Most team principles have engineering backgrounds, which works for supervising building a car and staying in the F1 technical arms race. However watching Adrian Newey take on John Barnard and Ross Brawn does not put bums on seats, people want to see Schumacher and Hill (Senna/Prost, Mansell/Piquet and so on) battle over a season.
Flav Briatore understood better than anyone that the money coming into the sport did not depend on the technical side of things. Flav was different, he did not understand the technical side, he employed people for that. He got that it was the product on the track and the personalities that led to the fans and TV contracts that gave the teams fat bank accounts.
Flav understood that having one of those drivers led to the backing to produce the best equipment. After his debut at Spa in ’91 it was clear the Michael Schumacher was going to be one of those drivers, and Flav wanted him in a Benneton no matter who he had to screw over to get him.
Michael Schumacher was poached from Jordan on the eve of the Italian GP. This came up in a conversation I was having with racing friends a couple of weeks ago in the UK. Flav replaced Roberto Moreno with Michael, with out actually mentioning it to his current driver.
The first Roberto knew about it was when a journalist called his hotel room in Italy to ask him what he thought about this. Roberto ended up driving a Jordan that weekend as he was about the only person available at such short notice that could do the job.
When people outside hear some of what goes on (industrial espionage, trying to fix races, tampering with drivers and so on) and while it’s been going on for a long time the sport does not look good. But now, as an outsider, it’s fun to watch.