Table of contents for September 2024 in AUTOSPORT

Confession time: this month’s cover feature has been a long time in the making. We’ve put it off at least once. Perhaps the long era of Red Bull dominance has rendered us punch drunk. When McLaren applied a major update to its MCL38 in Miami and Lando Norris immediately claimed his first grand prix win, it was still too early to say definitively that this venerable team, which hasn’t been a genuine title contender since 2012, was back in the game. Larger sample size required. Subsequent rounds seemed to confirm that McLaren’s car-performance uptick was real, rather than a track-specific outlier. But from Canada onwards there were a series of slips twixt cup and lip. Indubitably we can now say McLaren has gone from also-ran to an occasional poacher of…

Australian racers in Formula 1 have been key characters from the early days when former Spitfire pilot Tony Gaze launched the connection in 1952 with four entries including Silverstone and Monza. Three years later, compatriot Jack Brabham made his F1 debut at the British GP and went on to become the only triple world champion from the other side of the world. Knighted in 1979, Brabham saw another Aussie take the title in 1980 as Alan Jones swept through the opposition in his Williams FW07B with sheer tenacity and determination. Alan’s last F1 race win was at Las Vegas in 1981 and it was 28 years before Mark Webber was able to celebrate a similar special moment for the land Down Under. His Red Bull win at the Nürburgring in 2009…

GP Racing: How did you personally first get into the world of Formula 1? Robin Fenwick: I’ve always been interested in sports, in particular rugby and cricket, and after university I worked for various sports marketing agencies including one that had an F1 contract. My first GP was at Monza – when Vodafone were sponsoring Ferrari – and that helped me to build connections. That led to a position at McLaren and it was quite a transition to go from rugby to working in a £300 million building designed by Sir Norman Foster. At that time McLaren had a huge marketing department and I was looking after title partner West, part of Imperial Tobacco. GPR: That was a golden era for tobacco sponsorship. Remind us of some of the activations West…

“I see it as a dream,” Antonelli said when asked directly about his F1 prospects. “Some degree of worry is always there, the prospect of not being able to perform I think frightens everyone. My approach is to see it as a great opportunity to learn, grow and also enjoy the moment. I’m not afraid of being judged, I know Mercedes has a clear opinion about my potential. Already this season in F2 the championship didn’t kick off in the best way but there were no negative thoughts” It’s been almost 20 years since an Italian driver won an F1 race, and all four of the Italian drivers who have debuted in the championship in the 21st century have never finished on the podium. Understandably, there’s a lot of excitement…

FC Stuttgart I like football, but I mainly follow the German league and my club is Stuttgart. It’s been challenging the past few years, when we went down to the second division, then up again, then down and up again, and last season we finished second in the championship ahead of Bayern. I’m friends with some of the old players, like Hansi Müller, and we meet up from time to time. Being a dad Family is always at the top of my list, although it’s not easy with my job and many other projects to spend as much time with them as I would like. I’ve got two boys, they’re twins, and I try to do all sorts of things with them. They do a lot of sports, they play…

HOW TO WIN A GRAND PRIX Author Bernie Collins Price £22 quercusbooks.com Sky Sports F1 subscribers will now be familiar with the County Fermanagh accent of Bernie Collins, formerly performance engineer to Jenson Button, latterly head of race strategy at Aston Martin. This book, written with GP Racing columnist Maurice Hamilton, is an intriguing mix of autobiography and race-engineering manual. The journey from school through Formula Student to a first job with McLaren is threaded through with important life and career lessons – indeed, it’s fascinating to see how some competitors always seem to come armed with bigger and better tools, even in Formula Student. And there are intriguing insights into the subtle differences between F1 outfits, right down to how they managed their laundry. The meaty end of the…

OLEG KARPOV Oleg tries to unravel why Andrea Kimi Antonelli is so highly rated, and if he will indeed blag a Mercedes drive for 2025 (p48) BEN HUNT Autosport’s chief motorsport writer takes a look at another of F1’s young coming men, the Haas-bound Oliver Bearman (p56) ANDREW BENSON The BBC’s Formula 1 correspondent analyses the progress McLaren has made, in short order, to be back at the front of the grid (p38) DAMIEN SMITH Damien has delved into the fascinating story behind the Lotus 56B, the only gas turbine car ever to race – albeit briefly – in F1 (p72)…

There are lots of places to shoot Turn 1 at Spa-Francorchamps, which is good because the start is usually dramatic. I like this position and angle where you’re on the outside of the corner shooting across and down. With a telephoto lens and a fairly big aperture it blurs a lot of the messier background elements so you can draw the eye towards the action. The risk you take is that some of the drama kicks off earlier in the corner. A couple of years ago the organisers widened the run-off here but replaced a lot of the asphalt with gravel to deter track-limit gambling. Lando Norris just got it a bit wrong at the start here and slipped from fourth to fifth. Where Spa, Belgium When 3:04pm, Sunday 28…

There’s nothing new about F1 teams changing team principals – in recent years it’s felt as frequent as football clubs sacking their managers. And as Chelsea begins the new Premier League season on its sixth in two years, Alpine is definitely heading towards that extreme. A year after Otmar Szafnauer was ousted and replaced by Bruno Famin, a new man is taking over the reins at Enstone. And you could be forgiven for being surprised by the choice: Oliver Oakes has never worked at Enstone and has never held a senior position at any other F1 team. However, that’s not the most significant bit of news from the French manufacturer’s team, as it has also decided to change its power unit supplier, abandoning its own engine programme in favour of a…

There’s another year and a half to go before Audi officially makes its debut in F1, but the German manufacturer is already one of the series’ biggest newsmakers. In the middle of summer its F1 project underwent major managerial changes, with CEO Andreas Seidl and chairman Oliver Hoffmann departing. Former Ferrari F1 boss Mattia Binotto has taken the reins of preparing Audi’s F1 debut, while Red Bull team manager Jonathan Wheatley will join him shortly. While the poor results of the Audi-owned Sauber team this year have been a significant factor in the board’s decision to wield the axe, it’s understood internal conflict between Seidl and Hoffmann acted as an accelerant. Insiders suggest the two erstwhile project leaders had substantial disagreements over the next steps required. Seidl had been in place…

August’s break was probably particularly welcomed by the teams. The first part of this record-length season was hectic to say the least – but, as they assembled in Zandvoort, how might they have assessed their performance over the previous months? The answer will vary from the delight of McLaren through the concern of Red Bull to the possible despair of Sauber. The season opener in Bahrain suggested a degree of inevitability with Max Verstappen on pole by nearly a quarter of a second but at the same time the field was extremely close: the gap from first to last in Q1 was only 1.15%, or just over one second. However, the Red Bull 1-2 in the race didn’t bode well for a season of surprises, and Saudi only reinforced the view.…

Now you’re running closer to the front in F1, have you noticed an impact elsewhere in the business? Yeah, everywhere. From CVs coming in the door to sponsorship, we’re doing awesome. Drivers’ happiness, team morale, shareholder excitement, fans… everywhere. But we need to keep our feet on the ground. I like where we’ve come from because we’ve kind of earned it the hard way and I think it’s made us more resilient and very proud of what we’ve done. And I actually think it’s good that we went through the bad times because we know what that feels like, so we’re going to work really hard to make sure we don’t get back there. We’re not taking anything for granted. Are you looking to secure a title sponsor for 2025?…

WHILE THE FORMULA 1 world has been whipping itself into a froth over the if-when-where of Mercedes protégé Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s F1 debut, one of Ferrari’s up-and-coming talents has been there, done that, and picked his race number. Oliver Bearman has already proved himself capable of racing an F1 car at one of the most challenging tracks on the calendar – and Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu reckons it’s actually his new driver who has the potential to excite the establishment. Bearman, pronounced as it’s written (somewhere along the line it had been incorrectly distorted to Beer-man), will drive for Haas from next season, effectively on loan from Ferrari, where he is part of the driver academy. The 19-year-old was born in London and grew up living in Chelmsford, Essex…

Nothing is trivial in Formula 1 – literally every aspect of a team’s activities is geared towards performance and, given the rapid calendar expansion of recent years, the wellbeing of track personnel is now being given a great deal of attention. But while it’s a well-known fact that each driver has a personal physiotherapist, few people realise that the professionals who look after the physical – and often mental – wellbeing of the team’s mechanics have long been among the most important members of F1 teams. At Haas that role is filled by Faith Atack-Martin, a specialist with a background in football – she previously worked at Leeds United – who joined the team five years ago and has been helping the team’s mechanics do their job better ever since.…

THE FIA PRESIDENT SHOULD brace himself at Monza. Particularly if Lewis Hamilton wins. Mohammed Ben Sulayem (MBS) wouldn’t want a repeat of Alain Prost’s podium antics in 1989 not long after the McLaren driver had announced he would be joining Ferrari for the following season. Prost was severing a relationship with a team that brought him 29 wins and three world titles. Ron Dennis had shown great faith in Alain by offering a McLaren seat for 1984 a matter of hours after the Renault driver had been blamed (unfairly) for losing the 1983 championship. Twelve months later, Prost was neck-and-neck with McLaren team-mate Niki Lauda, the Austrian winning the title by half a point. Prost collected it at the end of the next season. And the year after that. He…

1 Mercedes match goes to extra time Lewis Hamilton was clearly perturbed he’d finished less than half a second behind Mercedes team-mate George Russell in the Belgian Grand Prix. From the near-perfect race he’d just executed, you could sense he felt injustice that he hadn’t just taken win number 105. “The car came alive and I was really surprised to, firstly, get into the lead and then be pulling away,” said Hamilton, who has found an extra gear since his brilliant Silverstone win. “I felt fully under control and I’ve not had that for years. I had plenty of pace and tyres… and it just didn’t end up as planned.” He very nearly sat in the middle, winner’s high chair in the pre-podium green room. And was silent as he…

When Max Verstappen crossed the finish line in his RB19 at Suzuka last year, winning by 20 seconds over the next non-Red Bull car, few minds in Formula 1 might have imagined that, come the summer break, the 2024 season would have the widest race victory success spread in 12 years. Except, it seems, within Red Bull itself. The team stunned F1 with the big changes to the upper aerodynamic surfaces of the RB20 compared with its illustrious predecessor. Its early season form – which should have been a clean sweep but for Verstappen’s brake exploding and Sergio Pérez putting in the first of many underwhelming displays in Melbourne – suggested all were going to be carried before once again. But inside that sprawling Milton Keynes industrial-estate-cum-‘campus’, we now know…

“Ladies and gentlemen, could you please welcome on stage Formula 1 world champion Mr David Coulthard!” The host was eager, she had read her briefing notes and given DC the big build up, then at the last minute elected to ad lib. “Thanks for promoting me,” said DC graciously, adding, “however it was my misfortune to arrive at the peak of my career at the same time as Mika Häkkinen and Michael Schumacher, so I’m afraid that world championship title rather eluded me.” The audience laughed, the host grimaced, and the event moved on. Yet, for a guy who won 13 GPs, including two victories at Monaco and at Silverstone, and finishing in the top three in the championship five times, it might have stung. Talk to DC and he…

ANDREA STELLA ARRIVES for our interview with six pages of notes, and the thoroughness of preparation is obvious. There are sections, with headings. They cover the areas McLaren’s team principal figures we’re likely to discuss. And there’s a remarkable example of the emotional intelligence of the man who, since he took on his current role in December 2022, has masterminded McLaren’s transformation from long-time midfielders to Formula 1 front-runners. One of the questions planned was: “How do you go from better to best?” Stella has no way of knowing this. We’re a fair bit through the interview when it’s asked. Stella smiles and turns over a sheet of paper. “Look,” he says, pointing at a section heading in his handwritten notes. “Better to best.” It’s hard not to focus on…

A TWO-MINUTE VIDEO CLIP recorded during one of the Prema Formula 2 team debriefs provides a fascinating insight into the world of Andrea Kimi Antonelli. The Italian’s engineer, Pedro Matos, makes fun of his driver’s incredible ability to remember lap times. “Fastest lap, Silverstone, race one,” he says. “2:01.2,” Kimi replies. Matos chokes with laughter as he checks his screen. The FIA’s official timing sheet on his monitor confirms: 2m01.267s. “Right, yeah, this one is easy,” chuckles Antonelli’s team-mate, Oliver Bearman (see p56). “Remember when we did the race in Monza in F4?” Ollie adds, offering a real challenge from an event they both took part in back in 2021. “What was your lap time in quali?” “You wanna know?” giggles Kimi. “Was that 52.9?” “Let’s check somehow.” Bearman turns…

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