From: aghao@sersun2.essex.ac.uk (Aghanya O A)
Newsgroups: rec.autos.sport
Subject: F1: Belgian GP Q1 report
Date: 28 Aug 92 14:47:43 GMT
Reply-To: aghao@sersun2.essex.ac.uk (Aghanya O A)
Organization: University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Greetings.

Well, I haven't done this for a while, but I thought I'd try my hand once again
at providing some net coverage of a GP weekend.  I have to apologise in 
advance for the lack of numbers in this report, but I only had a few seconds
to copy down the list of names, and so the times are (very) thin on the ground!

Anyway, after the first qualifying session, the order was:

1.  Nigel Mansell	1:50.545
2.  Ayrton Senna	1:53.??? (either high 52 or low 53)
3.  Michael Schumacher	
4.  Riccardo Patrese	
5.  Jean Alesi
6.  Thierry Boutsen
7.  Mika Hakinnen
8.  Martin Brundle
9.  Johnny Herbert
10. Gabriele Tarquini
11. Ivan Capelli
12. Andrea de Cesaris
13. Michele Alboreto
14. Eric Van de Poele
15. Stefano Modena
16. Karl Wendlinger
17. Pier Luigi Martini
18. Bertrand Gachot

...

29. Perry McCarthy	2:15.??? (he's nearly there!! :-)

Now, about the session.

In the morning warmup, Mansell was fastest, followed by Patrese, Senna and 
Boutsen.

There was a 20 minute delay at the scheduled start, after Eric Comas crashed
his Ligier very heavily at the exit of the 180mph double left-hander which
leads up to the bus-stop chicane.  Senna, who was the first driver to arrive 
on the scene, seconds later, stopped to aid him - rushing frantically from his
McLaren to aid the Frenchman, whose car was stranded in the middle of the 
track, all four wheels having been torn off.  I found that truly admirable
and heartwarming.  My respect for the man has just gone up another notch...
(Frank, maybe you're signing the wrong guy! :-)

On the restart, Boutsen, Hakinnen, and Herbert were among the early runners,
each briefly topping the timesheets.  After about 20 minutes, Patrese took
to the track, had 2 attempts at dislodging Herbert, and failed both times.
Shortly after Rico, Mansell emerged, as did Schumacher, who immediately
blotted his copybook with a spin at the La Source hairpin, caused by him 
locking up his front right wheel.  He spun into the armco on the *outside*
of the corner, barely avoiding wiping off his rear wing, and then was lucky
to gently kiss the barrier with his right hand side tyres, facing the wrong
way.

Meanwhile, Riccardo had finally made it to the top, and suddenly, the track was
full of cars.  BTW, McLaren had been testing an actively suspended MP4/7A, and
were reputed to have a version of it available for their drivers, but no one
knew whether or not they were running it, and the team were unwilling to 
comment.

Mansell then set about Patrese's time, eclipsing it by exactly 1 second on
his first flying lap.  Senna was also storming round, and was over a second 
behind Nigel.  Ayrton was thus 3rd, Schumacher made it to 4th.  Brundle
was driving very untidily, and made 10th.  Boutsen was 8th, but still pounding 
round.  Capelli slowly improved to 11th.

At this point, after 30 mins, Mansell's time was 1:52.557, about 5 seconds 
slower than last year's pole time, set by Senna.  He then improved on that by
0.7s, as Senna continued to chip away at his own time, getting second place
by beating Patrese's fastest time.

Now Patrese came out again to have a real go at Mansell.  All round his lap, 
you could visually see his total commitment - riiiiight on the apex of every
corner, juuuuuust over the white line on the exit, very smoooooth, his Renault
wailing.  It was working too, and he was less than 0.5s behind on the first
split, and gaining on the second split.  However, he undid all his hard work
right at the end of the lap, with a big off as he passed through the bus stop
chicane.  The chicane is a left-right-straight-right-left affair, and as he
exited the left-right bit, he poured on a bit too much power for the short
straight, and the car stepped out on him.  However, he refused to lift, and
tried to hold the car through the right left.  Unfortunately, he couldn't,
and spun to the right through the right left bit, striking the barriers hard
with the left side of his Williams.  That was a shame, because he, IMHO, would 
have beaten Senna's time comfortably, and would have been close to Nigel's
too.  He was unhurt though, and ran back to the pits to use the spare, looking
understandably pissed off.

Other improvements were coming in thick and fast - Schumacher leapt to third,
Alesi to fifth.  Senna decided in the dying minutes of the session to have
a proper go at Mansell's time - I tell you, you might criticise the reigning
World Champion for a lot of things, but no way can you take anything away from 
his driving.  He put everything he had into that lap, and I beleive that when 
he went into the pits, he had his mechanics take off some wing, making the car
faster on the straight.  Of course, this had the inevitable consequence that
it was loose round the twisties, and he must have decided to trust in his own
skills to take the car round the corners as fast as was humanly possible.
He needed all his considerable expertise here, because lurid slides were the 
order of the day. However, it was effective, because he was less than 0.3s 
behind Mansell at the first split.  However, he too came to grief right at the 
end of his lap, because the back of his McLaren got away from him under braking for the bus stop chicane, and he couldn't hold it, spinning to a graceful
halt without hitting anything.

Unfortunately for him, Mansell, unseen by us on TV, had also re-emerged, and
had set about moving the goalposts for everyone else.  He hacked over a
second off his already unmatchable time, to leave the rest of the field 
floundering in his wake.  1:50.545 was an awesome performance.  I just wish I 
had seen it.

Anyway, the chequer came out, and the session ended.  Emmanuele Naspetti, the 
latest newboy, had made the provisional grid in about 22nd position, so that 
was good.  McCarthy had done 7 laps in his AMF in the morning, probably more 
miles the in the rest of the season put together.

I'll try and watch the second qualifying, and put out a report on that.
If someone has acces to the times, please post them, otherwise I'll do
that later on today.

Cheers,

	Obi.

===============================================================================
    .-----,   .           !    Obi Aghanya
   /     /   /        @   !    Fault Tolerant Systems Research Group
  /     /   /----,   /    !    Dept. of Comp. Sci, University of Essex
 /     /   /    /   /     !    Colchester  CO4 3SQ,  UK
(_____'   (____'   (__    !    EMAIL : aghao@essex.ac.uk
       (Waterloo in '92 - for Ayrton! :-) [Told you so! :-)]