The only thing to do at such times is to believe that things will improve, but there's no point just sitting there, with your fingers crossed, hoping that the car will get better. You have to find the reasons the car struggled in the first place and then get on and fix it. Knowing why one car is not as good as another is not always that straightforward.

As a driver, I see my job as directing the team to these shortcomings, suggesting new ideas and trying to keep people motivated when the prospects are looking bleak. Part of the way you do that is by expressing your own disappointment and pointing out the problems, whether they are in the team or the car, but that is when you can come in for criticism yourself. Just like the chassis, the engine or the tyres, if people are looking for a target, eventually they will remember that the driver is also part of the package.

Publicly, you can't afford to rise to the bait, but good racing drivers always analyse their races, looking for improvement. They consider the part played by every component, including themselves, and are the only ones who can really assess their own performance.

A driver's particular style is a totally individual thing. Somebody said that driving style is like handwriting, because the way you drive is an extension of your personality. People drive in subtly different ways from each other, in a style that they have Grafted over the years. In most cases, this style has been worked out by the individual totally on his or her own. There are no David Leadbetters or Arsene Wengers in motorsport.

Because I started on motorbikes, I have a different style from most of the guys who came to motor racing through karting. You don't tackle comers aggressively on a bike; instead, you learn to blend braking, turning and accelerating. With that type of background, I developed into what I would describe as a smooth driver rather than somebody who throws his car around, but that doesn't mean that I am not as 'on the limit' as some of the others. All it actually means is that I explore the limit in my own way. I would liken my instinctive style to that of Alain Prost more than any other driver, although I sometimes change character to suit different circumstances.

Prost's style was so smooth that he made racing look easy. I won't forget Ayrton Senna watching the big screen showing Main's hands on the wheel, via an 'in-kart camera', at the Elf Masters Championship in Paris. Ayrton watched him like a hawk, obviously impressed, for Prost was the master of understatement when it came to driving.

Other drivers, the ones who look as if they are having to work hard in the cockpit, fall into the 'wild' or 'spectacular' school, and that style also has its merits. Jean Alesi, Jacques Villeneuve, Mika Hakkinen and even, from time to time, Michael Schumacher, all tend to get out of shape every now and then. In the 1994 Benetton, Schumacher looked so busy in the cockpit, you could hardly believe that he could keep that up for a whole race. Those drivers throw their cars around, run wide on corners and put wheels off the road. In a race, it carries the risk of getting a puncture, but in qualifying, it can work to their advantage. And, of course, it does look spectacular.

A common problem in telling the difference between able and less able drivers is that what may look spectacular is not always fast. If a car is going sideways, then it's not going forward as much as it could be, because the tyres that hold us to the road can only do so much work - technically this is called a 'friction circle'.

A tyre grips the road, and we try to find the limit of that grip. The driver knows when he's reaching the limit because, through the seat of his pants, his feet on the pedals and his hands on the steering wheel, he receives messages from the car and the tyres that he has to respond to.

Balance is vital. In braking, most of the load is taken through the front wheels, which is why we have bigger brakes at the front. In acceleration, all the load is taken through the rear wheels. The objective is to use to the full the combined braking, cornering and accelerating capabilities of the car - in other words, to find out how far you can drive around a corner without spinning off the track.

It might sound easy, and maybe it would be if we were driving on a billiard table surface with a constant-radius corner and a perfectly balanced car, but that never happens. Instead, the art of driving is about balancing and juggling the different forces, and being sensitive to those four small patches of tyre that connect you to the track. Differences in style come down largely to the ways in which drivers cope with that juggling act.

You can observe this most closely in the way a car goes into a corner. Everything starts from that vital point in the same way that everything follows on from the backswing in golf. How hard a driver hits the brakes as he comes to a corner has an enormous effect on how balanced the car is on the entry to a corner. Some drivers have a very aggressive initial braking, like Alesi, and this puts the whole bias towards the front of the car, so that the back end becomes light and difficult to control. Luckily for him, Jean's great strength lies in his ability to control just that sort of problem. Hakkinen, too, turns in very late and hard, rather like a rally driver.

By contrast, when I have the car set up well, I require small adjustments on the wheel, and my brake wear and fuel consumption are normally much lower than my team-mate's - Prost was the only exception. Giancarlo Fisichella, the Benetton driver, is another in the same camp, relying on finding as smooth a line as he can through the corners. I believe this is the most efficient way but, as I say, it's all a matter of opinion.

There isn't a right way and a wrong way. Jean has his style and I have mine, and we both try to do our best. Jacques Villeneuve drives in his own particular style and it won him a world championship in 1997.1 tend to think that all those moments when he puts two of his wheels on the grass cost him more time than they gain, but Jacques wouldn't be the same driver if he wasn't so keen on finding 'the edge'. It's great entertainment and, even if it's not my style, I would certainly pay to watch Villeneuve driving when he's got a head of steam up.

My father, in one of his first race meetings, was black-flagged for spinning seven times and he was brought in to the pits and told to calm down. His reply was: 'How can I take the car to the limit if I don't know where it is?' In a way, he was right - you have to go beyond the limit in order to know where it is. Jacques thinks like that as well; the difference is that he is not afraid to include an accident just to be totally sure.

As a breed, most drivers are stubborn. If the engineer sits down with his driver and tells him to do something else, a lot of guys will struggle against acting on that advice. It's to do with an ingrained sense of being comfortable with one way of driving, rather than malice or arrogance. Essentially, their style is their style and, like handwriting, it is very hard to change. There are odd bits that they might pick up, but most drivers can only drive one way. Indeed, many of us don't want to change something that we feel works well enough, and there's something to be said for that approach too.

A handful of drivers will try to adapt and learn - the sort who strive to improve their skills - and historically, the champions come from that select band. Niki Lauda, for example, used his intelligence to make himself the best that he could be. He was always very talented, but he also taught himself how to perform in every situation.

I have always been keen to try out new ideas, but it's not easy to adapt and it gets more difficult the longer you drive. For a few years, I tried left-foot braking, a karting technique that a lot of young Grand Prix drivers now use so they do not have to transfer their right foot from the throttle to the brake and back again throughout the race. It also means you can trim the balance of the car by braking and accelerating at the same time and, if you get it right, it's a way of driving that can probably serve you quite well.

The trouble is that I grew up driving a different way, using my right foot on the brake, just as you do in a road car, and my left foot is not as sensitive to braking as my right. I might get there if I spent a year practising the technique in races, but I would lose a lot of time over that year and it's hardly worthwhile. If I was twenty-four years old, I would do it, but as I'm a little older than that, I think I will stick with my old friend, the right foot.

Generally, though, I am very willing to adapt my style. If the data says I should be doing something new, then I will give it a go. It might suggest that there is another line through a corner or a way of turning in that will give me a better time, so I'm happy to go out and put the idea into action. If it works, then it could mean another couple of places on the grid. If it doesn't, then you can scrub it off the list and look for the next bright idea.

In the wet, you're forced to make changes, both to the setup of the car and to your driving style, whoever you are. When rain comes down, turning the racetrack into something of an ice-rink, a driver has to be more aware than ever of that balancing act between cornering, braking and accelerating.

For me, it still comes back to the lessons I picked up while riding bikes. You need a lot of nerve to lean a bike over and put the power down through a corner when it is pouring with rain, and you become very alert to the level of grip that you have. Funnily enough, the best practice came while I was a despatch rider, charging through London in all conditions. There are some particular roads, such as Belgrave Square, that get very slippery in the wet, so I used those opportunities to learn to powerslide the rear wheel and get a bit crossed-up. It was very good training and the best way to brighten up a dull day.

In the wet, you can play with the car and have fun, balancing it with the throttle and letting the wheels slide on purpose. You have to concentrate much harder because a curve that barely merited a thought when it was dry becomes a corner and the straights that were previously flat-out blasts become skid-pans. On a wet track, you can't simply thump your foot down on the gas and start thinking about the next corner because, with the amount of power the cars have, you could find yourself spinning like a top before you ever get there.

You have more opportunities to pick different racing lines in the wet. The game becomes dominated by the need to find a section of the track that will let your car grip the surface as hard as possible, and it's a different challenge at every circuit. At some places, the usual racing line is marked with streaks of oil and rubber that get treacherously slippy in the rain, so at those circuits it's better to look for an alternative. At other places, where the track offers more grip, the normal line can still be the best solution.

A tactical decision such as that comes down to a driver's experience and his ability to size up a situation. The good guys will be thinking all the time about looking for grip, and they might change their line on every lap. In bad weather, those are the drivers to look out for - the guys who are thinking all the time and looking for the advantage.

Wet weather racing has a drama of its own, because it tends to come down to a few crucial decisions. The first one presents itself if it starts to rain while you are on dry tyres. Do you wait to see if it eases off? Do you come in early and try to steal an advantage, or do you leave it late to change? After all, if you change on to wet tyres and the weather improves, you'll have to make another pit-stop to change back again, wasting crucial time.

Another crucial decision must be made when there is so much rain that everybody has to slow down a lot. You don't want to reduce your own speed, because that goes against a racer's instinct, but something inside you says, 'this is crazy - you can't drive flat out in these conditions'. That moment is when you have to negotiate with yourself and come up with a compromise: fast enough to race, slow enough to keep the car under control.

Inside the car, you're soaked. Imagine sitting in a chair with a wind machine blasting you and somebody hosing you down for two hours, and that will give you an idea of what it is like to race in the rain. If it's a hot day, then the conditions are not so bad, because the rain cools you down and can make you feel quite fresh, but there are not many hot rainy days. Usually it's cold, so you end the race shivering and feeling like a lump of ice, which makes it difficult to jump when you're on the podium.

There are advantages to wet weather racing, though. It can reward the better drivers, and it gives you a chance to play with your tactics. It is also easier to overtake in the wet, so long as you can see through the spray.

The level of grip offered by the car is amazing. Because of the amount of downforce holding you to the track, you can go through deep puddles flat out and still come out the other side in a straight line, feeling no more than a deceleration as the car pushes away the water. Water is 800 times more dense than air, so we go slower on the straights in the rain as a result of this 'boating effect'. On other occasions, though, you suddenly have no grip and you feel the car lift off the road or start changing direction. All you can do is react with the steering wheel and the throttle, and hope for the best. It's interesting . . .

In conditions like that, it is vital to have a good set-up on your car so that it's balanced and responsive. A driver needs to feel comfortable that he can control his car in corners and get as much speed as possible on the straights, and, whatever the conditions, if he's good at that aspect of the sport, he can hold a considerable advantage over the field.

It is vital to communicate and work with the engineers. Drivers don't have to understand the physics and the engineering of their car, but it can help the engineers to come up with solutions more quickly if the driver can make suggestions, such as adjusting the roll bar or dampers, and talk accurately about the sensations he experienced while driving. If he simply leaps out of a car without giving any guidance, then he leaves a lot of holes for the team to fill in with educated guesswork.

Despite all the information we get from the telemetry and the onboard computers, it is still necessary for the driver to communicate exactly what it is about the car that is holding him back, and some drivers are better at this sort of dialogue than others. The good ones can go to a test session and really make the most of the time, trying out new ideas and improving the machinery. The bad ones just drive around in circles.

The work done in those long test sessions is critical to success in Formula One. By pounding the car for lap after lap, you can look for improvements and hopefully come up with the tweaks you need to claw back the missing time. The problem, of course, is that every other team is also testing, trying out their own ideas and searching for ways to improve their cars. It's a battle away from the races, but it has a direct bearing on what happens during a Grand Prix. A team that uses its testing time well is normally a team that gets stronger all through the year.

I don't have the skills to design and you won't ever see me telling designers how to do their job, but I can be their eyes in the car. I can tell them what happens in their car when it is being driven hard, how it performs and how it can perform better. I tell them how it behaves through certain corners, whether it's well balanced or being held back by peculiarities in the suspension or in the aerodynamics. They have plenty of information sent back to them by computer links as well, but the driver's input can make the difference. The facts on the computer show what the car is doing in terms of speed, acceleration, power and so on, but it is the driver's responsibility to say if he can drive it or not. That is the point when a good designer or engineer comes into his own.

If there was one thing that Tom Walkinshaw did that might have persuaded me to stay at Arrows, it was to sign up John Barnard to design the cars and do the job of technical director. John is a man full of innovative ideas and is willing to try them out. I got on very well with him and he made a healthy difference to the team. It was largely thanks to him that the car ran so well in Hungary last year, because his ideas helped us to have the car set up perfectly for the race and, with a bit more luck, we would have won. John's talent was one of the main strings to the Arrows bow, but without a powerful engine there was not a lot that even he could do for the team in 1998.

There are some very talented people in Formula One working on the technical side and their ability can make the difference between winning and losing. John is one; another is Adrian Newey, the man whose designs helped McLaren start the season with such a clear advantage.

I have known Adrian since I started out in Formula One. He produced his first car for Williams in the year that I took over the role of team test driver, so I got a close-up look at his skill early on.

I started off my testing career with a single test behind the wheel of an FW13 car, which had been designed by Patrick Head, the team's technical director. After that, I moved on to the FW14, which was Adrian's design. As test driver, it was my job to work closely with the designer, telling him how the car was performing out on the track. From the very beginning, we got on well and worked as a team.

I was very interested in learning about Formula One cars and Adrian helped me enormously. Then, in 1996, he played a big part in helping me to win the world championship, not only by designing the car, but also by giving me advice on how to prepare it for each Grand Prix.

My interest in Formula One is heavily biased towards the technical side and I am intrigued by people like Adrian and John Bernard, people who are interested, above all, in finding answers to difficult questions. I have that curiosity, but I am afraid that I have none of the qualifications, except a Physics 0-level, which simply isn't enough nowadays.

The sort of engineers who are succeeding in Formula One car design today are people like Adrian and a whole new breed of highly qualified specialist aerodynamicists. Eddie Jordan made a smart move by enlisting the services of the highly rated Mike Gascoyne later in the season, after we realised that our car needed some serious attention in that area. Mike has a double first in fluid dynamics from Southampton University, which makes my 0-level look a bit puny.

My father had a love of technology and machinery, and that fascination was passed on to me from my earliest days. It was one of those interests that we shared and I took to avidly. Like most children, I used to like making things. I made models and spent a lot of my time finding out how things worked by taking them apart. I loved to strip down cars and bikes and leave them like that. Rebuilding was a talent that I only acquired much later, and resulted in some very messy situations early on.

During my first years of racing motorbikes, I stupidly didn't want anybody to help me, so I did all the work myself. I knew what to do if the bike was not running well, how to prepare and adapt it and to make sure that if a problem came up, I knew how to solve it. I made plenty of mistakes along the way, but I was always learning and fiddling with the machinery, feeling a tremendous sense of satisfaction when I made a change that turned out to have a good effect. I also got to know the feeling of frustration that comes from mechanical failure, and I have never got over that.

A few years ago, I worked with Adrian and Patrick Head, the Williams technical director, on what were known as the active-era cars. It was all about cutting-edge technology and the most sophisticated machinery that motor racing had ever known, with suspensions that controlled the height of the car as you went round corners and traction control systems that ensured your wheels never spun while you were accelerating. We were scratching the surface of what was technologically possible at the time. They were all new and different ideas and concepts, and we were having a good time.

Then, as soon as they had come, active cars were banned. For those of us who had taken an interest in the way the cars were being developed, it was a disappointment, but not nearly as much as it was for the poor guys, like Frank Williams and Ron Dennis, who had forked out millions to develop the systems. Some of the technical developments we had been working on then would have taken us down an entirely new design route because they were so innovative and exciting. Up until then, the limitations on how we worked and even how we thought had been fairly strict, but all of a sudden, there was a world of computer-controlled suspensions and differentials, ideas that were completely new and that forced us to open our imaginations to what could be achieved.

For me, it was fascinating. It was truly a wild ride in an Fl car. I cherish the memory of driving the Williams active car around Estoril in winter testing in 1992 with traction control, anti-lock brakes, large qualifying tyres that had no grooves and a 3.5-litre engine. It was awesome, and more.

It must be so odd for people such as Adrian and Patrick to design these wonderful cars but never know what they are like to drive. I know they get a sense of satisfaction from seeing them being driven hard and used properly, but they wouldn't be human if, once in a while, they didn't wonder what it's really like to be inside the cockpit for a flat-out lap. Instead, they have to put up with people like me coming back into the garage and complaining that 'it's not quite right'.