India is only three years into its relationship with Formula
1, and faces an uncertain
future with the grand prix not appearing on next year's calendar, apparently
so it can reappear at the start of 2015.
Neither of the races at the Buddh International Circuit have
been especially inspiring - both have been copybook victories from Sebastian
Vettel, leading from the front in his Red Bull.
So, for this weekend I have cast my mind back to a
remarkable race in a classic season, a race in which the story behind the
result was far more fascinating than the result itself - a win for Alain Prost
in his Ferrari, of which there were five that year - would suggest.
Alain Prost only passed Ivan Capelli's Leyton House three
laps from the end in his Ferrari
The history books will remember 1990 as the year of Ayrton
Senna and Prost, McLaren and Ferrari, but at the French Grand Prix there was a
major and unpredictable upset.
It was tyre-stressingly hot, hot, hot at the Paul Ricard
circuit near Marseille, but there were no surprises for the first 27 of the 80
laps, with the McLarens of Gerhard Berger and Senna leading Nigel Mansell's
Ferrari.
Prost, who had slipped a couple of places down the field
from his fourth place on the grid, was the first to pit for new tyres with no
problems, but the McLaren stops were disastrous. Nearly 13 seconds for Berger,
more for Senna, and they slumped down the order.
Now, surprise, surprise, it was the two yet to stop,
Japanese-sponsored, Judd-powered Leyton House cars of Italy's Ivan Capelli and
Brazilian Mauricio Gugelmin in the lead, ahead of Prost.
So when would they come in to change tyres?
On and on they went, until it became clear that they were
going through non-stop! So could Prost catch them?
The Frenchman fought his way past Gugelmin to second but the
unfancied Capelli was driving out of his skin and stayed ahead - until just
three laps from the end.
But Capelli still finished a superb second - a glory day for
the tiny team and for the man who had designed the car.
That was a chap called Adrian Newey who, in one of the worst
decisions in F1 team management history, had already been sacked, and was on
his way to Williams.
There, he applied the methods he had used at low-budget
Leyton House to the much greater resources of Williams to produce the classic
FW14. And the rest is history. Rather like Leyton House, in fact, who
disappeared from F1 under a cloud at the end of the season.
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