Finding an underdog

The 1988 Formula One season was dominated by one team, McLaren-Honda, one car , the MP4/4 and their drivers Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. Both at the time, and in the 31 years since, there has been a huge amount written about the season. The fact that the team won 15 out of the 16 races, the team dominated the constructors championship (outscoring their nearest rivals 199 points to 65), and that both Senna (champion) and Prost (runner up) also outscored their nearest rivals by over double the points illustrate how one-sided the year was.

Having awoken fully to the world of motor sport this first full season of avid tv watching allowed me to see some incredible fights between the McLaren drivers.......and whilst it only takes 2 drivers to have a race, I was keen to see who the other drivers were and how well they were doing in each race. Ferrari can hardly be described as an underdog, although they were in a relatively fallow period in 1988, but their win at Monza in September felt like a win for everyone else, aided by Senna coming together with Jean-Louis Schlesser making his one and only F1 start deputising for Nigel Mansell at Williams.

What really caught my eye through the season was the occasional unusual result; Nigel Mansell finishing 2nd at the British grand prix in the Williams-Judd; Ivan Capelli reaching the third step of the podium at the Belgium grand prix in the turquoise coloured March-Judd.......and for me Derek Warwick and Alessandro Nannini scoring points for their respective Arrows and Benetton teams.

Occasionally James Hunt, commentating with Murray Walker on the BBC TV coverage would sound exasperated by "back markers" who would fail to look in their mirrors, generally get in the way or in the case of Schlesser have some sort of impact on the race. Although I was still relatively new to the sport it appeared to me that any driver or team that had made it to the Formula One grid had achieved something the vast majority of people in the world of motor racing has failed to do. Of course what I hadn't realised is that there are a number of factors besides talent that can get you into Formula One.

As is always the case in life, the more detail you discover, the more you understand what you are watching, and I was on a mission to fill my head with knowledge of all the drivers, teams, race circuits and wherever possible history of the sport - especially when I read about the cars from the 1950's, 60's and 70's; cars that bore little resemblance to the cars of 1988. Pre-internet of course so the library was my main source of information plus the occasional book purchased for me.

On my mission to find an underdog to support I was a few steps further forward. I realised there were a number of excellent drivers on the grid (Senna, Prost, Piquet, Mansell to name but a few) and a number of teams that had history and pedigree (McLaren, Lotus, Williams and Ferrari....again to name a few), but no-one leapt out to me as someone to support just yet.

However totally off my radar a certain Johnny Herbert , British Formula Three champion of 1987, was taking on the International Formula 3000 championship, and I was later to find out his season started off with a win, he showed obvious speed and championship challenging form, but his season ended with an accident at Brands Hatch which caused significant damage to his legs and feet. The promise of a race seat at Benetton for 1989 had been made by team manager Peter Collins if Johnny was able to recover........could this be the greatest underdog story ever ? *

*maybe - but as with anything in my blog its my opinion, and I'm not one for trying to argue who the greatest racing driver is (at least not in this blog post). However, as I was to discover, this was one racing driver I was going to support for the next 12 seasons of Formula One and beyond.