepared 13th December1997.