How F1 team bosses used to be far larger characters

Did you find the Formula 1 Friday interviews hard work during the final six races of 2024? Scarcely a week went by without Tom Clarkson gamely attempting to inveigle interesting answers from team principals who gave the impression of wishing they were doing something else – even reading the FIA so-called ‘Vision’ about diversity, accessibility, sustainability and box-ticking.

The problem is that more and more team principals are engineers. I’m not saying engineers are dull. But they’re unlikely to take a pop at each other in the same way as Toto Wolff compared Christian Horner with a “yapping little terrier”. Now we’re talking! Being the owner of a Border Terrier, I understood Horner’s cheerful response when expressing admiration for the feisty breed. Silly stuff, maybe, but it made a change from earnest discussion about the value of aero elasticity. That’s not my particular forte, which is probably why I appreciated the characters who ran F1 teams back in the day.