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By Giorgio Piola of Grand Prix International (1981)
The hour of revenge very nearly struck at Long Beach for Riccardo Patrese, Formula 1´s unloved son. It is a revenge for which this young man from Padua has been waiting ever since the end of 1978. It was a year that began promisingly, with a remarkable run in first place at Kyalami soon to be followed in Sweden by a second place fought with an on-form Ronnie Peterson. But the season was to end in the drama of the accident at Monza for which the F1 barons like Lauda, Hunt, Andretti and Scheckter were quick to declare Patrese responsible. From that moment onwards, both in the eyes of his peers and those of the public, Riccardo Patrese became a "dangerous" driver It was a reputation which his conduct in races (and several accidents) has been unable to repair. What´s more, Riccardo undoubtedly has the most unfathomably difficult character of any of the present F1 drivers. There is also the question of the judicial problems which the Arrows team - for which he was and still is the number one driver - encountered when sued by Shadow (resulting in a decision which upheld the Shadow charge of plagiarism). Yet Patrese is the first to admit his faults in his relations both with the press and with his fellow F1 drivers. "It´s quite true," he confesses. "that I have very few friends in the sport. I´m a closed person, and people have a tendency to confuse this with aggressivity when in fact I´m really a very shy person." "I don´t like to be in crowd. What I like best after a race is to go home and lock myself up with my electric trains. You may think that sounds a bit childish for a Formula 1 driver, but I have more than 60 model locomotives. It´s a hobby that I share with my brother, who´s an engineer. Our ambition one day is to have our full-size electric train." "So much for the unknown side of my life. But in racing, to succeed you must be really tough, not just with competitors but with yourself. It´s one of the rules of the game. On the other hand, my most important personal quality is my stubborness. If, psychologically, I have succeeded in overcoming the various difficulties which I have encountered in my driving career, I owe it all to my strength of character."
But Patrese´s character has forced him into mistakes several times during his career: "I didn´t know enough to grab three great opportunities which were offered to me at various periods. The first was when I turned down an offer to follow Alan Jones, my then team mate at Shadow, into the Williams team as his number 2. Alan was very persuasive, but I just couldn´t raise any faith in the Williams team as it then was." "The second time was when I was offered a place at Brabham to be Niki Lauda´s number 2. I wasn´t keen to play second fiddle to Niki, and anyway I was still hoping to join Ferrari. To any driver, especially if he´s Italian, it´s a dream to get an invitation to go to Ferrari. They spoke to me after Kyalami in 1978, but they never followed it through with an offer. It´s a matter of history now, it´s in the past. But I want the truth to come out, because Ferrari put out rumours that my financial demands were unacceptable. That is entirely false. You hardly consider the cash side when you´re asked to drive for Ferrari. In fact, I believe that they had decided they didn´t want an Italian driver in the team." Throughout the winter of 1980/81, Patrese had great difficulty in finding the right F1 place. Now he´s proved his point with a brilliant run in first place at Long Beach. "After five years and 50 Grands Prix, it hurts your ego not to receive a single F1 proposal. I had the feeling that I was being overlooked and rejected. My pole position is a was of demonstrating to those who had no confidence in me. Last year I went through a very tough period. The team was making absolutely no progress with the car, relations among the management were deteriorating fast, an then all our problems were topped by the decision by the sponsor (Warsteiner) to pull out." It was during the 1980 season that Tony Southgate, the chief engineer at Arrows, left the team. "I have always had a good relationship with Tony. But in spite of my admiration for his abilities, it has to be said that he made a lot of modifications without much in the way of results. Still, by getting rid of Southgate we forced ourselves to jump into the unknown. I had only worked with his deputy, Dave Wass, in 1977, when Tony was looking after Alan Jones´car. Last year, though, Wass´analysis of the situation fitted in with the opinions that Jochen Mass and I had about the car." The way that Arrows MD Jack Oliver tells it, the story of the team´s change of engineer would have a theatre audience weeping in the aisles: "Dave had always been number two to Tony Southgate. He would often tell me that there were things he would like to try on the car, or that he thought it was a mistake to change something else. But Southgate was the chief engineer. Dave felt slightly humiliated and last year he said that he wanted to leave the team. We had to make a choice then between Southgate and him. I hope very much that Alan Rees and I have made the right decision, because we have given him the opportunity to show what he can do. It´s the chance of a lifetime for Dave. We hope that he´s worthy of it" Like Patrese, Dave Wass suffers from shyness. But the resemblance stops there. The team´s new engineer is affable and concerned. "I think that Riccardo suffers from not being approached in the right way," he says. "Initially I had my own doubts about his character, but now that I´ve been able to get his confidence we are working together in perfect harmony. The problem which had us stuck in 1980 was understeer: when I took over the technical department at Arrows, I made some major changes to the rear suspension to make the car´s handling more balanced."
"I admit that I was worried at the start of this season," he says. "I was concerned that I might find myself in the same position as last year. We now have a chance of putting together a successful season." "But don´t try to imagine that I have got back my taste for racing. That would be wrong, because I never lost it. Now, with the skirts banned, the driver is going to become the most important factor in the team once again. I am sure that with the help of the people in our team I can take over the full role of a leader. I think that Arrows will stay in front when we get to South America. After that, other teams will be presenting new cars, and I am worried that our finances are still rather limited. Even more than usual, the first few races of this new season constitute transitional events. I was particularly impressed by the Ferraris. With their turbo engines, they won´t be racing in the same class as us." "As for the question about my character having changed, I do not think I am the right person to reply. I do think that I am becoming more outgoing. That´s all thanks to Jochen Mass, who was my team mate at Arrows for two years. There is no better teacher than Jochen when it comes to learning how to enjoy the pleasures of life and overcome one´s shyness! He´s an expert in the subject. We have become extremely good friends, in fact I now regard him as an elder brother." Before the start of the race at Long Beach, almost as if he had received a strange forewarning of the disappointment he was to suffer, Patrese seemed to feel that he would be quite happy with his pole position alone. But when he was forced to give up his lead and pull into the pits with fuel feed trouble, having put up a tremendous show against both Williams, he was entitled to the gesture with his helmet which indicated his frustration: "everything was going well. If I had felt that I was unable to hold off Reutemann under pressure, I would have let him overtake immediately, in order to attack him later on. But the machinery let me down. I´m not sure whether I´m supposed to be happy or whether I should go off and have a good cry. I´ve had enough compliments and slaps on the back, after leading the Grand Prix in ´78 at Kyalami. I just wonder if I shall ever again have the opportunity which slipped away from me today..."
© Grand Prix International Magazine - Article added in January 20 2007 (Magazine from my personal collection)
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Patrese
does not like to drag up his own memories of what happened at Monza. When
the question is raised, though, he does not hesitate: "my conscience is
clear. If it were not, that race would have broken me. The whole business
is going to be finally decided by a court hearing which will take place in
Italy this year. I am relieved. All the doubts will be settled at last."
In
Formula 1 there tends to be a cult following of the so-called "technical
geniuses." This does not sit well with Wass, a dedicated anti-star status
engineer. "I prefer a designer like Patrick Head, whose success is due
to the excellence of his detail work, rather than the spetacular
innovators who like to follow Chapman school of thought. From time to time
they open the door on a major innovation but they never seem to carry it
through to its ultimate, and often they end up by being beaten by their
own inventions." To tell the truth, Patrese´s pole position is not so
much significant insofar as its driver´s abilities are concerned as for
the fact that it marks the resurgence of a car which seemed to have go
stuck among the midfield worthies of Formula 1. Indeed, the most important
thing which occurred at Long Beach may prove to be what happened to
Patrese´s personal character. At the age of 26, he seems to have undergone
a metamorphosis: he has apparently given up his Buster Keaton gloominess,
for there are those who will swear to having seen him smile.
