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By Mathias Brunner of Autosport (1988)It isn´t very often that Murray Walker is lost for words. There is, however, one memorable occasion when poor Murray was utterly speechless. It was the Monaco Grand Prix of 1982 and Alain Prost was cruising to victory in his Renault. And then, in the closing laps, the French car slid out of control and crashed heavily on the waterfront. Riccardo Patrese took the lead in his Brabham. Half a lap later he had spun at the Station Hairpin. Didier Pironi´s Ferrari and the Alfa of Andrea de Cesaris both ran out of fuel on the last lap. "It´s incredible!" shrieked Murray, "Derek Daly is in the lead." As he spoke the cameras zoomed in on the Irishman as he climbed out of his wrecked Williams. Murray had been silenced. Through it all came Patrese, his car bump started from a dangerous position, to score his first Grand Prix victory. Five years before that victory Riccardo had made an impressive Formula 1 debut on the streets of the Principality at the wheel of a Shadow DN8. Somehow he had never managed to translate that obvious early potential into a victory. And yet, despite Riccardo´s joy, the many visiting Italian fans did not join the celebrations. A year later at Imola, Riccardo was leading the San Marino GP. He had driven strongly all day. He had been delayed by a pit stop and had charged back to retake the lead. As he moved past Patrick Tambay´s Ferrari the tifosi at Tosa jeered and spat. A few hundred yards further up the track, at Acque Minerale, the Brabham slid off the road into the barriers. Riccardo was left sitting in the car, listening to his compatriots cheering his demise. As he walked back to the pits they showed him a famous Latin gesture which you only use if you can run very fast or if you have an outstanding dentist... Why? Well, Riccardo had been driving a British car. An Eskimo or a Chinaman will be greeted as a long lost son if he drives a Ferrari, but an Italian in a British car, to the tifosi, is no longer an Italian. At Rio de Janeiro on April 03 Patrese will start his 12th season of Grand Prix racing. If he takes part in all the events on the calendar he will draw level with Graham Hill´s record of Grand Prix starts in Adelaide in November. For 10 of those 12 seasons, Riccardo will have driven for British teams, a strange statistic for a Latin driver. "It just happened that way," he explains. "I had started in Formula 3 with Chevron, so there was never any problem adapting to the British way of thinking about racing. I like the British approach. They work until the job is done and then they go home. In other countries they stop for lunch; they stop in the evening because of union rules. The British go on working until everything is as it should be. I really admire that." Patrese had enjoyed a meteoric career in motorsport, arriving in Formula 1 at the age of 24, having won the World Karting Championship, both the Italian and European F3 titles at his first attempt, and half a season in F2 with Chevron-BMWs. Fellow-countryman and millionaire Franco Ambrosio gave him the opportunity to join the Shadow F1 team alongside Alan Jones. "The step from F2 to F1 was not that hard," he remembers. "It became more difficult when the turbo era began in Grand Prix racing." At the beginning of 1978 the Shadow team split and a group of the Shadow men formed the new Arrows team. Patrese went with them. It was a time of great disappointments and some awful moments. "We had a hell of a team and a great time together," recalls Patrese. "Our greatest fault was that we were inconsistent. We had a fantastic car at Kyalami where we lost what looked like a certain victory just a few laps from the end, and that with a brand new car." Riccardo talks of the highs and lows, but doesn´t mention that other drivers might well have given up. The engine failure in South Africa was a bitter disappointment. Then Arrows was forced to change its chassis overnight after Shadow won a court case with the team over the design of the car. "Having to change a car in the middle of a season is hard for any Formula 1 team," he says. "But especially for a new team as we were. We had an almost perfect car before the court case and just a normal one after that. It wasn´t good enough to win races" And then came Monza and the horrible accident which claimed the life of Ronnie Peterson. "Monza? In my heart I always knew I was not to blame for the crash. That gave me a great deal of personal strength." It was a kind of courage needed to sustain the young Grand Prix driver. "I guess that many drivers would have broken sometime in that period," he says. "Nobody can imagine what was going on in my head, being treated as guilty for something I had not done. For four years I had to ask myself the same question: Am I a killer? All the time I knew deep-down that I was not, but it was almost too much to bear." "After Monza the other drivers wanted to teach me a lesson," he says with some bitterness. "They said it was nothing to do with Monza, but because of other encounters with me on the track. They said I needed to calm down a little, that I was trying too hard. Anyway, they wouldn´t let me race at Watkins Glen which was a shame - and very wrong."
For a young driver it was a terrible period to live through. The crash, the bad press, the suspension at Watkins Glen and then the trial which, incredibly, went on for four years. "In Italy," he says, "these things take time. I got the reputation of being a dangerous driver, and when the trial finally ended and I was found to be completely innocent, almost no-one noticed. The crowds seemed to be more interested in a killer than in an innocent man..." "Being treated like that, I tried to protect myself with a wall of arrogance. I was also a very shy person which increased the opinion that I was a harsh and unfriendly man. It didn´t make me very popular." "When I was finally declared innocent, I felt a huge weight being lifted from my shoulders. I felt free again. Today, I am a very different person. I know my limitations and I am much more easy-going than before." Throughout this time Riccardo stayed with the Arrows team, but there were few results. "We had what were supposed to be technically revolutionary cars cars," he explains, "but they were - hmm, let´s say - a little bit too revolutionary..." "Bernie Ecclestone wanted me to join Brabham for 1978, but he wanted me to sign a three-year contract. At that time Ferrari was interested as well, so I signed for another year with Arrows, hoping to move to Maranello the year after." "At home I have a letter from Ferrari telling me that I would drive a Ferrari in 1979. Then they told me I should wait for another year and that everything would fall into place for 1980. Then they said the same about 1981..." Throughout the period, hoping to be picked up by Ferrari, Riccardo remained at Arrows. The 1981 season started well with Patrese putting his Arrows-Cosworth A3 on pole position around the streets of Long Beach. He led the Williams FW07s of Carlos Reutemann and Alan Jones in the early laps and then the car began to misfire, and finally retired. It was another crushing disappointment. The potential was clearly there and it was followed up by a third place in Brazil and second at Imola. And then the season fell to pieces. "As long as we had Michelin tyres, we were competitive," he explains. "In the mid-season Goodyear arrived and Michelin decided to supply its best tyres to only a handful of teams. Arrows was not in that exclusive club, so we switched to Pirelli which were too new to be good." At the end of the year Riccardo joined Brabham. "We were more a family than a Formula 1 team. I had a fantastic time with Nelson Piquet and finally I won a race." Next came the dreadful mistake at Imola, but at the end of the year he drove beautifully to win the South African GP at Kyalami. That same day Nelson Piquet won the World Championship for the team. In Formula 1 racing it is a very short trip from the top of the heap to the bottom and, leaving Brabham, he joined Euroracing Alfa, which turned into a disaster. It seemed that the team had the motto: Today we are at the edge. Tomorrow we will take a step forward... "I joined Euroracing for sentimental reasons," he explains. "I imagined that as an Italian driver I could lead an Italian team with Italian engine to success. Euroracing and Alfa never managed to put things together." Riccardo, and his team mate Eddie Cheever, struggled to score 11 points in 1984 and the next year they failed to score a single top six finish. It was back to Brabham at the end of 1985. Out of the frying pan and into the fire...
"In terms of morale," explains Riccardo, "this was the low point of my career. We went on working, but we were all in a state of shock. Never before had I had the urge not to race. It was a stupid death, unexpected and cruel." The team struggled on, but the car was not a success and, at the end of the year, designer Gordon Murray left to join Mc Laren. The new BT56 was introduced, but the new F1 regulations, restricting power with a pop-off valve, strangled the 4-cylinder BMW. Despite this, Riccardo plugged away behind the mighty Williams, Mc Laren, Ferrari and Ayrton Senna´s Lotus. "It would have been a better season if BMW hadn´t finished its development programme," he says. "We had the 1986 engines with a 4-bar pop-off. We wouldn´t have won any races, but I would have been better placed in the championship than 13th." At the end of last year Patrese had his first taste of things to come, joining the Williams team at Adelaide, in place of the injured Nigel Mansell. "The Williams chassis is very good," he explains, "and the Honda engine was a dream come true: powerful and reliable." Having driven one of the most powerful Formula 1 engines ever - the unrestricted BMW turbo - does Riccardo not feel it is an anti-climax to be looking ahead to a season with a Judd normally-aspirated V8? "No, I don´t think so," he replies. "Sure, in the beginning everything seems to happen very slowly and you find yourself waiting for the big power to come in, but that never happens. After a few laps, you realise that you are still in a true Formula 1 car. A good Grand Prix driver will have no trouble adjusting himself to the change in power levels. We are going back in time a little. Once again it is important to have a good chassis, but now a slower driver can no longer hide his inability to find a good balance by simply increasing the power. The racing will still be fun. It doesn´t matter so much if you have 1200bhp or 650 bhp. We will be later on the brakes and faster in the corners than the turbo cars, so it won´t be that boring!" For Riccardo, the switch to normally-aspirated engines is the correct one for FISA to have made. "The turbo cars were far too quick and they caught fire very easily. FISA´s decision was for safety reasons and I welcome anything that increases safety. It will also be closer than before, so it is more interesting for the drivers - and the spectators..." Joining Williams came as a great opportunity for the Italian, but it was not a new idea. "Frank Williams offered me a car twice before," he explains. "At the end of 1977, I decided to join the new Arrows team and then, at the start of 1982, I had already signed for Brabham when Frank asked me. To be in the same team as Nigel Mansell is a great motivation for me. Everyone considers him as a very strong driver, so it will be quite clear what the situation is if I am faster!" "But speed is not everything. Look at Nelson Piquet. A lot of times he wasn´t as quick as Nigel, but he is the World Champion. From time to time it is not enough just to be fast. Nigel and I are not very close, but we will get to know each other better driving for the same team. I really hope we can work in the same direction. That will be the key to success. We must create a good relationship to get Williams as near as possible to the turbos, and hopefully ahead of them." In his 12 seasons Riccardo has had a lot of very different team mates: champions and losers, those who were difficult to deal with and ones who became friends. Which ones stand out? "Jochen Mass, who was with me at Arrows, became a really close friend and Nelson was always fun to be with - away from the track. He is a driver who pulls a team around him and it is though to look good as number two to Nelson. I always got along well with Alan Jones (Shadow) and Rolf Stommelen (Arrows)" "On the other hand, I had some problems with Siegfried Stohr and Eddie Cheever. I never figured Stohr out and we never became friends. Eddie has a character all of his own. Perhaps we were too close when we were at Euroracing. Today we get on fine. Let me put it this way: I would go out to dinner with Eddie, no problem; but I don´t think I would have dinner with Stohr." "It´s no secret that I wasn´t too happy with Bernie Ecclestone when he told me Andrea de Cesaris would be my team mate last year. At Zandvoort in ´83 Andrea jumped out of his car and rushed up to me and began to fight. He thought I had blocked him, which was not true. Then I was with Lancia in the World Endurance Championship and Andrea came along to one race as a guest driver. He had no F1 drive at the time, having lost the Ligier after crashing too many cars and getting fired. In the endurance race we were running in third and fourth places and he ran me off the road." "At Brabham I had the impression that Andrea was still very fiery, but when he realised he would have to work with me, he apologised for all the old things. I didn´t like that because before that he hadn´t given a damn..." Two Grand Prix victories in 11 seasons is not too good a record. How does he feel about that?
"You need a lot of luck in this sport, but I´m a happy man. I don´t complain about my destiny. Being here, after 11 years, is the greatest success for me." "Becoming the most experienced Grand Prix driver is not important. You never know. You shouldn´t think so far ahead..." A week after the championship ended last year the Williams team was out testing an evolution car in torrential rain. The team is still hungry for success and Riccardo too is still hungry despite his 11 seasons. At the end of last year, his dry sense of humour shone through one particular remark. "In 1987 the npçumber two at Williams was faster than the number one," he said. "I think we will continue that tradition next year." At 33 years of age, the ambition still burns strongly. Long may it continue.
© Autosport - Article added in January 20 2007 (Magazine from my personal collection)
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"None
of the drivers ever had the guts to tell me, but for many I was the killer
of Ronnie Peterson. Remember what happened the following year, remember
the final laps of the French Grand Prix at Dijon between René Arnoux and
Gilles Villeneuve. None said they should be punished for dangerous driving,
but I was a danger on the track."
Brabham
launched the revolutionary BT55 and, although he always drove strongly,
Riccardo, more often than not, found himself walking back to the pits in
the races, the lay-down BMW unit failing to be reliable. And then came
Elio de Angelis´ testing accident at Paul Ricard.
"You
can´t really put it that way. I´m getting ready for my 12th consecutive
season in the most demanding racing series. That means something. To
become a member of a top team like Williams after all these years is a
great satisfaction. It proves that someone likes the way I work. I don´t
think I made any major mistakes in my career decisions. Sure, with
hindsight, you can say it was wrong to join Euroracing, but after the
event you can always be a wise man. All the decisions seemed to be the
right ones at the time I made them. Maybe I shouldn´t have waited so long
for Ferrari, but show me an Italian and I´ll show you somebody who dreams
of driving for Maranello..."
