Inhaltsverzeichnis für July 2023 in AUTOSPORT

Sun-drenched, soaking or somewhere in between, the British Grand Prix remains a highlight of the British sporting summer. Well, except for that time Bernie Ecclestone cynically bunked its slot down to late-April as part of his ongoing feud with the British Racing Drivers’ Club, letting the spring deluges do their worst. And even then it was a decent enough race, with Heinz-Harald Frentzen in the mix from a front-row start and David Coulthard coming through to win for McLaren (though you might not have been so enthused at the time, had you needed a tow out of a muddy car park). This month we look forward to the annual jamboree at Silverstone by speaking to all three flag-carrying British drivers. Nobody has won as many British GPs as Lewis Hamilton…

Shooting the grid in Monaco is often a case of smash-and-grab because it’s one of the tightest grids in the calendar and attracts the biggest contingent of celebs, hangers-on, and journalists trying to appear in the background of Martin Brundle’s televised grid walk. As Aston Martin’s photographer I had to document the team’s front-row slot but after I’d captured the wide angles of Fernando arriving at P2 I tried a few more experimental shots. This was taken with a 50mm prime lens as Fernando took his helmet off. It’s exposed so almost everything else is washed out and you see the intensity on Alonso’s face as he gets ‘in the zone’. Where Monte Carlo, Monaco  When 2.19pm, Sunday 28 May 2023 Details Canon EOS-R3 50mm lens, 1/2000th @F1.2…

It was beginning to spit with rain at the beginning of FP3 in Barcelona and I was shooting across the final corner with a 500mm lens on a monopod. Normally you would be pretty static because it’s a cumbersome piece of kit but I began to practice tracking the cars as they came past in anticipation of one of them going off here. The deletion of the chicane has made this corner faster and trickier. I had two trial runs before Logan Sargeant gave me a go at doing it for real – popping his right-front wheel onto the inside kerb spat him off into the gravel and I followed the full sequence. High adrenaline and heart rate for us both, I’m sure! Where Barcelona, Spain When 12.38pm, Saturday 3…

@_markgallagher YOU CAN STILL EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED This issue of GP Racing was printed the day following the 40th anniversary of my joining its sister publication Autosport. Starting work in the advertising department meant cajoling hard-pressed punters into taking a classified or display ad, but the graft didn’t matter. This was Autosport and that meant opening doors to all kinds of possibilities. One such was my first weekend working at a Formula 1 race, the 1983 Dutch Grand Prix. My job was to deliver posters for a sponsor, Valvoline as I recall, even if it did involve walking for what seemed like miles across sand dunes. I was a very happy 21-year old. I reflected on this recently when witnessing grumpy fans celebrate the fact that the cancelled Emilia-Romagna GP…

As a race promoter, what keeps you up at night in the days and weeks before the event? That’s an interesting question, isn’t it? Well, all the things that could interfere with the seamless running of the event. The weather – rain can make for a good race but then it adds to the challenge of getting people in and out quickly. There are boring event-organiser things that members of the public aren’t really interested in the mechanics of, such as sewage. We have to guard against disruptions such as the Just Stop Oil protest which happened last year. And of course, we have to make sure the IT infrastructure is robust – without it you can’t get people through the door, let alone stage a race, so we have…

PICTURES FORMULA 1 HAS A PROBLEM A year and a half ago, it introduced new rules which were aimed at closing up the field and making the racing more exciting, by enabling cars to follow each other more closely and overtake more easily. At the time of writing, just before the Monaco Grand Prix, the lifespan of those new rules had been 27 races, of which 22 – 81% – had been won by Red Bull. Max Verstappen set a new record for wins in a season on his way to his second world title in 2022, and is well on the way to challenging that this year, when Red Bull’s closest opposition is significantly further away than it was last season. Those bare facts alone suggest the new rules…

PICTURES NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, I FOUND myself wishing Niki Lauda was on hand for a quick quote, just to put the latest Formula 1 nonsense in perspective. The thought occurred while watching the shambles in Baku as Esteban Ocon steamed into the pitlane on the reasonable assumption that it remained part of the field of play rather than resembling Paddy’s Market. After using typically salty language to address the FIA’s uninformed decision to begin erecting parc fermé barriers and open the pitlane to all and sundry, Lauda would surely have mentioned Ocon’s good fortune in at least being able to continue. Niki would have recalled the 1974 British GP. Trying to emerge from a last-lap tyre change, he found the end of the Brands Hatch pitlane blocked by…

1 Verstappen snatches pole and victory from Alonso As it produced a sixth win out of a possible six for Red Bull and the fourth of the year for himself, it’s easy to undervalue Max Verstappen’s performance in Monaco – so dominant has Red Bull been in the spring of 2023. But Max’s 27-second-plus lead at the end of the race tells you very little about how challenging his path to victory in Monte Carlo really was. On paper, Monaco represented the best chance for Red Bull’s closest rival this year: Aston Martin’s AMR23, in the hands of Fernando Alonso, has excelled under braking and in low-speed traction sections at most tracks since the start of the season, exactly what’s needed in Monaco. And, it turned out, Fernando did indeed…

PICTURES IT’S TIME TO SQUARE THE (RUBBER) CIRCLE You’d forgive Lewis Hamilton for wincing any time he hears the words ‘Pirelli’ and ‘Silverstone’ uttered in the same breath. His attempt to convert pole into a home victory during his maiden Mercedes campaign in 2013 was scuppered by his left-rear tyre exploding. Seven years later he crossed the line to land his seventh British Grand Prix triumph, albeit with the front-left rubber in tatters. But he shouldn’t face another similarly sticky situation this month. Pirelli will use the trip to Northamptonshire to introduce a new construction which has most recently been tested in Barcelona. Concerned by increasing downforce levels and cornering loads, the tyre maker has fast-tracked a specification originally intended for 2024. The bumf says compounds and profiles will stay…

OLEG KARPOV This month Oleg discovers George Russell’s Silverstone memories (p44) and also pays a visit to helmet maker Schuberth (p54) ANDREW BENSON BBC Sport’s chief F1 writer investigates whether overtaking has become more difficult this year and what can be done about it (p62) ANDREW FERRARO A quick jaunt over to the delights of Monte Carlo for Andrew to capture Lando Norris for our main feature (p32) JAMES NEWBOLD James, Autosport’s Plus editor, has looked at why a plethora of talented drivers only managed a solitary season in F1 (p82) Thanks to Kate Binder, Roman De Lauw, Neil Kent, Bradley Lord, Jamie MacLaurin, Adam McDaid, Deborah Tee, Fabiana Valenti, Rosa Herrero Venegas, Tom Wood…

This year we had some quite late track sessions in Monaco so that meant potentially longer shadows, given the high-rise nature of the environment. This is the exit of the tunnel just before the track pitches downwards to the chicane. I initially set up to shoot the cars head on, because most of them (especially the Red Bull) are kicking up fewer sparks than they were last year. Then when I saw the Ferrari sparking I quickly moved to a different position. Canon’s new 100-300mm F2.8 lens gave me a different take on focal length so I was able to shoot a little bit looser. Having the sparks in the shadow created quite an interesting effect. Where Monte Carlo, Monaco When 5:05pm, Friday 26 May 2023 Details Canon EOS R3…

01 U-TURN IF YOU WANT TO Honda rows back on decision to quit Formula 1 02 MCLAREN’S MARSHALL PLAN Woking poaches key engineer from Red Bull Having decided to withdraw from Formula 1 less than three years ago – but never really leaving it entirely after all – Honda announced it will be making a full returnn when the new engine regulations come into force in 2026. This time, its partner will be the Aston Martin team. Confused? Just think of the saga as a very late course correction as Honda tries to avoid replicating its failure of late 2008, when it abruptly pulled the plug on its F1 project. The car its team had spent that year developing behind the scenes brought Jenson Button the 2009 title and the…

@benedwardstv PICTURES A BIG SUMMER FOR TWO GREAT BRITISH NAMES Celebration of Formula 1 in the UK reaches a peak during two weekends in July. The British Grand Prix at Silverstone is followed by the Festival of Speed at Goodwood which this year provides anniversaries for two major teams. The Lotus brand was created by Colin Chapman in 1948 and, while the company is no longer playing a part in F1, there will be plenty of key single-seaters to honour the 75th anniversary of one of the most imaginative constructors in motor racing. 15 years after Chapman’s launch, the young New Zealander Bruce McLaren set up his own team. As a result, the McLaren brand is second only to Ferrari in terms of ongoing duration in F1, and the two…

CV 2019- Project manager, deputy general manager, QEV Technologies 2019-2021 Executive MBA, IESE Business School 2018-19 Stress engineer, senior stress engineer, Renault F1 2017-present Founder, GPBox 2017 Stress engineer, Force India F1 2015-17 Stress engineer, Manor Racing 2014-2015 MSc in motorsport engineering, Oxford Brookes University 2013-15 Co-founder, BASS Racing 2013-14 Project engineer, Solid Engineering 2007-12 MEng in mechanical design and MEng in industrial engineering, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya 2006-08 Founder, Xtremecooling GP Racing: You had a very interesting entry point into motor racing – going straight into designing a motorbike… Pol Sancho: I graduated in Barcelona in mechanical design, engineering and automotive engineering. Different universities compete with projects such as Formula Student and MotoStudent, which we won in 2012. We were young and naïve and thought we were the best,…

After such sustained success, how have you adapted to knowing that you turn up to races with only an outside chance of winning? I never got comfortable. But, damn, it’s a great feeling when you know you’ve got a car you can compete with on the weekend. From our perspective, we know we’re not fighting for a win. So, it’s arriving hopeful that we’re able to find a little bit of magic. Every small decision, every position that you gain in qualifying makes that difference. I would say I’m enjoying this more… for the short term. How has the team come together and how much have you all learned from this tough period? As the sport continues to grow, there’s more people coming into the team. There’s a lot of…

Mini Moke The first car I ever bought myself and I still own it. It’s a 1987 Mini Moke. I bought it in Italy and completely restored it. I initially wanted to restore it with my dad. That was the original plan, but with our schedules there’s just no chance, so I’ve done it by myself. The piano My education was quite isolated, mainly focused on racing. Even though I had other interests, that was my main occupation. So I never learned to read notes, I never played an instrument. But I’ve always loved the piano. And it was during lockdown that I had the idea of learning to play. But because all the deliveries were so delayed, I didn’t get my digital piano until after the lockdown. Anyway, I…

PICTURES 1950 Raymond Sommer A fiercely independent streak meant Raymond Sommer won fewer races than perhaps he should have done. As such it’s difficult to say what he might have achieved, beyond his tally of three points from five world championship appearances, had he not crashed fatally aboard a Cooper in a minor event at Cadours in September 1950. But the two-time Le Mans victor had a giant-killing streak that he’d displayed in defeating the mighty Alfa 158s with his private Maserati at St Cloud in 1946. And when the world championship began in 1950, Sommer even led at Spa aboard his privately entered Talbot-Lago after the hitherto dominant 158s pitted for fuel. It prompted panic and even disbelief from the Alfa pits, who lobbied the timekeepers that he couldn't…

30 June-2 July 2023 Red Bull Ring THE MAIN EVENT Dutch fans turned Red Bull’s home circuit orange in 2022, resulting in a party atmosphere rarely seen here since the days of Michael Schumacher’s pomp. Last year some of the behaviour got out of hand, so it remains to be seen what precautions the promoter takes this year. Despite a short lap and a supposedly unchallenging layout, the circuit has hosted plenty of exciting races thanks to the effects of weather and tyre degradation. It also has more than one overtaking opportunity per lap, owing to the ease of making mistakes at Turn 1. Getting it wrong there leaves drivers exposed on the straight which follows – and even if they win the battle at Turn 3 they might still…

21-23 July 2023 Hungaroring THE MAIN EVENT Judicious layout tweaks, DRS and the sensitivity of the Pirelli tyres have helped transform the competitive picture at a circuit once notorious for processional racing. Hungary was a race many F1 insiders were inclined to skip but this is no longer the case, even though the Hungaroring could do with freshening up. The opening of the Balaton Park Circuit elsewhere in Hungary may provide competition and persuade the accountants to sharpen their pencils… This event is a great one to visit since you can enjoy nearby Budapest, a great city – albeit one with some eccentricities. As a contributor to GP Racing’s sister title Autosport learned to their cost, parking your car pointing the wrong way on some streets is a clampable offence……

In Monaco you spend a lot of time in traffic – even if you’re a top-flight racing driver. When all 20 cars are on track it can get pretty cluttered and, as a photographer, you’re aware that you need to plan for more than one car to be in the frame. This is one corner where you can shoot across, there’s no fence in the way, and you can accommodate two cars in the composition if they’re close enough. It’s quite dynamic because the leading car is pointing right at you. At this point in the session the two Ferraris were looking like they might be able to offer Max Verstappen a challenge, then Carlos put it in the barriers. Where Monte Carlo, Monaco When 5:10pm, Friday 26 May 2023…

One of the things I’ve noticed about the new generation of Formula 1 drivers is that they all seem to get along with each other quite well – out of the cockpit at least. Once the visors are down it’s another matter. This was quite a nice moment in parce fermé after the Spanish GP while Lewis Hamilton was being interviewed and Max Verstappen and George Russell were chatting about the highlights package being played on the big screen. In (recent) times past, drivers like these would just have hung around not acknowledging one another. Another bonus is that it’s a clean shot without the umpteen officials, mechanics and TV cameramen in parc fermé… Where Barcelona, Spain When 4.38pm, Sunday 4 June 2023 Details Canon EOS R3 70-200mm lens, 1/100th…

PICTURES SHEER MAGNETISM: HOW A MOTOR GENERATOR WORKS Last month we looked at batteries and acknowledged there are many different types of devices which fit that generic term. This month we take a similar look at one of the other major components of a hybrid system: the motor or, as it’s known on a vehicle, the motor generator unit or MGU. The motor is the device that converts electrical energy to mechanical energy. It’s a reversable process and so, if driven, a motor can also turn mechanical energy into electrical energy as it acts as a generator, hence the name MGU. Motors consist of many parts but the primary ones are the rotor in the centre, which turns and provides motion, and the stator which surrounds it and is non-moving. We…

9 AM ON A LATE SPRING DAY in Monaco and already the sun is intense enough to have GP Racing scuttling for shade in the forecourt of the Columbus Hotel. On the opposite side of the road, in full stealth mode – backwards-turned baseball cap, dark shades and an on-brand Quadrant hoodie – Lando Norris is chatting to a lycra-clad Mark Webber, off to crest one of the local cols on his bicycle before lunch. Webber waves a cheery farewell, clips in and pedals souplesse into the sunshine. As Lando joins us we notice an additional element of disguise: the wispy beginnings of a beard protruding from his chin, soon to be premiered to viewers of his YouTube channel as he essays an exclusive preview of the new F1 2023…

2009 British Grand Prix “This was my very first grand prix, the very first time I went to Silverstone. I was standing on the edge of the circuit, Turn 1, Copse – the current Turn 9. I would have been 11 years old, racing in the cadet category in karts, it was called Comer Cadet then, and I was leading the championship. But it was there, standing on the outside of Copse, when I probably for the first time clearly realised I wanted to be a Formula 1 driver. I think the years prior I was too young to really know F1 and what exactly that was, I was just enjoying go-karting. But hearing the noise, the buzz, seeing the crowd… That’s when I was like, ‘Yeah, this is what…

1 “What you see here is the start gantry with the equipment where we operate the start procedure for F1, F2, F3 and all the other support races during grand prix weekends. And on the left-hand side you can see a little box, which is a replica of all the lights we’re controlling: the main one above the starting grid as well as pit exit and pit entry lights.” 2 “With the intercom we stay in touch with race control, Safety and Medical cars. If we need to speak to them we can, but mostly we listen. In changeable conditions it’s good to know what Bernd [Maylander, the Safety Car driver] says. If it’s ‘still puddles and aquaplaning’, then we know it will take at least 10 more minutes before…

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1 Mercedes best-of-the-rest behind dominant Verstappen Max Verstappen wasn’t at his imperious best despite winning the Spanish Grand Prix from pole position with a 24.09s margin over second place, but such is Red Bull’s superiority that the world champion can still have a (slightly) off day and emerge on top. A typically robust defence of his lead from the challenge of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz into Turn 1 will have raised the hackles of some in the fan community, but it was a succession of track-limits violations while running well ahead later in the race which attracted the attention of the stewards. Max qualified nearly half a second faster than Sainz, his companion on the front row, and was on course to go even faster on his second Q3 run when…

7-9 July 2023 Silverstone THE MAIN EVENT If you’re lucky enough to have tickets for this year’s British GP then the action begins on Thursday 6 July with a launch party on site headlined by DJ Calvin Harris with Cat Burns and Jess Glynne in support. Over the following three nights Jax Jones, the Black Eyed Peas and Tom Grennan headline the main stage, so don’t think of packing up until Monday… There’s also the small matter of the racing on one of the fastest, most exciting circuits on the calendar. This year Silverstone has added more seats to offset the area now occupied by the new Escapade complex. Another ‘must’ is the Silverstone Museum where the track’s past meets its future – including a cutting-edge sim racing rig. 2022…

ORIENT STAR CONTEMPORARY SKELETON Price £2759.99 orientwatch.co.uk Established in 1951, the Orient Star brand is now part of the Seiko Epson Corporation. In 2021 it launched a new generation of Skeleton watches in its Classic Collection, ‘skeletonisation’ in watchmaking being a style in which the designers bring the mechanical aesthetics of the mechanism to the fore, exposing the workings within. Orient Star’s new Contemporary Collection aims for a “refined yet informal” look with fine hairline and mirror finishing on a slimline 39mm diameter stainless steel casing. The hand-wound F8B61 movement is presented in contemporary grey with the silicon escape wheel in blue, and the balance wheel bridge evoking the shape of a comet – all symbolising “the vastness of the universe”, says Orient Star. The power reserve is claimed to…