However, whatever happens now, it is Herbert who will be remembered as the man who gave Stewart Grand Prix its one and only Formula One win. Herbert has never been a fashionable driver in the superficial world of F1. Maybe he lacks the rock star cool of Hill or the playboy image of Irvine. Maybe he would have been better off if he was called Gianni Berti, with dark Latin looks, rather than a plain speaker blessed, or maybe cursed, with eternal Peter Pan youthfulness. He would certainly have been better off if an F3000 accident hadn’t almost crippled him when he was within sight of the big time and being heralded as the brightest prospect of his era, and he would have done better not to have languished in the slowly dying Team Lotus for far too long.

Mr. Herbert is not one to dwell on ifs and buts. Grit and determination are among his strengths and they came to the fore in 1999, when he managed to turn a disastrous season into his best since taking fourth place in the 1995 World Championship. He simply hung in there until his luck changed and kept on fighting. Prom staring redundancy in the face, lie is now facing the 2000 season with renewed confidence. Eddie Irvine might not have to measure himself against Michael Schumacher every day, but Johnny Herbert will be no pushover.

We caught up with the Englishman on a cross-country skiing trip in France. It’s not that difficult: have you seen how slow they go? "I got into it the first year I joined Sauber and I have kept on doing it ever since," said Herbert to clarify if not exactly explain his unusual training methods. "Derek Warwick is a keen cross country skier as well, you know," he added, as though this added to its prestige. "It’s a good workout and unlike downhill skiing, you don’t have the bother of going all the way up the hill again at the end of it! Plus it involves training at altitude which is good." I didn’t like to ask the last time a Grand Prix was run in the snows of Mexico City.

As a driver who seems to be able to shrug off the bad times, Herbert reckoned that 1999 involved riding out the storm until the blue skies began to appear around the mid-season. "At the start of the season I never seemed able to get hold of the car properly, but come Austria we had cured the differential problem and I had a good race, albeit three laps behind everyone else," he recalled with a touch of irony. In truth, he was the innocent victim of a first lap shunt. After limping back to the pits he lost four laps while a new rear wing assembly was fitted and then set second fastest lap as he charged after the field. It was a performance which earned him our Drive of the Day award.

"But it still did not seem to click. At Hockenheim the wing fell off in practice and then I had electronics problems which meant I did hardly any running until qualifying. In the race I got up to fifth before I had transmission problems. At the Nürburgring, I got in front of Rubens (Barrichello) for the first time in qualifying, which was good. It was great to get that win. I remember the difference in my driving before and after I went to the Nürburgring was immense. I was very relaxed and the win gave my confidence a big boost. Malaysia was also a damn good race. The beginning of last year. with so many things going wrong in both testing and the race, was not good for me confidence-wise. But as usual, I dug in to try and achieve something and I was still digging and fighting by the time we got to Nürburgring. Then it finally all came together for me, because I was there where I had to he to pick up the win."

Most people would have bet on Barrichello to give Stewart its first win. He had been with the outfit since Day One and was definitely the darling of the team. Despite this, Johnny is not particularly pleased to see him go. “At the end of the day, I don’t think it helps me that he has gone, because he had done very well all year and was very popular with the team. It hasn’t done me any favours, him leaving, because now they have bought in Eddie (Irvine) after his couple of good years with Ferrari. So, it could be worse for me with Eddie than it was with Rubens because Eddie has had a couple of really strong seasons - especially last season when he almost won the World Championship. You could say that will be a more difficult situation for me, but generally, because I am at a stage where I am very comfortable with everything and everyone, I am driving better than I have ever done."

So what was his first reaction when he heard Eddie was going to be his team-mate?

"I saw it in a positive light." replied Herbert, with just a hint of PR speak. "It was another challenge for me as he was rated highly. I have never been scared of anybody. I have always said, as long as it is a fair fight then I have never had a problem with my team-mate. I enjoy the challenge of trying to beat my team-mate. At the end of the day, all I have to do is get on and do my job. That is all I have to concentrate on and all I will concentrate on. If I can beat Eddie then that will be fantastic. I am working s cry hard on that at the moment. Testing has been going well for me, which is great. I have been working hard on my fitness and that will hopefully pay off by the time we get to Australia. I ended last year driving well in a car that was competitive and that has continued over the winter."

A lot has been made of the fact that Irvine is insisting on power steering, as though there is something sissy about it. The truth is that while Stewart did not use it, most of the top teams do. Herbert has an open mind and is not about to pass up a possible perk just because it was not his idea.

"I’m going to give it a try and see how I get on with it," he said. "There have been some places where I felt that the car was very heavy on steering, but over the year, I probably built up the strength to drive the car like that. But there are some places, like the long corners at Barcelona, where the steering becomes very heavy. It would be better in that situation to have something lighter, that didn’t require so much physical effort, because then it leaves you more energy to put into everything else, including your concentration. As long as you can still feel the car, then power steering is fine. When I first joined Stewart from Sauber, I noticed the steering was much heavier, even though Sauber had no power steering. But heavy is the way Rubens likes it and I gather that is what he has asked for at Ferrari."

Herbert has learned a lot over the years, having reached the point where, with one hundred and forty-five Grands Prix under his belt, he is the second most experienced driver in the sport behind Jean Alesi. The most important lesson he has picked up is that you never in fact stop learning. "You never know everything." he said. "You never reach perfection, because the cars and the technology are changing constantly. You have to keep up with all that technology and to be honest, it is getting more and more difficult. The cars are more difficult to master than they ever have been and that is a function of the way the rules are drawn up. They are more difficult to drive now and that comes mainly from the tyres."

Herbert might not subscribe to the rabid nationalism which has gripped some of his British predecessors, but his team’s name change fur this year is important to him. "To be honest, and I mean this, to have the name Jaguar on the car is something very special to someone who is British," he declared patriotically. "It is a name with the same ring as Ferrari. Even McLaren still hasn’t got that sort of aura and neither has Williams or Benetton. Jaguar has got that special appeal. which you could see from its following in Sports Car Racing. It is the ideal representation of British motor sport and a good marque to be involved with in Formula 1. 1 know that everyone at both Jaguar Racing and Ford are committed to doing the job properly. The good thing is that there is too much at stake to get it wrong and therefore it will have to work. Everyone will be fighting hard and doing everything they can to achieve their targets."

Meeting targets is one thing, but what Jaguar has to do is win races very soon and Championships must follow. There are at least three teams who look more likely to do that this season and Herbert is realistic about the Big Cat’s chances. "Everyone at Jaguar is very much aware of what they have to do. We need the engine consistency displayed by Mercedes and Ferrari and we also need our own wind-tunnel. Realistically that is what we have to do. You have to have at least the same facilities as the top teams. If you can have more, then that is even better. That is the plan for the future, because it ain’t going to happen overnight."

Herbert shares the feeling that runs throughout the team, that their best chance of success might come early in the year. 

"We have had two of this year’s cars running since January and hopefully that should give us an advantage over everybody else which we should be able to carry through to Melbourne," he said. "We have not just made a simple improvement on last year’s car and I guess this car is a significant jump forward from the last one. We won’t know where we stand until we come up against the opposition. McLaren might be slower than last year or they might be a full second quicker. We have to wait and see. They have been the dominant team for a couple of years now, but this sport goes in cycles and eventually the others catch up. Ferrari is in the same boat. Jordan have probably slightly less of a gap to close than we have.

"Although you can have a rough idea about the performance of other cars, until we all get out there on the same piece of road in Melbourne, on the same day and in the same conditions, you cannot have an accurate picture of what to expect."

Jackie Stewart announced at the launch that he would be taking a back seat from now on and there was a flicker of anxiety on the faces of his drivers when he said he would still find time for "driver training." Herbert found it hard not to laugh while he explained what the three-times World Champion still had to offer his current charges. "All I will say about Jackie is that whenever you go testing, Jackie is always watching the track action and he always comes back with comments like, 'It’s doing this, it’s doing that, it’s twitchy and so on,'" began Herbert, picking his words carefully. "That is what he will carry on doing. At the end of the day he is a driver, he still enjoys that side of it and he gets a kick from it. Sometimes it’s useful and sometimes not. You take what you can; retaining the positive and throwing away the negative."

Just like his team-mate, Johnny has race-mad parents who like to he in the thick of it. "My Dad was always there when I was karting. He liked being involved and lie would always be in the garage listening to what was going on," explained Johnny. "These days I try and focus on what I am doing on my own, but my Dad was my mechanic when I first started so this is something he still enjoys. He likes motor sport anyway and obviously he wants the best for me. So whatever he hears, he tells me in the hope it might be useful." 

On the other hand, wife Becky is a very infrequent visitor to the race tracks. "Becky has the kids to look after first of all," said Johnny, proving that not all the rich and famous regard their children as an accessory to be looked after by nannies. "Secondly, she is not a huge fan of just turning up, sitting there and looking pretty outside the motorhome. She doesn’t enjoy it and I would not want to force her to be there. I understand she would rather sit at home and watch the action on television. We have the French digital service (in Monaco) so she can know exactly what is going on, even during the practice sessions. So when I speak to her later in the day, she knows exactly what I have been doing, or haven’t been doing. Becky doesn’t like the limelight."

Herbert’s Estuary vowels sound so archetypically English, it is hard to picture him as a jet-set resident of Monaco, but as with so many of his colleagues, the lure of sun, sea and scarcely any tax proved too attractive. "It is difficult for the kids, because there is not that much for them to do here," he admitted. "They go horse riding and it takes up quite a lot of time, mainly for Becky, but for me also when I am home. It was not just the tax advantaged that made us move here. We also felt it would be good for die girls to experience a different culture and learn a different language as well as meeting people from different countries. The weather was another plus for Monaco when compared to other tax havens like Ireland, the Isle of Man or Jersey. Go there and you might as well stay at home. When we do move back home, we will miss the Monaco weather. I have to say that I love the cold, crisp and sunny English winter days, but you don’t get too many like that."

Herbert certainly has no immediate plans to hang up his helmet and head home for Blighty. "No, no definitely not," he said, quick to deny any suggestion that retirement was an option. "I still feel as though I am twenty something - like 29 maybe! Actually, I still reckon I am a young 20. My body still wants to do it and I don’t have any aches and pains. I am still fired up to do it. If I have a good year this year and have the season I am hoping to have, based on our testing so far which is going well, then I see no reason why I shouldn’t be able to race at 38 or 39. There’s no reason not to, but I’m aware of the fact that it will not be enough just to be here. I will have to produce the goods at the end of the day. I’ve got to be there. I am up against Eddie and 1 have to beat him. I feel that, at the moment, I am driving better than I have done in a long time and I’ve got to keep that going. I am very fired up to do that, both for myself and for the team."

Once a driver hits 35, retirement does loom into view, even if it is only a dot on the horizon, but Herbert has not bothered getting his future mapped out just yet. "I reckon I still have a few more years as a driver, but then it will be time to see how I I eel about a challenge somewhere else," he reflected. "I think I will always be in racing, because I love it. So it will have to be something that is racing orientated, but it will never be managing a race team. I think that would be too intense and would stop me from spending more time with the family, which would have to be the priority."

For the moment, Johnny Herbert is too fired up at the prospect of Formula 1 Y2K style to even think that far ahead. "It’s still great fun," he enthused. "You still get a kick out of it every time you get in the car, especially when things go well and you feel you have driven well. Even if you have not finished in a top position, as long as you feel you have driven well, then you can still get satisfaction from that - but of course, getting a good result is the best feeling of all." 

Fans of British Racing Green will be hoping Johnny gets that feeling pretty damn soon.