By Paul Haney
From the Chapman Report - August 1988

I had a frequent flyer pass this spring, so I decided I could afford to go to the Detroit Grand Prix. I had seen Formula One races at Long Beach, Las Vegas, and Dallas, but had never been to the Motor City. Since I've been writing race reports and articles for "The Wheel" and "Sports Car Magazine", it turned out I was able to finagle a Press Pass.

Through the efforts of John Kelly, publisher of "The Wheel", the monthly newspaper of the San Francisco Region of the Sports Car Club of America, I was able to attend the Detroit Grand Prix with a press pass. I hung out in the media room eating the free food, was snubbed by the French journalists, attended the press conferences (where the drivers, notably Senna, snubbed the press), watched the closed circuit TV, and attended the Foster's Barbie. I had a great time, met some new people, saw some people from the GGLC, and rubbed elbows with motoring personalities. And, yes, I saw some racing.

I also had a surprise conversation with the President of Lotus, Mike Kimberly (see accompanying article). It's amazing how one's life can be affected by wearing the right hat.

1988 Formula One Season
Those of you who have been following Formula One racing this year know that the Mclaren-Honda team has won eight straight races. Ayrton Senna (ex-Lotus pilot) and Alain Prost are completely dominating F1 racing. Some, maybe most, of the credit should go to Honda, whose turbocharged V-6 motor is surely the most powerful and, more importantly, the most fuel efficient. But Lotus has the same engine and is nowhere near being competitive.

This is a transition year for F1, the last year for the 1.5 litre turbocharged engines with limited fuel. Some teams have decided to begin development of motors designed for next years rules. Honda has continued to fund current engine development and so are dominating 1988.

Next year the engine formula is 3.5 litre, 12 cylinders or less, normally aspirated, running on gasoline, and no limit on consumption. They mean cylinders too-round ones is what the rules say. This rules addition was prompted by rumors last year that Honda was working on an engine that had a complex piston cross-section, supposedly to allow more valve area for a given displacement.

To give you an idea of what it takes to dominate F1 racing, lets talk some numbers. Ron Dennis, McLaren Managing Director said in a TV interview that they have "about 160 people" employed in their company. "Honda has about the same," he added. Gordon Murray, the McLaren chassis designer, has 10 designers and draftsman working for him alone. $30 million is the estimated McLaren annual budget versus $50 million for the Honda F1 engine project.

Friday
After I picked up my credentials, I dawdled in the media room over coffee and danish. There was a 20 foot long table loaded with promotional literature from the various sponsors and teams. A slick (literally) brochure from Lotus spoke about a possible "Hat Trick". Senna won the two previous Detroit GPs for Lotus. I brought back some extra copies of the brochure that I shared with GGLC members at the July meeting.

I got out to the track a little after ten o'clock, just as the first practice was beginning. As I was walking out toward Turn 1, I came upon Piquet's Lotus sitting against the Armco between Turns 2 and 3. It had a crunched front corner and a huge camera mounted over the roll bar. The report was that he had made contact with another car on his first lap on the track. The workers brought up a crane and lifted it up over the fence clear of the track. Not an auspicious beginning.

When I finally made it to Turn 1, it was no surprise that I met Jerry Bassler and Kathie Hansen. Jerry is a long-time GGLC member and has owned almost 30 Lotus cars, both street and racecars. Kathie must like racing too because she's always there as companion or pit crew.

High-tech Pit
I was standing in front of the Lotus pits after the Sunday morning warmup, two hours before the start of the race. Two men in Honda uniforms were dangling off each of the three Lotus (Piquet, Nakajima, backup). One was an engineer in shorts and a short sleeve shirt. The other, a technician, wore coveralls. The technician did nothing during the hour I watched except tweak the fasteners and hose clamps on the engine. He went over the engine repeatedly. Each time he would tighten and then slightly loosen each fastener or clamp. Very carefully! There were at least a dozen Honda men in the Lotus pit with an equal number in the McLaren pit next door.

When a motor was fired up, several of these engineers were in attendance. One did nothing but hold a digital readout device for the engineer who was controlling the throttle. The cold motor was not "blipped" up and down in rpm like all of us amateurs do it. The engine rpm was controlled at specific levels so the numbers on the readout could be stabilized and compared to desired values.

You wouldn't believe the computers in use by the Honda guys. The cars have instrumentation that gathers engine information and transmits it continually to the receivers and computers in the pits. The engineers know temperatures, fuel consumption, anything they want all the time while the car is on the course. We even heard a rumor that, due to a satellite link, Honda engineers in Japan have the same data as the engineers Detroit-simultaneously.

That's a far cry from the pits at Sears Point where a lot of racers don't even know if the motor is running lean or fat. It's grid time. Do you know where your ignition timing is?

Ayrton Senna On Track
Senna has been the fastest qualifier at the first six events this year. He's won four. It would have been five, but he hit the Armco while leading by almost a minute at Monaco. In the rain at Silverstone he outclassed every other driver. Too bad he's not still at Lotus.

Watching up close and personal, you can see why Senna is considered the best of the current drivers. Mainly, he's smooth. Other cars jiggle and slide. You can hear the engine note change as some drivers are on and off the throttle in the corners. But not Senna's, he's smooth as a baby's butt.

I found a couple of places where I could stand very close to the Armco barriers. The drivers negotiated turns 1 and 2 as a 180 degree left of constant radius. I was able to stand inside a fence that was the thickness of the Armco, about eight inches, from the track. I spent the entire first F1 practice session in this area, moving around to different parts of the turn. The fastest drivers (Senna, Piquet, Prost, Mansell) put their tires inches (two, not six) from the barrier everywhere around the curve. More conservative or less experienced drivers left feet between them and the Armco.

Senna comes closer to the Armco than any other driver. In fact, when I looked at the lap times after the first qualifying session on Friday afternoon; it seemed to me, as I went down the sheet, that there was a direct correlation between close to the barrier and fast lap time. Senna was fastest with a 1:40.606. Prost was second in the first qualifying session at 1:42.019. In the second session Berger, in a Ferrari, turned a 1:41.464 for second on the grid. Senna didn't have to go faster so he didn't.

The Lotus "Hat-trick" had a snow-balls chance. Even with the same engine as the McLarens, the best Piquet could do was eigth on the grid with a 1:43.314 in the second session. That's almost three seconds slower than Senna. Nakajima didn't qualify, he wasn't fast enough.

The Barbie
Being in the media room was fun too. There were at least 200 people milling around in there. It was well organized with closed circuit television, phones, and facilities for direct satellite feed for radio and TV journalists. There was food:danish and coffee in the morning, salads and cold cuts at lunch. Fosters passed out "oil cans" of beer but you couldn't drink in the media room.

With TV coverage in the media room and a constant flow of legal-sized bulletins from the media services staff, the journalists didn't really have to venture out among the rabble. I think some of them sit around and interview each other.

Fosters sponsored a "Barbie" Friday evening for all journalists. The TV talking heads were there: Chris Economaki, David Hobbs, Ken Squier, and John Bisagnati. Ex-F1 champ Alan Jones was there also. When I got home and watched the tape of the race, I learned that Jones was the color announcer with Economaki and somebody else forgettable.

The Race On Tape
I was amazed at how boring the race was when I watched that tape. The last two thirds of the race was a procession. The announcers had to work hard to have something to talk about. They would have been "Up Close And Personal" all over Prost's mother if they could have found her. Mansell turning his cap around sideways during his "what happened to put you out?" interview was the highlight of the second half of the race.

There were several good reasons why the TV race was boring. First Senna just ran away with it. There were only a few passes for position. Second, the track surface deteriorated badly. Someday someone will notice that Trans-Am cars (they raced Saturday afternoon) will tear up any but the best asphalt surface. It takes six months to a year for asphalt to cure well enough to take that kind of abuse.

In some corners only the racing line was clean. When a hot tire got into the marbles outside of this line, the loose rocks pressed into the hot rubber and stayed there until worn away. The coefficient of friction between rock and road is not as good as between rubber and road. The drivers said it took several laps for this stuff to wear off the tires enabling them to return to normal cornering speeds. Unwilling to pay this penalty for an off-line pass, the drivers just got in line through the corners and waited for a chance at an easy pass on a straight.

There is no room for runoff at Detroit. Like most street courses, there is nothing but concrete barriers lining the track. In areas of likely impact there are, of course, banded stacks of tires. But any little miscue means a bent car. So, about 20 laps into the race, with the outcome mostly established; there should be no surprise when the racing stops in favor of survival. What you saw then was a defensive procession.

Television always tries to distill an event down to a manageable story. The TV people don't know enough about racing to let the spectacle speak for itself. They think everything needs an explanation. Unfortunately, it's like a Witch Doctor explaining a Solar Eclipse.

TV producers try to simplify any event. They try to present background, a beginning, a middle, an end, and a wrap-up. It's like the southern preacher said, accounting for his pulpit success, "First I tells 'em what I'm gonna tell 'em. Then I tells 'em. An then I tells 'em what I told 'em."

Unfortunately, the middle of the Detroit race was a fifty lap procession, an hour and a half, of nothing. So they babbled.

Being there
Since I was out in the middle of it, I saw a rich spectacle. I watched the start of the race in the Turn 1/2 area and then walked down to Turn 3. The cars were bunched during the first 10 laps and there was some passing on braking going into Turn 3. The Ferraris seemed to be making a race of it with Berger and Alboreto splitting Senna and Prost at the start. But Prost passed them both on the sixth lap. Berger was out with a flat tire shortly after that. The McLarens were never challenged again.

I didn't know the race was boring! I walked around the course, watching the cars go by, listening to the various, glorious noises. Occasionally, I heard some commentary over the PA system.

Continuing around the course, I stopped at Turn 4 for a while. Most of the workers on that corner were from SF Region. My media pass got me into the area inside Turn 6. This is a high speed sweeping left with a blind apex. During Saturday's practice session, Stefano Modena hit the wall at Turn 6 so hard that one of the concrete barrier units cracked in the middle. The damaged barrier was replaced in less than 30 minutes. I was impressed.

The fans, of course, are part of the show too. The hot, muggy weather encouraged skimpy clothing and exposed a lot of female flesh. At one of my favorite viewing locations some security guys were heckling a scantily clad young lady in the stands in hopes that she would share with them some intimate parts of her anatomy. She was teasing them by acting like she was willing to doff a part other checkered-flag bikini outfit. The guys got more and more excited. Finally, she pulled down the checkered bottom only to reveal a relatively modest pair of matching checkered panties. The guys were very disappointed and she got a great laugh.

When the F1 cars exit Turn 7 they go up through the gears into fifth to about 140 mph before braking for Turn 8, a 90 degree left. This is a favorite passing area and another place where I could stand right next to the Armco very close to the cars. I kept telling myself it was safe, but the noise and speed of the plus the scant inches between them and my flesh was actually frightening.

About mid-way in the race I walked back to turn 4 and discovered that I had missed Piquet's spin and retirement. His Lotus was sitting there all alone. I took some photos and walked on toward the pits. I watched the cars go through the high-speed chicane before the pits. The drivers exit speed here determines the top speed on the following straight. Again Senna and Prost were the smoothest and most precise through here.

The Brazilian fans were already beginning to celebrate Senna's apparent victory. They danced around, shouting and chanting, waving Brazilian flags and spilling more beer than they drank. These fans didn't just come to watch. They believe in being a part of the spectacle.

Back in the Media World
I have to admit I watched the last 20 laps on the tube in the media room. I was tired and hot and finally had enough racing, at least for that weekend.

We elite journalists were served hotdogs after the race while waiting for the podium trio to come for their post-race interview. We watched on the closed-circuit tube while they were interviewed in several languages. Ever the arrogant chauvinist, Chris Economaki groused on the air about his having to share the winners with the rest of the world.

Alas, only the third place finisher, Thierry Boutsen showed up to talk to the press. There were dire mutterings around the room about Senna and Prost harming "The Sport". While waiting for seconds in the hotdog line, I commented to my colleagues that I didn't blame Senna and Prost for their absence. Why, I asked, should they have to come here and answer questions that were usually trite and sometimes really dumb? I'm sure they thought I was a gate-crasher. I think the press people take themselves a little too seriously. Maybe it's the free food!