#oops-a-daisy

The reasons there are few videos of Fisichella doing great stuff (and some do exist, though copyright forbids me from linking to them) are the facts that he does his races quietly and has a tidy driving style. None of JPM's wheel-locking or massive slides are in evidence unless Fisi's having a really bad day, and it's always more difficult for a camera person to convey excitement when there is no feeling that the driver is out of control. While keeping just the right side of that boundary in a dramatic way is commendable and fan-attracting, the smoother, quieter method usually generates more race speed from the car.

It's no accident that the only top-level drivers using the just-in-control driving styles are Juan Pablo Montoya, Jacques Villenueve and Fernando Alonso. Montoya got it to semi-work in a rather understeery McLaren and messy Williams, Villenueve's not managed to co-operate properly with a car since he went to BAR and Fernando Alonso has created a new variant of just-in-control driving that nobody else has yet managed to emulate.

Picking a single definitive race is tricky because Fisi has had so many really good races. Taking just those races starting from when I paid particular attention to Giancarlo's races, anything from the the start of 2001 through to about two-thirds of the way through 2003 (apart from Malaysia 2003), USA 2003, anything in 2004 after about race three except Monaco, Australia 2005, Canada 2005, the last third of 2005, Malaysia 2006, the American leg of 2006 and the last third of 2006 will show elements of why Giancarlo is in the top 5 drivers and has been for a long time. Simply because he doesn't have ten fifteen-second-long race incidents that summarise the true scope of his ability the way Juan Pablo or any other "just-in-control" driver will have doesn't mean there is nothing to summarise. Though if I had to pick the one that best shows why Fisi is better than JPM, it would be Brazil 2003. Notwithstanding the rain factor, there was also the part where the notoriously unreliable Ford in the back of Fisichella's car had been sounding slightly off since about lap 49. However Giancarlo got the car past the red flag before the engine finally blew up. Not only would Juan Pablo not won the 2003 race, he would have induced a technical retirement. However, the cameras missed most of Giancarlo's race as they were too busy keeping up with spinners at Turn 3 and Raikkonen passing everyone except Fisi.

This also helps to explain the video situation, as having a few widely-recognised key situations forming the videos is the quickest way of building up search ranking. That helps explain why JPM's best-known incidents are always going to be very high on the video search list.

As for the the part about it being only legend that the driver must make the team work, it's a fact. Everyone in a group has to support everyone else in the group to succeed, and teams are no different. Simply because teams are usually predisposed to helping their drivers and Ron Dennis clearly hadn't recruited Juan Pablo to be an "after you, Claude" No. 2, doesn't mean that Juan Pablo didn't need to do any work to maintain that. From the F1 Racing September 2006 article, Juan never took any time to gel with the McLaren team setup, which apparently was causing trouble long before the tennis incident. Juan should have known fitting in would take work and if he wasn't prepared to do it, he should have found another berth for 2005 (there would have been plenty open to him at that point on the open market!)

That is why I hold Juan largely responsible for his having to leave McLaren in the first place. In fact this is the second time it's happened, with Juan Pablo unable to co-operate with Williams enough to extend his original contract there either. The fact that he chose the timing of his leavetaking is great, but surely it's better to do what Fisi did and put some effort into nurturing the team that's giving you the car? That's why the Renault people have bent over backwards to protect Fisi where necessary when McLaren would do no more than it usually did to protect Montoya when he erred.

Team building may not be a major factor in driver ranking, but when the raw speed statistics do not help separate Juan Pablo and Giancarlo very much, and the differences in results almost entirely attributable to cars rather than drivers, then things like the ability to become a No. 1 in a team suddenly play a major role in the decision.

It's worth saying that in the olden days when cars ran close to each other, these skills were still necessary - it was simply that they were taken more for granted because the whole motorsport community was closer-knit back then - in fact the drivers had to do more back then to get into their teams' good books. Do you think it was an accident that a lot of the drivers back then had some background as a mechanic before reaching F1?