It speaks volumes for the premium Christian Danner puts on honesty that the drivers he immediately considers for his favourite team-mate both were willing to go beyond the racing norm of looking after number one.
Just as Alfa Romeo colleague Giancarlo Fisichella didn’t shy away from revealing to Danner the differences between the engines in their 155 V6 GTIs, which explained his deficit at the 1996 Silverstone International Touring Car Championship round, so Danner settles on Martin Brundle after pairing up at Zakspeed during the 1987 Formula 1 season.
“He was quick, he was straight, he was uncomplicated, and he was honest which is a very uncommon attitude as far as team-mates are concerned,” relates the inaugural Formula 3000 champion of 1985.
Brundle had joined the ambitious German outfit after three years at Tyrrell, having emerged as a regular points scorer with Renault turbo power in 1986. Befitting his experience, the Briton had negotiated number one status.
Danner, known to Zakspeed after making two appearances during a busy 1985 in which he raced sportscars and touring cars in addition to his main F3000 programme, signed a contract guaranteeing equal status. But at a small team that Danner’s engineer Chris Murphy estimates was operating on half of the leading teams’ budgets, this was always going to be difficult to realise.
“That of course in reality doesn’t work out in a small team because there is always a lack of parts, development parts in particular,” affirms Danner, who had scored the only point for an Arrows driver in 1986 up against the highly-rated Thierry Boutsen. This led to a frank conversation with Brundle over a beer about which of the pair would end up with a new rear suspension.
“I said, ‘well, if you have it, I have it because I’m on even status’, then Martin said, ‘I’m number one, I get everything’ and we were kind of laughing about it,” the 65-year-old remembers. “Usually people can take whatever they can get and screw the team-mate, but he wasn’t like that at all. We then decided to give Erich Zakowski a hard time, insisting on our rights which was he wanted the rear suspension because he’s number one and I wanted the rear suspension because I’m at equal terms!
Source: Autosport