Glenn Freeman

Ben, what do you think of that?

I know you've worked with Pat quite closely in the past.

You know him reasonably well.

What do you think of that decision to not become part of the exodus to Ferrari?

Now, despite Simmons staying to head up a new structure, Berger said years later on Beyond the Grid that he felt the team was collapsing in the wake of Schumacher's departure and the other people who eventually followed him.

Berger accepted the drivers didn't do a good enough job either.

And he said he was busy with complaining instead of sorting out the problems and that it just didn't fit together.

He said it was no specific person's fault.

It was just a combination of everything.

Briatore has said that he made a mistake in hiring a Lacey and Berger as a Lacey was not performing like I believed he would perform.

And Berger was at the end of his career.

And Berger has held his hands up to that, too, saying he was too busy being moody rather than just getting on with the job because he was getting a bit old and grumpy.

Things weren't much different in 1997, ultimately.

The team did win a race, this time with Berger at Hockenheim, of course, but it finished a distant third in the Constructors' Championship again.

It actually scored one point less than it did in 1996.

Simmons said he felt by this point the team had gone back to the old Benetton, perfectly respectable, but we could have done better.

I think that picks up on something Matt said earlier, that kind of the Benetton that ended up being rebuilt was just the Benetton that existed before Schumacher.

At the end of that year, in 97, both drivers and Briatore were gone, with the Benetton family deciding to put David Richards in charge to start a new era for the team, which again, didn't really get any better.

Matt, looking back at it now, could anything have been done to avoid this drop-off?

Or was it inevitable that once Schumacher was gone, Benetton would never be the same again?