Interview with Forrest Evers

(Veteran's Day is a holiday and the blog is taking the day off, sort of.  Digging through my files I found an interview I did with my fictional character, Forrest Evers, years ago.  Hope it makes you smile too.)

    Forrest in the Rain

    Rain break in the Barcelona Press room and Forrest Evers is staring out at the steaming track.  Forrest is looking good.  At six one he is as tall as Berger and broader than Mansell across the shoulders.  His “leatherbeaten” face the same  craggy setting for those intense, blue eyes that nail you from those mildly obscene ads for “Formula One, the pheromone ‘attractor’.” 

BJ:  So you had a frustrating year.

Evers: Yeah, you bet. Everybody that wasn’t holding a steering wheel that said Williams had a frustrating year.  But next year with the new Judd power . . . . 

BJ: There was one bright spot.  You were voted number one sex symbol.

Evers: (laughing) In Indonesia, yeah.  Match that, Nigel.  Look, racing is in my blood and if I am not running in front I am not relaxed.  This year the only running in front was from a pack of women in Estoril.  You think being a sex symbol is fun, try it  some time.  It sure wasn’t my idea, I don’t deserve it and please, if you are female and feel the urge to ring me, don’t.   Yeah, it has been hard.

BJ: How did your talks go with Eddie Jordan?

 Evers: Talk, not talks.  As in Eddie talking.  And what he said, after you sorted through the charm, the stories, the compliments and the promises, was no.

BJ: But you’d be perfect.  You are only thirty four, you’ve won five Grand Prix and you have ten years experience in Formula One.

Evers:  Yeah, there’s no question in my mind that I am faster than Nigel now.  I respect what he’s done.  He was the world champion and they don’t give that away.  On the other hand Christian Fittipaldi, Alex Zanardi, Gil DeFerran, Al Unser Jr., hey, Bobby Rahal is faster than Nigel now.

BJ:  They’re all Indycar drivers.

Evers: Exactly.  Johnny Herbert is way faster than Nigel now, no question.  But Eddie isn’t hiring Nigel for his speed, he’s hiring Nigel for his marketing.  Nigel draws crowds and sponsors.  So on that level, I don’t blame Eddie for picking Nigel over me.   If you want to win in Formula One, money comes first. 

BJ: But that’s always been true.

Evers:  Sure, the equation has always been there, but there is so much money now that it outweighs everything.  They slow the cars down with rinky dink second gear corners on narrow little mickey mouse tracks so the TV cameras can lock on the logos when what you’d like as a driver is a balls out, wide open, flat out screaming track like Monza, like Spa.  Like Silverstone used to be.

BJ:  But drivers died.

Evers:  Drivers died.  Make all the safety changes you want, and I’ll be glad for them.  But you won’t change the nature of the beast which is who gets closest to the edge without getting cut. 
            Listen, at Estoril, you know that bumpy uphill little straight where you drive into the sun and Micheal Schumacher slipped right by me?  And then coming out of that little 2nd gear corner, we are going up through the gears and I am locked onto the back of Schumacher as he’s in fifth turning right into the Senna Corner; my car goes light and doesn’t want to turn in but I like the tow and think maybe if I can stay tight all the way around I can hitch a tow down the main straight.  

Also I want to get in tight, avoid that wavy patch and suddenly Jacques (Villeneuve) is alongside me out of nowhere on the wavy patch,  170 mph, turning in.  You know Jacques sits low in the car and I don’t think he saw Michael until he got alongside me.  He wanted to get back in on the line but Michael was there so Jacques was forced to go around him.  And he did.  He could have backed off, played it safe, tucked in behind me.  But he didn’t.  I mean that is racing.  The rest of it is marketing.  Best moment of the year. 

BJ: From an Indycar driver.

Evers:  From a Canadian.  Canadians are like Scots.  They huddle on the border, cling to their history and drive like the thieves of God.

BJ:  Thieves of God?

Evers:  They steal scraps of time, pieces of track nobody else wants.  Keep your eye on Coultard next year.  If McLaren gets ever gives him a car that will go around a corner, he’ll be there with Jacques and Michael.

BJ:  Wait a minute, Forrest.  You’re saying Villeneuve passed Schumacher at Estoril because you were in the way?  I looked at those tapes and I didn’t see you.

Evers: You media turkeys only see the first three or four cars on the track.  Like the rest of us are see-through.  If you are in the middle of the pack, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, nobody gives you credit.  I made a mistake at Monaco, admitted it and everybody said, ‘idiot.’  Michael makes the same mistake, admits it, and everybody says ‘what a great guy.’  Well Michael is a great guy, but you guys could take your blinders off.

BJ: Are you saying you are as fast as Michael Schumacher?

Evers: Wait till next year.  You are in for some surprises.

BJ: Seriously, Forrest, you think you have a shot at the world championship?

Evers: Absolutely.

BJ: But you are a fictional character.  Ink on a page.

Evers: Sure, but I’m still faster than Nigel.

1979 Polish Grand Prix. by Forrest Evers

     If Nigel hadn't made all that noise about winning more GPs than Stewart I wouldn't even mention the `79 Polish Grand Prix. It certainly didn't do anything for my career.  But Stewart still won't talk about it and I think it's time to set the record straight. 
     I was nineteen, dragging my first Formula Three car across Europe behind a clapped out Cortina.  I was in Hockenhiem, scrounging the pits for a used half-shaft when Jackie Ickx introduced me to a tall, pale man in a pin-stripe suit who said he represented Count Jazelrewski, Grand Nephew of King Karol of Roumania.  He didn't look like he represented anybody, he looked like he had been sleeping in doorways.  So when he asked if I would I care to race in the Polish Grand Prix the next weekend, I had to smile.
     "Is not a joke," he said.  "The Count needs to make up the field.  £500 cash."
     £500 was a fortune. £500 meant I could swap my lump of an engine for a Judd worth rebuilding.  But the Polish Grand Prix????
     The plane landed in the dark and slid on the wet grass.  In the semi darkness, I could pick them out moving toward the open door. . . Andretti, Hunt, Ickx, Lauda, Schecter . . . I don't know what they promised Stewart to lure him out of retirement  and ignore the obvious shortcomings in safety (Hunt said it was over £50,000).  Stewart was the first down the ramp, scurrying across the lawn towards what looked like Dracula's house.
      The Count shook hands as we walked into cold entry hall.  He was smiling, saying "Good Morning, thank you for coming.  I am Chairman Polski Fiat, Count Jazelrewski."
      I liked the Count.  He was a short intense man in overalls, with the presence of a corporate chairman, offering us a glass of Jazelrewski `69 in the ballroom for our driver's briefing.  "You must forgive me for rushing you," he said, "but the plane has to be back with Air Poland in Cracow before dark." 
      The Count explained that he had `borrowed' a 77 Ferrari 312 T2, for replication by the Polski factory, "accurate, I assure you, to the last detail."   He and FISA were going to sell the 26 replicas to rich collectors in the West to demonstrate Polish engineering skill, attract foreign capital etc. etc.  My mind wandered to the doorway where a hauntingly beautiful young woman was fiddling with the button on her blouse and staring at me. 
       The Count droned on; limited crew and flag marshalls, a cameraman at each of the more important corners to record the event, "maybe to sell to TV." 
      "No spectators," he said,  "Too bad.  The regime maybe not understand importance to Polski Fiat, to Poland and World Peace.  6.3 kilometres to the lap, 70 laps.  Qualifying would be from 10 to 11.  Perhaps you wish to walk the course before."
       The "course" ran from the front of the castle down to the lake where it plunged into the gloom of the Polish forest, emerging after a mile long uphill straight on a high ridge, two fast curves along the ridge, then it dove down through the forest again to a nasty decreasing radius turn in the semi darkness before the track emerged again from the forest, swept along the shore of the lake and rose up to the "pits" in front of the castle.  Something like a narrow Spa with wild boar droppings.  
       Practice was tough.  The cars were accurate replicas except for the last detail.  The tires were the best racing tires in Poland; stolen off the limousines of foreign diplomats.  I had never driven a Formula One car before, let alone on street tires, and qualified 21 out of a field of 21.  As Marjeanna was later to point out, I had a lot to learn.
       There was a wall of tire smoke at the start.
         I saw very little of the race.  My tires seemed to be made of a wood substitute and it didn't make much difference whether I stood on the brakes or put it into a broadslide, it wouldn't slow down.  Which didn't matter because flooring the accelerator just spun the wheels. It was a pig on ice. I did three cautious laps and Stewart flew past me. In the two corners I was privileged to watch, he was so smooth he never seemed to touch the ground. I went off trying to replicate his technique, spinning into a marsh at the end of the lake. 
        When I got back to the castle to wash off the mud, a slender hand on my shoulder stopped me. "I am Marjeanna, daughter to the Count," she said.  "I want to show you the other Poland." 
        Later, flying back to Berlin in, none of the drivers, not even Stewart, would speak to me.  And when I go back over the day two questions go through my mind. Did the Count and Marjeanna set up the bedroom scene, the Count knocking the door off its hinges, to get out of paying us?  And do FISA, in their archives, have a record of the race which had gone 47 laps, Stewart leading every one, before the Count ran out on the course, waving his arms and screaming, stopped the race?  Either way it is all on film somewhere in the castle.  I would love to see it.