Motor Racing: Hill in tune after disharmony

Andrew Baker reports on qualified success for a driver under high pressure

There IS a saying, popular in motor racing circles, which runs in polite translation: "When the flag drops, the rubbish stops." When the flag dropped to commence yesterday's qualifying session for the British Grand Prix, Damon Hill could at last put the rubbish behind him and get on with his job.

It is a credit to his powers of concentration that he was able to blank out the disharmony of the previous 48 hours and haul his Arrows-Yamaha into 12th place on the grid for today's race at Silverstone, top of the second division and his second-best qualifying performance of the year.

Despite yesterday's qualified success, it has not been a happy homecoming for the world champion. Exactly one year ago he qualified on pole position here on the way to the title in the formidable Williams-Renault. This weekend he found his job prospects with a more modest outfit under question as the Arrows boss Tom Walkinshaw launched a cruelly timed public attack on his No 1 driver.

Walkinshaw questioned Hill's motivation, alleging that the world champion had "gone to sleep" and was not providing the leadership for which the team is estimated to be paying him pounds 4.5m this year.

As Walkinshaw must have anticipated, the media seized on his words and blew the statement up into an ultimatum. Where Hill might have expected heroic headlines, he instead read that he was facing the sack.

The 36-year-old Briton reacted with the diplomacy that has become one of his trademarks. Pursued all over the paddock by news hounds eager to further fan the flames, he shrugged off Walkinshaw's remarks and even conceded that they may have been partially justified. "Tom is entitled to put a rocket up the bum of his drivers," he said. Hill might have added that Walkinshaw might also think of adding a rocket to the back of his tardy car while he was at it.

The pantomime was typical of Formula One's "silly season" when contracts are being negotiated in private and public statements are no more than cyphers concealing the complex manoeuvres. Paddock gossip yesterday had it that the Hill v Walkinshaw spat resulted from the driver's decision - not publicly announced, and quite possibly imaginary - to move to another team now that Arrows seem unlikely to have a powerful engine next season. Mugen Honda, who Walkinshaw is thought to have been pursuing, recently announced that they would be supplying the Jordan team next season. Hill may also move to Jordan, although he is thought more likely to join the outfit of his former team-mate Alain Prost.

Another less cynical theory suggests that Walkinshaw was merely trying to extract the best from an expensive driver who has been performing below par. If that is the case, the tough Scot may be forgiven a little smug grin this morning.

The two were not talking yesterday afternoon - not visibly, that is. Walkinshaw took his place for the qualifying session on the pit wall while Hill sat in car number one in the team's garage waiting to go out.

Hill's team-mate took to the track first. This was Pedro Diniz, the wealthy and not excessively talented Brazilian with whom Hill had been unfavourably compared by Walkinshaw. In grand prix racing, your team-mate is your most important opponent, and whatever else Hill achieved yesterday he had to make sure that his No 2 driver stayed that way.

Hill sat calmly in his car while Diniz and his other rivals pounded around the track, flicking between the channels on the television set perched in front of him on the car's nose. The screen scrolled through the times recorded so far, allowing the driver to see when the track conditions might be at their best and the traffic at its sparsest.

Diniz recorded a lap of 1 minute 24.239 seconds, and Hill was stung into action. He gestured to his mechanics, the wraps were removed from the tyres and with a tigerish roar that belied its pussy cat performance, the Yamaha engine started up. After a couple of exploratory laps and some minor adjustments in the pits, Hill set a time of 1 min 23.271sec, good enough for a place in the top dozen and a second quicker than the upstart Diniz. A lap that might have been faster still was aborted when Hill tried too hard and made a mistake: no lack of motivation apparent.

Fresh from the car, Hill declared himself pleased. "That wasn't bad at all," he said, "given the setbacks we've had and the pressure we've been under." Had he found the rows and the attendant media scrum annoying? "Not really. This is Formula One, it's part of the picture. You can't sit back in this game and I found those accusations irritating but we can get better and we will with more work and more testing."

How did he compare 12th place with his pole position from last year? Stoically. "The crowd's focus is obviously going to be on the group at the front, and we are a bit of a side attraction," he said. "It's - I won't say it's depressing - but it bugs me." Sleepy one day, bugged the next. It's no life for a champion.