James B wrote:
Anyone able to share that Autosport Plus "what ifs" article? Based on the sub-heading, it sounds like they pinched some of my ideas
Quote:
he 1000-race history of the world championship has been the stage for some of the most legendary battles ever seen in motorsport - but history turns on some key events and decisions, so what might have happened had the coin-toss of history come down as tails instead of heads on some of those occasions?
As part of our celebration of the landmark Chinese Grand Prix, we've picked out five times when history forked in one direction, but had it gone the other things could have been very different.
Moss versus Clark
The Stirling Moss-Jim Clark battle is one of the great motorsport fights that never happened. Clark was just about to get into his stride when Moss, then the undisputed best in the world, suffered his career-ending crash at Goodwood in 1962. But what if he had walked away from that accident on April 23?
Moss had been set to drive a Rob Walker-run Ferrari that season, Enzo's cars having only been defeated in 1961 world championship races by two mighty Moss drives. But events would soon prove that the 156 was no longer a match for the latest British contenders, notably Clark's Lotus 25 and Graham Hill's BRM P57. Moss might have been able to steal the odd podium or win, but the title would surely still have gone to Hill.
Ferrari's revival began in 1963 with John Surtees, but with Moss on its books would it have signed the ex-motorcycle ace? It's difficult to know if a Moss-led Ferrari would have improved in the same way as it did with Surtees, but it seems likely. He was willing to test and could see Ferrari's potential. That means Moss could have finally taken that elusive title in '64, following Clark's first crown the year before.
Surtees's real-life title defence was hamstrung by reliability problems, so Clark and Lotus would still have swept to the 1965 championships. However, had Moss still been at Ferrari in '66 and not fallen out with management, there is little doubt he would have won the title with the 312. Surtees surely would have done so had he not walked out on the team at Le Mans.
It's not out of the question Moss would have stuck with Ferrari machinery - his time at Mercedes and Vanwall had only been ended by the withdrawals of those teams - and, had Walker's terms with Ferrari remained favourable, there would have been little reason to change. And would Lotus boss Colin Chapman really have supplied the privateer team with equal equipment once Team Lotus and Clark was ready to win?
Nevertheless, Ferrari was outclassed in 1967 and '69, and was too unreliable in '68, so Denny Hulme, Jackie Stewart and Hill would probably still have taken their titles.
Moss believed he would have continued racing as slicks and wings arrived - after Clark's death in a Hockenheim F2 crash - and his old rival, Jack Brabham, showed it was possible to remain competitive by winning the 1970 South African GP shortly before his 44th birthday.
Moss, three years younger than Brabham, could therefore have still been quick enough in a Ferrari to benefit from Jochen Rindt's death at Monza in 1970, as Jacky Ickx nearly did. That was also the last year a privateer (Ken Tyrrell's March 701, driven by Stewart) was able to win a world championship race and Walker closed his team at the end of 1970. With Walker leaving - and cars such as the powerful Porsche 917 proving faster than the F1 machines of the day - Moss could well have retired from F1 at that point.
He could have done so with three world titles - 1964, '66 and '70 - to his name. That's one more than Clark but, given the changing competitive fortunes of Lotus and Ferrari during the period, it's quite possible the two greats would not have had much in the way of battles on a level playing field. Motorsport enthusiasts might still have been frustrated.
What if Clark had lived on
When it comes to F1 duels that never quite happened, one of the most appealing is that of Scottish legends and friends Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart. Clark was busy putting in arguably his greatest season - winning the world championship and the Indianapolis 500 - when Stewart arrived in F1 with BRM in 1965. In one of the finest rookie campaigns, Stewart was often Clark's closest rival, and won the Italian GP and finished third in the world championship, behind Clark and BRM team leader Graham Hill. Clark was still king of the hill, but Stewart was learning fast.
BRM became less competitive after 1965, leaving Stewart with such poor machinery as the H16-engined P83. But a move to Ken Tyrrell's eponymous team and Matra chassis for '68 was the start of one of the great F1 partnerships.
By now, the revolutionary Cosworth DFV-engined Lotus 49 was reliable and Clark waltzed to victory in the season-opening South African GP. Stewart got ahead of the second Lotus of Hill before retiring, but a third world title looked likely for Clark.
He had two options for the weekend of April 6-7: the BOAC 500 world sportscar race at Brands Hatch and the European F2 season-opener at Hockenheim. Had he chosen Brands he would have avoided the fatal accident that befell him in Germany and arrived at the Spanish GP in May as favourite.
He would also have done so without Stewart, who had suffered his own F2 accident at Jarama. He missed the subsequent Monaco GP too. In real life, those JYS absences helped Hill secure the title. Clark was clearly Lotus number one and would surely have been world champion instead. His relationship with team boss Colin Chapman was becoming more strained by 1967 but another world title would perhaps have kept them together.
The on-track story would have got more interesting in 1969. Lotus and Matra were evenly matched and, in reality, Jochen Rindt often gave Stewart cause for concern. But the Lotus was too unreliable, so Stewart would probably have taken the crown with his favourite F1 car, the MS80, even if Clark had still been around.
Post-1969 Alternative 1
Would the frailty of the Lotus have finally encouraged Clark to look elsewhere for 1970? Or retirement?
Perhaps March founders Max Mosley, Alan Rees, Graham Coaker and Robin Herd would have found a way to get Clark into one of the many 701s on the grid. That would have given Clark the same machinery as Stewart, in a Tyrrell-run example, and Chris Amon. A direct comparison would have been great for fans - and motorsport historians - but all three would have found the March not worthy of their abilities as Rindt and the Lotus 72 dominated prior to the Austrian's fatal crash at Monza.
With Rindt gone and Clark disenchanted with the March, it's easy to see a reconciliation with Chapman - it happened between Lotus and Ronnie Peterson in 1978. Chapman would probably have placed Clark alongside Emerson Fittipaldi at Reine Wisell's expense, setting up a tussle between the established great and the rising star.
After a difficult year with the 72, faced with the young Brazilian charger and thrashed by Stewart's Tyrrell 003, Clark might then have decided to call it a day, having racked up the same trio of titles that JYS managed before his retirement at the end of 1973.
Post-1969 Alternative 2
With Stewart hamstrung by the March 701, Clark would have been able to make good use of the 72 in 1970, had he remained at Lotus. He might also have been more willing to use crotch straps, and thus survived the Monza crash that killed Rindt. Given Rindt's five wins before the Italian GP, Clark could well have broken his own 1963 record of seven victories.
Would Clark have continued? Opinions, even of those close to him, have always been split on whether or not he was on the verge of giving it all up. But such an impressive campaign and a fourth world title would have been one hell of a way to retire at 34, the same age Stewart was when he retired after his finest season in 1973.
Stewart at Ferrari
Between 1968 and 1973 Jackie Stewart won 25 world championship races and three drivers' titles. Ferrari won just eight points-paying grands prix during that time, but things could have been different if plans for 1968 had gone the way Enzo Ferrari intended.
During his unsuccessful 1967 campaign with BRM, Stewart made what was supposed to be a secret visit to Maranello to talk about a possible deal. "It was like Star Wars in comparison to any F1 operation everywhere else," recalls Stewart. "I was impressed, but I didn't know what to do, so I said I'd think about it.
"He wanted me to drive F2 as well as F1 and I said, 'I drive for Ken Tyrrell'. He said he'd give us the engines then if I wanted to drive the Matra, but he needed it red. I said it's blue, and we agreed it would be blue at the bottom and red on the top. That was a big deal."
Before anything was signed, Stewart travelled to Enna-Pergusa for a European F2 round with his Matra team-mate Jacky Ickx: "He asked if I was going to take the Ferrari drive. I said, 'How do you know about that?' He said, 'They told me, they've offered me the drive'. I said, 'Well in that case you should take the drive because I'm not going to take it'.
"I was already frightened about Ferrari. I knew of their reputation and history with drivers. Shell wanted me to do it and it was good money, but it was an instantaneous thing.
"I phoned Franco Gozzi and told him the deal was off. He said, 'But you shook Il Commendatore's hand'. And I said, 'Yes, and he shook mine, but now Jacky Ickx tells me that he's been offered my drive'. He said, 'There must be some mistake'. I said, 'Well, it's a mistake that tells me I shouldn't be driving for Ferrari'."
Ickx did indeed go to Ferrari, while Stewart, Matra and Tyrrell joined forces, narrowly missing out on the 1968 F1 crown before dominating the following year. By the time Ferrari won its next title, Stewart had won two more championships with Tyrrell and retired, but what if he had signed?
Firstly, it's quite possible that, without Stewart, Ken Tyrrell would never have founded his eponymous team, meaning one of F1's great marques, not to mention cars such as the P34 six-wheeler, might not have existed.
Stewart's career might have been more tricky too. Rising star Ickx won the French GP in 1968 and team-mate Chris Amon led more laps than anyone other than Stewart and Graham Hill that season, but poor luck prevented a title challenge and 1969 was a poor one for Ferrari.
The 1970 312B was a better proposition than the March 701 Stewart was saddled with and might have been enough for him to snatch the crown from Jochen Rindt after the Lotus driver was killed at Monza, but Ickx's time at Ferrari after that was largely frustrating. Could Stewart have been a galvanising force in the way that Niki Lauda was after Stewart retired? It's impossible to say, but this is probably one of motorsport's what-ifs in which the driver made the right call. Ferrari certainly struggled more without Stewart than Stewart did without Ferrari.
Villeneuve at McLaren
Gilles Villenueve famously made his Formula 1 debut in a McLaren M23 in the 1977 British Grand Prix prior to his move to Ferrari for the following season. But when Villeneuve lost his life in qualifying for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix a return to McLaren was looking very likely.
In 1981, there had been some tentative negotiations between Villeneuve and Ferrari, involving some figures-on-a-pitboard antics in the Montreal pitlane that baffled observers, but Villeneuve stayed on for the ill-fated '82 season but was free to leave at the end of that year. The move to McLaren was still very much in the pipeline for 1983 and he was set to move to the team, something that would have been made even more likely by the acrimony within Ferrari that arose after Dider Pironi won the infamous 1982 San Marino Grand Prix after, in Villenueve's eyes, breaking a team agreement not to pass him.
That would mean Villeneuve, on a long-term deal, lining up alongside Niki Lauda at McLaren in 1983. It would have likely left Ferrari with the same line-up for '83 as in reality, with Rene Arnoux signed from Renault after falling out with the team following the French Grand Prix and stand-in Patrick Tambay signed on a permanent deal. The driver who loses out in all this is John Watson, although it would have been logical for Renault to sign him to take Arnoux's place rather than Eddie Cheever.
The first key question is would Villeneuve have won the '82 championship had he survived qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder? The answer is, probably. The Ferrari 126C2 was the strongest all-round package of the season, and with Pironi injured at Hockenheim the way will have been clear for Villeneuve to prevail. Provided, of course, he'd been able to put the Imola controversy, still raw when he got to Zolder, behind him and focus on doing the job.
If so, Villeneuve would take the number one to McLaren. In 1983, McLaren was very much on the rise as the changes made early in the Ron Dennis era started to take effect, but it was still stuck with a normally-aspirated Cosworth engine in an era where the turbo was king. Villeneuve's qualifying speed would surely have given him an advantage over Lauda, and surely he would have won the famous Long Beach Grand Prix that year, when Watson and Lauda finished first and second from 22nd and 23rd on the grid respectively.
This means Villeneuve would have a shot at the '84 title in the all-conquering TAG Porsche-engined McLaren MP4/2. It would come down to a battle between Lauda's experience and savvy and Villeneuve's speed, a battle that Villeneuve would surely have won unless his season was as beset by mechanical problems as Prost's was in the real world that year.
There would be plenty of knock-on effects. Prost, after falling out with Renault, would not have joined McLaren in 1984 and would therefore likely have ended up either at Lotus or Ferrari that season. Prost was a driver who appealed to McLaren, and there's every chance he would have ended up there, perhaps as team-mate to Villeneuve in '86 after Lauda's retirement.
As for Villenueve, he could conceivably have remained at McLaren for some time. He would have had a clear run at the '85 crown, although it's difficult to see him reproducing the Prost-style season that stole the '86 title from under the nose of Williams.
So had he lived, Villeneuve might well have thrived to become a triple world champion in the more calming environment of McLaren, which would surely have allowed him to round off his sensational speed with the all-round attributes needed to be a great champion. And the career of Alain Prost, as a result, might have been sent in a different direction.
Senna races on
Had Ayrton Senna climbed out of the wreckage of his Williams-Renault FW16 on 1 May 1994, would he have won the 1994 world championship? Given the form of Williams improved dramatically once the French Grand Prix sidepod package was introduced and the problems caused by switching from active ride to passive had been solved, the easy answer is yes. After all, Damon Hill came within a point of doing so.
But Senna would have been 30 points behind Michael Schumacher - and seven behind Hill - after Imola. He would surely have won the Spanish Grand Prix that followed and perhaps at Monaco as well, to kick-start his title challenge. Assuming the rest of the season progressed as it did in reality, with Schumacher disqualified from the British Grand Prix and subsequently banned for two races - and then excluded at Spa - and Senna was able to perform at a higher level than Hill then a fourth world title was possible.
Ferrari's then-president, Luca di Montezemolo, has claimed there was contact with Senna before Imola about a possible move to Ferrari - perhaps even as early as 1995. But if Senna and Williams had hit their stride, it's likely he would have stayed on.
Then it becomes a question of how many titles? Williams underachieved in 1995 but had a quick car - whether it was quick enough for Senna to have won the title rather than Benetton driver Schumacher is a moot point. But the Benetton B195 remains an underrated car, and this would surely have been a spectacular battle.
Senna would surely have won the '96 and '97 titles in a Williams, so it becomes a question of how long he would have raced on for - and whether the lure of Ferrari would have led to a move there. Had Ferrari opted to sign Senna and build the team around him rather than Schumacher, history would have been very different, although the appeal of the younger star would perhaps have ensured things didn't change so much - especially if Schumacher had beaten Senna to the title in '95.
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