Breakfast with ... John Watson

They say you shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, but Eric Silbermann risks the wrath of Mrs. Manners by having breakfast with a pot-pourri of paddock people.

Five times Grand Prix winner and now a regular commentator on everything from Formula 1 to the Blancpain series, John Watson is never short of an opinion, so he seemed the ideal choice to quiz on the shenanigans taking place in Melbourne’s Supreme Court this weekend. I caught up with 'Wattie' over breakfast in the hospitality area of one of his former employers, McLaren.

Contracts must have been a simple affair when you were racing John. 

They were fundamentally no different to what they are today. A contract is a contract and if it's honoured, perfect. If it's not honoured by one party then you've got a problem. The difference is that, in my day they were not usually linked to a driver bringing a substantial sum of money which the teams are currently desperate to get to enable them to stay in business so normally, in my case, a contract would be a simple one or two page document. ‘Team will give the driver this, the driver will give the team something back’ and that was it. You relied on the honour of the team to fulfil its obligations and they would rely on me to fulfil mine.

Today everything is so much more complex and the contracts are extremely big documents and inevitably there’s a financial element involved. What we’ve seen here in Melbourne has been messy. For an internal team issue to dominate the news stories coming out of Melbourne is not really what the race organisation would have been looking for, I’d have thought.

Do you think it would have been done differently in the old days? 

This story might have had some public interest but with the world and the internet and every other form of electronic communication that we’ve now got, everything is instant news so if I fart in the press room, it could be on Twitter all around the world in seconds. The only thing is you can’t smell it on Twitter. But the stink of contractual failure, you can smell that in the paddock.

If they weren’t contributing, they would not get a drive

The other main difference between then and now is that my generation of drivers were generally employed for the job they could do in a car. It looks to me like half the grid is made up of drivers who are contributing substantial amounts to the team. If they weren’t contributing, they would not get a drive. But that’s always been the case.

Niki Lauda is held up as the example of the most successful pay-driver of all time.

Absolutely. He went to the bank, got money, went to Max Mosley and Robin Herd, got himself into Formula 1 and had he not had the opportunity to do that, God only knows what Niki would be doing today. Probably some of the things would be no different but whatever he’d be doing, he’d be a success at because that’s his nature. I think the worst example of all this recently is seeing the Lotus team signing up a young Spanish racing driver (Carmen Jorda). I don’t know where she’s come from. I don’t know what her credentials are.

That’s taking it to such ridiculous levels. That’s embarrassing for Formula 1 if it reaches a stage where drivers who are not qualified in any sense are given a role.

Surely it’s part of a bigger problem with funding of the sport?

I think there is a bigger problem in Formula 1 and that is partly in how the funds are shared out. It may well be that there will have to be a reconsideration and a redistribution but the owners of Formula 1 are saying “It’s our product. We take out of it what we want” in effect. The downside of it is I haven’t seen any significant major sponsor coming into Formula 1 in the last couple of years. If you look at McLaren, they are holding out because they could get sponsorship on board but they feel they don’t want to undervalue their brand. They’re fortunate as they’ve got a new engine partner with Honda. I’m sure there’s a substantial contribution coming. That’s the salvation.

But Formula 1 just sucks up money. I spoke to one guy in the pit lane yesterday, I don’t want to say who and he gave an example of how difficult it is for teams. They had a $10 million deposit paid into the bank but then in 24 hours, it’s gone because there’s such a legacy of debt and as soon as they get funds in, it’s straight out again.

Can you remember any particularly difficult contract negotiations you ever had?

I think the only one I had that was difficult was at the end of 82/83 with McLaren. I ended up starting ‘83 without a formal contract. It was a race by race thing.

The most straightforward one was with Bernie (Ecclestone). At the end of ‘76, Roger Penske called me in the middle of the night and said, “John, I’m sorry to say this but I’m going to stop the Formula 1 team.” The next morning, I rang up Heinz Hoffer, who was the team manager of Penske. All he wanted to do was help me get a drive and the options at that time were Brabham, Shadow, Arrows … Shadow-Arrows or whatever it was called at the time. We got on the phone to Bernie. It was about 11 o’clock in the morning. Heinz spoke to Bernie and said “Roger’s pulled the plug.” Bernie thought we were taking the piss. I spoke to Bernie and said, “Look, I want to drive and you’ve got a seat available.” This is on a Wednesday and, on the Thursday morning, Clay Regazzoni was due to arrive at Heathrow Airport to sign a contract, because Martini were keen to have an Italian driver in a Martini-sponsored Alfa Romeo-engined Formula 1 Brabham.

I’d lost one drive and, in less than 24 hours, I’d signed a contract with Brabham

So Bernie said, “Right, come up and see me.” He had a flat - I think Jeffrey Archer owns it now - in that big building on the Thames. I got there for 8 in the morning and half an hour later, we’d agreed a deal. Bernie then rang Herbie (Blash, currently FIA Deputy Race Director and Brabham team manager at the time) and said, “Herbie, go to the airport, tell Clay, apologise to him, say we’ve signed John Watson.”

It can happen as easily as that. I was just in the right place at the right time. It suited Bernie because what Bernie didn’t want was to have a sponsor who was dictating the driver. But on this occasion, I’d lost one drive and, in less than 24 hours, I’d signed a contract with Brabham.

But the pantomime we’ve had here this weekend, it being so public, is damaging to the sport, it’s damaging to the promoter here because he’s running the opening round of the World Championship and all the headlines are about people who aren’t racing, teams that are not on the track. This is not good for Formula 1. Formula 1 needs good races, good images on the TV screens. It doesn’t need these kinds of stories being thrashed out in public courts.

Finally, what do you think of the current state of Formula 1?

I understand the reasons why they introduced it, but I’ve never been a fan of the engine formula we’ve now got. It’s phenomenal in what it achieves in terms of fuel usage for performance over distance but I got more buzz when I heard the F15 jet flying across the paddock just now. It sounded loud, which is what I want a Formula 1 car to be.

Secondly, in an global economic downturn, to introduce a new formula with a new engine package or a new power train or whatever and then there’s a corresponding hike in price, on top of which everybody has got to develop new chassis, new aerodynamics, new everything, well, it’s too much. It will be interesting to see how the season plays out. I think a lot of teams need more assistance, whether it’s from the owners of Formula 1 or whatever.