Autocourse

A highlight of the Autocourse Grand Prix annual is the Editor's 'Top Ten'. Here are the assessments of Riccardo Patrese by Mike Kettlewell (1977-78), Maurice Hamilton (1979-1987) and Alan Henry (1988-1993)

1977

Patrick Tambay had flashes of brilliance, even earning World Championship points in his first season, and Riccardo Patrese, Gilles Villeneuve and Rupert Keegan displayed they, too, had talent.

1978

We don’t apologise for including Patrese in this year’s Top 10. Yes, the Italian was forceful and he did employ what are politely called “Formula 3” tactics, but he is a natural winner. There are many drivers who can race competitively in Formula 1, but few who can win. In South Africa Riccardo proved he could lead a Grand Prix with apparent ease, only an unexplained engine failure coming between him and the chequered flag.

Sadly, Patrese’s Arrows could not provide the reliability its driver required in order to establish himself among the elite of Grand Prix drivers. Possibly this explains his desperate driving?

It was gratifying to see that after his exclusion from the Watkins Glen starting grid he finished a fighting fourth at Montreal a week later. The treatment meted out by the “establishment” at the Glen could have broken a lesser pilot. But Riccardo is strong willed: he wants to prove he is a winner.

The Top 10 in full:

1) Niki Lauda 2) Mario Andretti 3) Carlos Reutemann 4) Alan Jones 5) Patrick Depailler

6) Jody Scheckter 7) Gilles Villeneuve 8) Jacques Laffite 9) John Watson 10) Riccardo Patrese

1979

Jochen Mass overshadowed Riccardo Patrese who seemed to have lost some of his sparkle following the hysterical aftermath of Monza the previous year.

1980

After showing encouraging form in South America, the Arrows team failed to provide Riccardo Patrese with a competitive car and the Italian continued to be accused of unruly behaviour from time to time.

1981

After seasons of acrimony there was hardly a complaint voiced against Riccardo Patrese in 1981. The Italian appeared to relax more and his driving followed its smooth, natural course, although he was let down badly by a switch to Pirellis after an impressive start to the season.

1982

Not much to choose between the speed of Patrese and Piquet (a compliment in itself), the switch to Brabham giving Riccardo his first truly competitive car plus his first Grand Prix victory. Lacking the dedication and enthusiasm of his team-mate for the BMW project, Patrese was rather lucky to win at Monaco and his season was punctuated by questionable incidents; lack of stamina in Brazil, practice crash at Long Beach, spins in Belgium and Monaco, inexcusable shunt in Detroit, the start-line stall at Brands Hatch. There were, of course, faultless performances but these were in the minority for such a talented driver with a competitive team.

The Top 10 in full:

1) Not awarded 2) Keke Rosberg 3) Alain Prost 4) Nelson Piquet 5) Niki Lauda

6) John Watson 7) Rene Arnoux 8) Michele Alboreto 9) Riccardo Patrese 10) Elio de Angelis

1983

Riccardo Patrese's stylish run at Kyalami, his careful use of the boost control, showed just what he had been capable of all season. Yet it took the threat of dismissal from Brabham to make the Italian drive with half of the composure and intelligence shown by his team-mate. Patrese's speed is not questioned but Imola proved he remains prone to dreadful errors of judgement.

1984

The switch from Brabham to Alfa Romeo marks the end of what looks like being the only peak in Riccardo Patrese's Formula 1 career. His driving has been inconsistent and there can be no better example of that than his elementary mistake at Brands Hatch.

1985

Riccardo Patrese can ill-afford another season like 1985. His reputation did flourish - but in the wrong direction. There was the usual sprinkling of accusations about his apparent inability to use a rear view mirror, but the Monaco fiasco punted him into the headlines thanks to a piece of thoroughly irresponsible driving. The shame is that Patrese started out with good intentions. He was fit, he qualified well, tried hard, but somehow the year brought very little to highlight his natural talent. With so many young chargers on the grid, Patrese's time may have passed him by.

1986

A new man this season due, possibly, to the absence of Piquet's dominant presence at Brabham. Showing more resolve than during the past three seasons put together, Patrese capitalised on superb natural skill which has been wasted during a long and largely unproductive career in Formula 1. He helped carry the team through the post-de Angelis gloom and a finish in the points in Mexico would have been well deserved and equally well received. Unfortunately, he reverted to type and spun it away, strengthening the belief that he may never be a truly complete driver. None the less, both Patrese and Derek Warwick deserve credit for persevering with a problematical car during such a dismal season for the Brabham team.

The Top 10 in full:

1) Alain Prost 2) Nigel Mansell 3) Ayrton Senna 4) Nelson Piquet 5) Gerhard Berger

6) Stefan Johansson 7) Michele Alboreto 8) Rene Arnoux 9) Keke Rosberg 10) Riccardo Patrese

1987

The Brabham-BMW driver may frequently have been powered onto the front half of the grid by a method which goes beyond the scope of this assessment but that should not detract from some worthwhile performances in the races. Patrese used his vast experience to push himself into the top six but, inevitably, the mechanical failures, a legacy of a minimal budget, kept him out of the points on at least four occasions. Despite the occasional lapse, such as the spin at Detroit, 1987 was a better season than expected and he will undoubtedly prove of some value to the Williams team.

The Top 10 in full:

1) Alain Prost 2) Nigel Mansell 3) Ayrton Senna 4) Gerhard Berger 5) Nelson Piquet

6) Thierry Boutsen 7) Michele Alboreto 8) Stefan Johansson 9) Riccardo Patrese 10) Jonathan Palmer

1988

Patrese could be counted as rather fortunate to have picked up the number two Williams seat at this stage of his career and ran unspectacularly in Mansell's shadow for much of the year, prudently stepping up his pace at the Hungaroring to shadow the Englishman for many laps. By then, of course, it was contract-renewal time, so a bit of window dressing seemed to be called for. Patrese proved yet again that he is quite unable to suppress the wild streak in his character when he 'brake-tested' Julian Bailey in practice at Jerez, an asinine piece of driving which rightly saw him penalised with a fine.

1989

It's a measure of Riccardo's new-found status within the F1 community that he was the number one alternative on Ferrari's list for 1990 in the event of Alain Prost declining Maranello's invitation in favour of a Williams-Renault drive. Yet nobody was happier than Riccardo when Alain opted for Ferrrari. The man Derek Warwick described as "the best and fastest team-mate I was ever paired with" felt more at home with Williams than at almost any other time in his 12-year Grand Prix career to date. Coming out from behind Nigel Mansell's shadow, Patrese looked consistently more convincing than his highly-priced team-mate Thierry Boutsen on almost every outing. Hand-in-hand with this rise to maturity, Patrese at last shrugged aside a reputation for the kind of unthinking actions which had got him into so much hot water in the past. Also, when assessing this newly relaxed Italian's performances, one should bear in mind that he looked on course for two victories this season, only to be thwarted in the closing stages. He worked well with the Williams team in general, and Patrick Head in particular, and demonstrated an almost insatiable willingness to test. After more than a decade, F1's one-time enfant terrible was at peace with himself. And it certainly showed.

The Top 10 in full:

1) Nigel Mansell 2) Ayrton Senna 3) Alain Prost 4) Riccardo Patrese 5) Gerhard Berger

6) Thierry Boutsen 7) Alessandro Nannini 8) Alex Caffi 9) Derek Warwick 10) Pierluigi Martini

1990

In his third season with the Williams team, Patrese scored an emotionally gratifying victory in the San Marino Grand Prix which bolstered his morale to the point that he began to talk in thinly veiled terms about the possibility of being in contention for the championship title. As things turned out, the Williams FW13B did not have the necessary staying power for this front-running job, nor Riccardo the absolute speed to compete consistently with Senna or Prost. Nevertheless, the relaxed and mature Italian driver remained an ever-present factor in the points-winning equation, a popular and willingly compliant member of the Didcot team. Ever-obliging, he would uncomplainingly make himself available at the drop of a hat to shoulder the burden of as much testing work as was put his way. A straightforward and uncomplicated bloke who likes driving racing cars and counts himself happy to be paid handsomely for that privilege. Riccardo consolidated his image as a mature, seasoned campaigner throughout 1990. Spirited and without side, Patrese served as a frequent reminder to everybody in the Grand Prix paddocks that life in top-line motor racing would be considerably less tense and complicated if others sought to emulate his example.

The Top 10 in full:

1) Alain Prost 2) Ayrton Senna 3) Nelson Piquet 4) Nigel Mansell 5) Alessandro Nannini

6) Thierry Boutsen 7) Riccardo Patrese 8) Gerhard Berger 9) Jean Alesi 10) Aguri Suzuki

1991

In his role as Williams's number two driver, Riccardo Patrese performed magnificently throughout the season, bringing to bear an appealing blend of determined, well-judged driving on the track and unfailing charm and good manners off it. Unquestionably the most endearing quality projected by Grand Prix racing's most experienced performer was the sheer delight he derived from winning races. Listen to Riccardo at a post-race press conference and you'll find it difficult to suppress a spontaneous smile. Suddenly, Formula 1 doesn't seem to be the overtly complicated, dramatic or tediously esoteric affair that Senna and Mansell so frequently make it. After his wins in Mexico and Portugal there were absolutely no complaints about the car. Everything was perfect from start to finish, he reported, grinning his contented grin.

From the start of the year, Riccardo did everything required of him. With Mansell accorded priority access to the spare car, Patrese's role was clear-cut from the outset. He was quicker than Mansell in qualifying for the first seven races of the season, but there was never a time when he sought to make political capital out of what was, in effect, a false advantage. He was happy with his own situation and content to be judged on his own high level of performance.

At Mexico he drove brilliantly to hold off a recovering Mansell and he returned to Europe after the mid-season American tour nurturing very real personal ambitions of the World Championship. Gearchange problems at Magny-Cours and a rare error at Silverstone, where he chopped across Gerhard Berger's McLaren on the first corner and found himself pitched into instant retirement, began to unravel those ambitions.

They were finally knocked on the head at Spa, where an inoperative reverse gear at post-practice scrutineering resulted in him being dropped from second to 17th on the starting grid for the Belgian Grand Prix. Even so, he stormed through the field to such good effect that it began to look as though he might challenge Senna's McLaren for the lead in the closing stages, only for his transmission to stick in fifth gear, forcing him to settle for fifth place at the chequered flag. At Monza he matched Mansell and Senna for sheer speed before breaking the clutch as he restarted following a spin, and at Estoril he put in a brilliant qualifying performance, bagging pole position thanks to the use of Mansell's spare FW14 in the final moments of the second session.

A willing, effective test and development driver, Riccardo contributed a lot to Mansell's World Championship challenge and even more to Williams's attempts to dislodge McLaren from their stranglehold on the constructors' title. Although neither of these ambitions were realised, it's difficult to see how Patrese could have offered more to the team's overall effort.

The Top 10 in full:

1) Ayrton Senna 2) Nigel Mansell 3) Riccardo Patrese 4) Alain Prost 5) Gerhard Berger

6) Nelson Piquet 7) Jean Alesi 8) Pierluigi Martini 9) Andrea de Cesaris 10) Mark Blundell

1992

Second place in the Drivers' World Championship gave Riccardo Patrese his statistically most successful season ever, but there is no doubt that 1992 was a disappointment for the pleasant Italian, who was forced to operate in Nigel Mansell's shadow throughout. Judged purely on his form the previous season, it seemed as though Patrese would give his team-mate a reasonable run for his money this year, but Mansell outclassed him from the word go and Riccardo, frustrated by restricted access to the spare car and a playing field which often seemed tilted in the Englishman's favour, had mentally conceded the title was out of reach by the time Nigel had won the first four races.

While nobody really doubted Mansell was quicker, the margin he exerted over Patrese surprised many people. Perhaps Riccardo's fluid, classical driving style was not calculated to get the best out of the Williams FW14B, or perhaps he was psychologically wrong-footed by Mansell's instant speed at the start of the season. Either way, one got the impression that Riccardo wasn't feeling as comfortable as usual in the Williams environment this year, and while he started the season with three straight second places behind his team-mate he radiated a perceptible air of frustration. He was also very irked to be effectively warned off making a race of it at Magny-Cours on one of the rare days when he looked likely to pose Mansell a strong challenge, and driving errors at both Hockenheim and the Hungaroring seemed rather out of character for a man who had come to be prized for his general consistency.

He took the decision to cut and run before the end of the season, putting his signature on a Benetton contract for '93 at a time when he believed there was no future for him at Williams. Mansell tried to hand him a win at Monza only for mechanical problems to strike at both cars, but the long overdue consolation prize eventually came his way at Suzuka.

For all his troubles in '92, Patrese remained one of the most consistently likeable personalities on the Grand Prix scene.

The Top 10 in full:

1) Nigel Mansell 2) Ayrton Senna 3) Michael Schumacher 4) Gerhard Berger 5) Riccardo Patrese

6) Jean Alesi 7) Martin Brundle 8) Mika Hakkinen 9) Johnny Herbert 10) Michele Alboreto

1993

While [Michael] Schumacher rarely failed to deliver, the same could not be said for Riccardo Patrese, who joined [Benetton] from Williams. The Italian finished in the points just twice in the first eight races but his experience with the new technology was to prove invaluable in the early part of the year. Nevertheless, by August, Patrese had been informed that his services would not be needed in 1994.