"Sauber can produce the goods"

So runs the banner headline over the two page feature on Johnny and Sauber in the 26 March 1997 issue of the UK's top weekly motorsport newspaper, Motoring News. The main article is by Rob Aherne and extracts are reproduced below by kind permission of the Editor, Mark Skewis.

They say that fortune favours the brave. Johnny Herbert would probably not concur.

Throughout a Grand Prix career spanning seven seasons and almost 100 races, Herbert has been on the receiving end of just about every brand of bad luck going. In Australia 10 days ago, the trend continued. Just as the jockey-sized Briton was making the most of a blinding start to edge his Sauber past Jacques Villeneuve's Williams, he became the injured third party in the French-Canadian's tangle with Eddie Irvine.

But this particular cloud does have a silver lining. Few expected a Sauber to have any business at the sharp end of the grid, after the C16 was one of the last 1997 chassis to break cover. But the C16 flew straight out of the box in Barcelona, and Herbert was disappointed to concede a third row grid slot in Melbourne during the dying moments of qualifying. Despite his truncated race, the combination's potential is abundant. And, says Johnny, there will be more opportunities to shine.

"Realistically, before the season started I was hoping we'd be in the top 10 in Australian," he admits. "Top eight, I thought was probably maximum. But after what we did in qualifying and even in the warm up [where he was third fastest behind the Williams duo], I think there's no reason why we can't be consistently top six.

"Races will be a bit different, maybe, but generally last year Sauber always performed better in a race situation. To get points on board is the first thing; Nicola got a point in Australia.

Once you've done that, you can start looking at podium finishes. To talk about winning races, with one race gone and me not even finishing it would be silly. But my goal for this year now is to work towards consistent podium finishes, and hopefully that's going to be possible.

"I feel what I did last year was much, much better than anything I did with Benetton, driving-wise. And Australia just completely blew the whole of 1995 away, in terms of what I felt I was doing in the car, because this is a car I can drive."

Johnny's top-flight career has been written off more than once. However, his acrimonious second departure from Flavio Briatore's team in 1995, after being shaded by Michael Schumacher, signalled perhaps his toughest test to date. Signing for Sauber alongside Heinz-Harald Frentzen was widely perceived as the beginning of the end.

"One of the main reasons for going there was Heinz," Johnny says. "It was no good me going to another team where the driver wasn't really recognised, because it doesn't do you any good. I'm always there for a challenge; I'm not just in F1 to be an F1 driver.

"Besides, I felt very, very at home there. They treated me equally with Heinz, but more than that, I had always lost continuity within Formula 1 before. This time I wanted it to carry on, and that was one of the biggest issues to staying there.

"The Ferrari [engine] thing was a massive bonus. The Ford wasn't that bad for driveability, but this engine has got a much bigger power band, and a lot more power.

"The most noticeable thing for me was in testing in Spain, when we took the fuel out. When we did that last year, it wasn't drastic at all, but in Barcelona it was like night and day. It was exciting again, because the engine just got up and went. Straight away there was a massive difference. But you need a competitive chassis as well, and we seem to have come up with both at the moment. If we go well [in Brazil], we should be competitive everywhere."

Rob Aherne feels that a few more performances like Melbourne are needed before the well documented ghosts of Johnny's 1995 season at Benetton are completely exorcised. Johnny says:

"Inside, I've always felt very confident in my ability, and that's never gone. I know there were a lot of people who said at the time 'That was then and this is now' - which I thought was very unfair, because any other guy who's been there has not been treated in the same way that Michael was.

"I did the best I could; I won races. People say they were lucky wins, but I think if other people had won the races - if Mika [Hakkinen] had won Monza, say [like David Coulthard did in Melbourne?] - it would have been a different story. I know that I could have done a much better job if I was in a car that I even liked. That made me feel good, in fact - that I won in a car I bloody hated!"

Aherne comments in the article that frustration remains a keyword for much of Johnny's F1 career, particularly as that career never fully regained the trajectory it displayed before his hideous Brands F3000 shunt in 1988. But thoughts of how he felt before that crash still motivate Johnny:

"I've got this determination to beat it. I just remember my mental state was so good, so high then. That's really what I'm trying to get back to, and I feel I'm getting a lot closer now.

"I've probably had more downs than I've had ups. I still feel I haven't achieved what my natural ability can do. [F1 is] a very, very hard world. I understand how you can be in it and out of it as soon as you blink an eye. I'm more determined than that - I'm not someone who's just been in and hung around. I've won two Grands Prix at least, and I think I can win a lot more.

"At the end of the day, I just think I can still do a very good racing job, if that's the right expression. I'm a racer at heart."

They say the only thing certain about luck is that it will change. Maybe Johnny Herbert's is about to...

MAX WELTI'S VIEWS ON JOHNNY

In a sidebar to the main article, Sauber Sporting director Max Welti, has a lot of nice things to say about Johnny:

"Heinz was often quicker, but he had a history with us; he had a lot of experience and built up his relationships within the team. Johnny was new, but I have to emphasise that he needed a ridiculously short time to integrate, until everybody got confidence in him.

"I believe a lot in Johnny. He is doing a very, very professional job; in fact, I haven't worked with many people with a better attitude to what he does.

"He is a joker: he has big sense of humour, but as soon as it comes to work, to anything that has to be done professionally, he is capable of switching from one mood to the other and being a completely different personality.

"I'm not sure if he always had this ability. I could imagine that he has only developed it so perfectly since he has been with us; I wouldn't say because of us, but I think he appreciates that we like working with him and integrate him into the team.

"He probably had that at Lotus, but he was a little bit too young to make the most of it. He certainly didn't have it at Benetton, because there he was treated like an asshole alongside Schumacher."

The above article extracts are reproduced by kind permission of Motoring News.
This article may not reproduced, in whole or in part, without their permission.
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This page prepared 4th April 1997.