I expected reid to ‘defend his position’ every time he got in front. He didn’t. He left the door wide open and i did the same

Some time into the Japanese Grand Prix, before switching off and wandering away as usual to do something more interesting with my life, like the washing up, I’m sure one of the TV commentators mentioned a ‘brilliant piece of defensive driving’. What? The driver in question had swerved across the main straight to block a rival who was trying to overtake. It was blatant.

Could someone please explain to me what precisely is brilliant about that? And where did this notion of acceptable defensive driving come from anyway? I suppose it must have been around, in some form or another, since motor sport began. Maybe so, but such outrageously conspicuous blocking was considered deplorable when I started racing. It certainly happened, but mostly it was a bit more subtle then; I admit we all had a sneaking admiration for Jack Brabham’s ability, in the 1960s, to make his car curiously wide without ever doing anything that resembled deliberate obstruction.

That’s something else entirely. Indeed, Jack turned his technique into an art form but today’s ‘defensive driving’ is lamentable. There are even rules now to define what sort of blocking is permitted and how long it can go on. Should we laugh, or cry? It’s such crap, of course, but I don’t suppose we shall ever get this disease out of racing now.

It’s easy to understand the problem. Take Druids Bend at Brands Hatch and suddenly you realise that it has a lot to answer for. If you’re in front in a race, coming out of Paddock Bend, it’s dead easy for the guy behind to slip up the inside and get ahead at that point. As a result, everybody under pressure there moves to the right immediately after leaving Paddock Bend, blocking the way. And I’ll bet most people think it would be stupid not to do that.

Well, please think again. Suppose that any such move were to be made illegal, resulting in disqualification? You’d stay to the left, the guy behind would go through and, next time round, you’d have your chance to return the compliment and get back in front. Wouldn’t that make for better racing?

Obviously, if you put that idea to the modern F1 people, it would provoke a reaction of utter incomprehension. F1 racing seems to get further and further away from the real world. The cars are amazingly quick, the drivers are fantastic and the opening laps are always exciting. Then, soon after that, every GP seems to go wrong, looking less and less like what I understand by the term ‘motor racing’. It’s like a weird fairground entertainment run to arcane rules of the Mornington Crescent variety. Dirty tricks, albeit of complex Machiavellian elegance, also seem to have become the respected code of conduct. F1 people just wouldn’t get my point, but perhaps historic racers aren’t so blinkered?

This line of thought came to me during the saloon car race at Goodwood, in which I enjoyed the most fantastic dice with Anthony Reid (see p96). Now, all right, Goodwood is different because there are no championship points at stake and no commercial pressures to make anybody try to win at all costs. Even so, old habits die hard and I half expected Reid, as a current driver of modern Touring Cars and a seasoned winner of many tough races, to ‘defend his position’ every time he got in front.

Well, he didn’t. He left the door wide open every time and I did the same, so we kept on overtaking each other, sometimes side by side through corners, yet without touching once. This, I think,
is what we used to call ‘motor racing’ and it felt great, at least until that wheel fell off the car I was driving.

This policy works better between drivers who really are on the limit. Those who are just a tiny bit slower cannot be trusted like that because they can change their lines unpredictably. Also, over the years, I have occasionally suffered when going to pass relatively slow drivers who simply steer into you under braking, long before the turning-in point, causing a major accident. They never accept that they’ve done something wrong, which does suggest, perhaps, that my naίve little theory is a lost cause from the start.
If one thing is clear, though, historic racing can’t take any sort of lead from the modern F1 circus. It is magnificent, without doubt, but is it motor racing?