Formula One: Jaguar Star Burti Steps Into A Different Age
30 March 2000
When up-and-coming Brazilian star Lucino Burti signed for Jaguar as its Formula 1 test driver, little did he realize how much motor sporting heritage he would be immersing himself as part of his new role. And, even if he'd spent long hours committing the make's numerous sporting successes to memory, he'd have had no inkling that he would get to meet up with his predecessor from a different age. But that's exactly what happened to Burti on Wednesday, when he shared experiences with Norman Dewis, the development and test driver for Jaguar Cars from 1952-86. Dewis is the man who honed the awesome D-type into a car which would dominate the Le Mans 24 Hours and World Endurance Championship. What's more, they met at Goodwood, scene of some of the D-type's greatest successes. Sadly, Burti didn't get to drive the D-type prototype up the Goodwood House hillclimb course, but he was able to get a great insight into a past world from Dewis and the car. "It was very interesting," says the 25-year-old from Sao Paulo, home of last weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix. "We get so used to things nowadays and it's easy to forget about the history of motor racing and how different it was. Listening to him talking about how things used to be done makes you wonder what things will be like 50 years in the future. After all, the difference between now and 50 years ago is so big, imagine what it will be like in the 2050s!" "I hope that then I will be talking to someone young telling them some nice stories. Hopefully that will be as a Formula 1 race driver, not as a test driver, and I will be describing my Grand Prix wins and championships." Brazil's racing history only really started in the 1970s, when Luciano's fellow Sao Paulistes Emerson Fittipaldi and Carlos Pace blazed a trail to F1 success which would be followed by Ayrton Senna and in all probability, Burti himself. Arriving at Goodwood, the stage for so many British racing dramas, must have been like steeping into a parallel universe. "Up until today, I never really knew about the 1950s," he says. "We didn't have that kind of racing in Brazil, but today was a good chance to understand a little bit about it. And to talk to someone who used to drive these things with no seatbelts is amazing. It would be nice to have a go myself, especially at Goodwood." Burti's seat time in the contemporary Jaguar R1 Formula 1 racer has been at a premium lately, owing to the disappointments which have beset race drivers Eddie Irvine and Johnny Herbert in Australia and Brazil. The young pretender tested the car in the wet at Silverstone on Tuesday morning, but was then forced to stand down for the rest of the three-day test so that the older Britons could accumulate mileage. "I hope that the team solves the problems and has good results, but the main thing is that I've been doing my job and doing it well," he says. "It makes a lot more sense for Johnny and Eddie to be driving at the moment, but I'm sure that soon I'll be driving more often. After all, the most important thing for me is to drive nearer to the end of the season, when people are making their decisions for 2001." Luciano's next Formula One test outing will be at Lurcy-Levis in France on April 27.