Johnny's Melbourne pace surprised many.
But what does racing really mean?

AT THE START of a new season, people often ask me what Fl means to me. It's a difficult one, because it works on so many levels.

As a driver, it's the ultimate - the biggest sporting challenge I've ever faced. I play golf, but that's nothing like the same feeling. Very stop-start. In F1, the game never stops. And the risks are much, much higher.

When I was a kid, I played football - and half the time you were nowhere near the ball. You were just running around doing nothing. In F1 you're doing something the whole time. First, the start, getting the car off the line. Then the first lap, making up as many positions as you can. Then being kind to the tyres. Being consistent. Avoiding errors. Getting the pitstop right. Fighting all the way. You've really got to perform.

In football, you've got other people - but once you get in the cockpit of an F I car, it's going to be obvious if you're the one part of a very long chain that isn't doing its job. That's immensely challenging - and when you ride a risk and get things just right, there's tremendous satisfaction.

F1 isn't just about the hedonism of driving a very fast car, which is what hooked us all in the first place. There's all the travelling, the leaving behind of your family. It helps if your partner accepts that it's one of those things that goes with the badge. Becky, my wife, is very supportive and understanding. She doesn't like being it races, so we are often apart. Our daughters, Chloe and Aimelia, know less about what I do than they used to. They know I go away a lot, that I race and am on TV, but they're more interested in horses!

It's important to retain a perspective on life, and F1 can distort it sometimes. In Melbourne I visited the Royal Children's Hospital's adolescent ward, and doing that sort of thing keeps you in touch with reality. There were some kids there who were interested and some who weren't, but I think it's important that they felt that somebody who didn't know them had come to spend a bit of time with them. My eight-year-old, Chloe, had a kidney problem when she was smaller, so I very much relate to kids and the staff at hospitals who look after them, and I try to give something back.

You appreciate how Fl's tentacles can reach into all corners of the world. As part of it, I think it's important to do what you can to make a repayment. It's difficult to explain without painting a picture of yourself as some sort of saint; I'm very definitely not that! But I think Fl has a responsibility over and above the imperative to stage a good race for the fans. Like any sport, it has subliminal messages that it should put across, and a little time invested can be surprisingly effective.

Conversely, there are times when Formula 1 is like a mother that devours her own children. Melbourne, for example, was the first race in 30 years that dear old Uncle Ken Tyrrell had missed, yet the show still went on. It's ironic, because you can get slated if you have a bad race or a bad year, but you can also get forgotten very quickly. Formula 1 is competitive and it's all about success, about today, right now, and tomorrow. It's not about - yesterday, not about the people who have jumped or been thrown off the merry-go-round. It's a terrible thing to say, but you don't have time to look behind. It has to be evolving constantly, moving forward, innovating, because that's its nature. It's a microcosm of the harder side of life.

Formula 1 can be a tide that sweeps everyone within it along, but in Melbourne it didn't quite sweep me along far enough. I spent my race examining the rear end of Jacques Villeneuve's Williams from very close range for the whole 58 laps. We had some bad luck on the pitstop, when I couldn't take on the full quota of fuel, so I stayed stuck behind Jacques while Frentzen and Irvine passed us. But for that, we could have taken third - so overall it was an encouraging start. What we need to do now is maintain that momentum.

These GP Columns appeared exclusively in F1 Racing magazine every month.
The columns are reproduced by kind permission of the Editor, Matt Bishop.
With thanks to F1 Racing ©. All rights reserved.
This page prepared 21st March 1998.