Ligier Fire and a first point, 1996

On 29 January 1996 Ligier unveiled its new car, the JS43, at the Yacht Club de Monaco, in the principality where Pedro Diniz had lived since 1993. He was 25, one season into Formula One, and the second seat was his. He told Folha de S.Paulo that this was his chance. He would have to learn to fight for places at the front, which he had not done with Forti the year before; first he wanted points, and after that, who knew, a podium.

The seat came with money, and nobody pretended otherwise. That autumn Ligier’s French backers had cut their budgets, the tobacco company SEITA by about 30 per cent, and a search for a paying American driver had come to nothing. The team belonged to Flavio Briatore, with Guy Ligier keeping 15 per cent, and Tom Walkinshaw’s TWR ran its engineering. At Suzuka in October Walkinshaw, who was said to have little time for pay drivers, denied that he had talked to Diniz at all. By December grandprix.com reported the deal all but done, and introduced him without ceremony.

Into the picture walked Pedro Diniz - an amiable but not very quick Brazilian with around $10m for anyone who would sign him up.

The sums reported ran from US$6 million to US$10 million, from Parmalat, the ice-cream maker Kibon and Arisco, and one report had them lifting Ligier’s budget to US$36 million. None of the figures was ever confirmed. He still had to go through a test, at Barcelona in December, where in two days he went off a couple of times and ended 1.08 seconds slower than Olivier Panis. In January Ligier laid off about a third of its staff, and Motor Sport’s diary recorded, in the same sentence, that the team had confirmed Diniz as number two to Panis.

Panis was 29 and in his third year at Ligier. In February grandprix.com thought Walkinshaw keen on neither of his drivers and resigned to both for their sponsors’ sake, and it found Diniz still slow in testing at Estoril. The car was built on a budget. Money had been too short for more than a tidied version of the JS41, the 1995 car that had looked remarkably like a Benetton. The JS43’s weakness was pitch sensitivity: it was good in races and poor in qualifying, which left both its drivers a long way down the grids. It had a Mugen-Honda V10 and Goodyear tyres, and Diniz’s car was number 10.

Walkinshaw leaves, Abílio steps in

The season opened at Albert Park, Melbourne, on 10 March. Diniz qualified 20th, less than a second slower than Panis, and finished 10th, after Martin Brundle, on cold brakes at the restart, had slid into the back of him. He had enjoyed a fight with David Coulthard: “it was a great experience to race a McLaren.”

That weekend Walkinshaw announced that he was leaving. He revealed who owned the team, bought control of Arrows the following week and took his engineers with him, among them the technical director, Frank Dernie. He took the Parmalat deal too, which he said he had signed himself: the company, which had followed Diniz from Forti, now backed Arrows as well, though its name stayed on the Ligier.

At Interlagos, days before the Brazilian Grand Prix, Diniz’s father, Abílio Diniz, came to the circuit to deal with his son’s sponsorship in person, for the first time, and sat down with Bernie Ecclestone, Briatore, Walkinshaw and Gianni Grisendi, the president of Parmalat in Brazil. In the paddock his son said: “I don’t really know what’s going on. But Briatore told me he’s going to bring people from Benetton.”

After a dispute over an alleged push-start and the use of the spare car in qualifying, he started his home race from the back of the grid and was fined US$5,000, which grandprix.com reckoned a cab fare to him. In the rain he still finished 8th, although at his stop the team fitted wet tyres again when he had expected slicks, and he had to stop once more.

Buenos Aires, 7 April 1996

By the Argentine Grand Prix the alliance with TWR was over and Briatore had taken direct charge of the team. Diniz qualified 18th, six places behind Panis. Somewhere around the 25th lap (the accounts put it anywhere from the 25th to the 27th) he was running with Pedro Lamy when the two of them came up to lap Luca Badoer’s Forti. Diniz said: “I was close to Lamy. We were both trying to lap Luca’s Forti. He didn’t see me and came back onto his line.” The Forti’s rear wheel struck the Ligier’s front wheel, Badoer’s car flipped over onto its roll-bar, and the Safety Car came out.

Under the Safety Car Diniz stopped for tyres and more than 100 litres of fuel. At the first left-hand corner after he rejoined, a turn away from the side the filler was on, the refuelling valve, stuck open, sprayed fuel onto the glowing brakes. The Ligier caught fire and spun, and the spin slopped out more fuel.

He was out of the car almost at once. Folha timed his exit at 4.6 seconds, and Atlas F1’s reviewer had never seen a driver leave a car so fast. He came away with blisters on the backs of both hands and a singed helmet, and told Folha: “I looked at my hands and they were on fire.” The fire crews were at work until lap 32.

Foi um problema que a Ligier não teria como detectar. … Algumas pessoas vieram me falar que as imagens eram chocantes. Quando as vi, no entanto, não achei tão fortes.

It was a problem that Ligier had no way of detecting. … Some people came to tell me the pictures were shocking. When I saw them, though, I didn’t think they were so strong.

On the day Ligier did not confirm whether a tank valve had leaked, and the television commentators took it for a blown engine. The FIA’s investigation did not agree with Diniz: it blamed a preparation mistake with the team’s own refuelling rig, work done by Ligier and not by the rig’s maker, Intertechnique. grandprix.com heard that Ligier’s regular refuelling man had been moved to another job when the TWR staff left, and that his replacement had not known how to do it. It was the fifth incident involving refuelling since refuelling had returned to Formula One in 1994.

In England, as two writers remembered it years later, the Sun ran the picture under the headline “Diniz in the Oven”. Two days after the race he could not remember undoing his belts or taking the steering wheel off. In 2012 he said he had got out without taking the wheel off, and still did not know how.

The first points

Imola, 5 May

At Imola, four weeks later, he drove what grandprix.com thought by far his best race yet. From 17th on the grid he was 14th after one lap and 7th by half distance. Fighting Mika Häkkinen’s McLaren, he found Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari behind them both; he said he let them through under the blue flags, but the stewards gave him and Häkkinen a 10-second stop-go penalty each, and the extra stop cost him a likely 6th place. Ferrari said the pair had cost Schumacher 9 seconds. Schumacher himself, as Folha printed his words in Portuguese, said only: “I think they were fighting for position. It happens.” Diniz finished 7th, and said: “I think it was the best race I’ve done in F1 … It was a pity. It would have been my first point.”

Monaco, 19 May

Monaco was Panis’s day. He started 14th, in conditions that went from wet to dry, made a light fuel stop, passed Brundle, Häkkinen and Johnny Herbert, then Eddie Irvine at Loews on lap 35, and took the lead when Jean Alesi stopped. Only four cars were running at the end. It was Ligier’s first win since 1981. Diniz, 17th on the grid, had gone out after 5 laps; he blamed the driveshaft.

Barcelona, 2 June

Two weeks later, in torrential rain at the Circuit de Catalunya, he scored at last. He had qualified 17th, feeling he had lost his way with the set-up that morning. At the start four cars collided on the pit straight and he came through; later, in the spray, a car he never identified shot across in front of him and missed him by inches, and once he went off and kept going. On lap 45 Gerhard Berger, running 4th, spun off trying to pass him. Schumacher won by 45 seconds. Only six cars finished, and Diniz was the last of them, 6th, 2 laps down, with Häkkinen 5th. It was his 24th Grand Prix, and his first championship point.

Passei perto várias vezes neste ano. Finalmente ele veio. Os outros pontos deverão ser mais fáceis. … Consegui me manter na prova e alcançar os pontos. Foi bom.

I came close several times this year. At last it came. The other points should be easier. … I managed to stay in the race and reach the points. It was good.

Magny-Cours to Monza

At Magny-Cours on 30 June he started 11th, his best grid yet, promoted a place when Irvine was sent to the back. On a heavy fuel load for a single stop he passed Rubens Barrichello and Panis at the start, and he held the cars behind him up for so long that Coulthard, ahead, had a 10-second cushion. He was running 6th when a pneumatic valve failed on lap 28, and Folha singled out his progress as the most notable among the top ten. At Hockenheim he qualified 11th, equalling that grid place, one place ahead of Panis: the only time all year that he out-qualified him, and he was delighted.

Then the finishes dried up: of the six races from Silverstone to Estoril he finished one; three ended with the car failing and two in collisions. In Hungary he went out on the first lap, tangled with Mika Salo’s Tyrrell and Jos Verstappen. Yet opinion was turning. Max Galvin, Atlas F1’s reader-reviewer, who in the spring had dismissed him in the crudest terms, wrote after that race that he “seems to be making the transition from rich-boy to racing driver at last.”

At Monza, on the Saturday morning before the race of 8 September, he moved across on Jacques Villeneuve’s Williams without seeing it, at high speed on the run to the Parabolica; Villeneuve went onto the grass and into the guardrail. Diniz qualified 14th, half a second behind Panis. In the race the chicanes were lined with tyre stacks that several of the leaders hit. He passed Verstappen and then Herbert, and Häkkinen, recovering from a stop, sat behind him until the pit stops. Panis, left on the dummy grid, started last and crashed with Ukyo Katayama. Diniz finished 6th, a lap down, for his second point. grandprix.com thought it a good race and a thoroughly deserved result, and Folha counted it among the best drives of his career.

Over the year Panis out-qualified him 15 times to once and scored 13 points to his 2; Panis was 9th in the championship, Diniz 15th. Diniz finished six races, Panis nine.

To Arrows

By the autumn Walkinshaw was running Arrows, with Damon Hill signed for 1997, and at Suzuka he announced Diniz as Hill’s team-mate; the Arrows chapter tells how the deal was made. Folha’s diarist told another side of it: Briatore, who had bought shares in Minardi, had kept Diniz waiting in the hope of steering him and Parmalat there, and Diniz’s camp had seen it and signed with TWR.

In the statement that went with the announcement, as Diniz’s own website later reproduced it, Walkinshaw said: “Pedro is probably the most improved driver in Formula 1 this season.” His last race for Ligier, at Suzuka on 13 October, lasted 13 laps: hit from behind by Coulthard at the start, he ran on worn tyres and fading brakes until he spun at the chicane. In São Paulo, two days before, Folha had summed up his year.

Considerado um ‘piloto de aluguel’ no início do ano, Diniz mostrou uma notável evolução.

Considered a ‘rent-⁠a-⁠driver’ at the start of the year, Diniz has shown remarkable progress.

The same article added that Parmalat’s backing was, obviously, still his main attraction.

In February 1997 Briatore sold the team to Alain Prost, and Ligier became Prost Grand Prix. Less than four years later the Diniz family would buy into it, and Diniz would stop racing to help run it.