Inhaltsverzeichnis für September 2023 in AUTOSPORT

Well, it looks like there’s no ver-stoppin’ him. Max Verstappen’s third consecutive world championship appears to be a matter of when rather than if – and even this supposed unknown has an element of certainty about it, so prodigious has Max’s propensity to win become. The smart money is on him getting the title over the line in Qatar, round 17; last year he nailed it in round 18. If this statistic seems counter-intuitive, given the widespread perception that last season was far more competitive than this one, it’s just a quirk of the mathematics – the sprint races are more numerous and spread differently in 2023. Whether you like him or not (my mother doesn’t, but then again he isn’t from Yorkshire), Max is a veritable force of nature…

Max Verstappen often turns away from the crowd as he’s spraying the sparkling wine on the podium, the better to direct jets of fizz at the people with whom he’s celebrating. Well, each to their own but it makes the conventional head-on podium image a bit tricky. While a lot of the Hungaroring infrastructure is dated and could do with a few improvements, one thing the pit building has going for it is a roof that overlooks the podium and parc fermé. There are very few high vantage points like this anywhere else. The low late-afternoon sun works really well here as it catches that very expensive and delicate trophy, plus the spray from the bottles. Photographer Zak Mauger Where Hungaroring, Hungary When 4:58pm, Sunday 23 July 2023 Details Canon…

This was one of the most challenging Belgian Grands Prix I’ve photographed. The generally miserable weather combined with the schedule-jiggling which accompanies the sprint events to make it very hard to work out when to go out onto the circuit and when to take shelter. For the sprint shootout on Saturday I went to Les Combes but nothing was happening apart from tractors trundling around trying to clear the standing water. So I decided to walk down to Pouhon. As I passed the ‘no name’ corner the sun broke through. It’s not normally somewhere you’d stop to take a picture so you may not have seen this angle before… Photographer Sam Bloxham Where Spa, Belgium When 1:01pm, Saturday 29 July 2023 Details Canon EOS-R3 100-500mm lens, 1/1000th @F7.1…

@benedwardstv MAX’S ON-TRACK STYLE SECRETS Understanding the specific abilities of F1 superstars is never easy. Max Verstappen is a key example and people fascinated by motorsport are always trying to work out how he performs at such an extreme level. Karun Chandhok often analyses those abilities for Sky F1, but he also remembers a day from our joint Channel 4 era when he first witnessed Max in an F1 car while we were standing trackside at the Barcelona pre-season test. “There was a point where we watched them coming into Turn 4,” Karun recalls. “As Max was braking and turning into the corner, the rear would start to slide and I thought, ‘He’s going to overheat the tyres, he’s lost it.’ But then I realised he did that every lap and…

GP Racing: You’ve spoken in other interviews about how challenging it was to get into motor racing. What were the biggest obstacles? Delphine Biscaye: I want to say it wasn’t that difficult – but, when I think about it, it was! It took a lot of perseverance – bothering people, basically. The challenge was to not stop before getting into it. Nobody in my family had done engineering, nor were they interested in motorsports. And actually I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I went to the interview for engineering school – but, as I was sitting in the waiting room, motorsport was all the other students there were talking about. So when they asked me in the interview, “Why do you want to study mechanical engineering?” I…

THE DUTCH FLAGS, EMBLAZONED with the name of the country’s motorsport hero, flew as the crowd’s favourite sped to victory around Zandvoort. There were an estimated 60,000-plus of them, putting the attendance of many grands prix to shame. But this wasn’t a GP. It wasn’t even Formula 1. It was the 1993 Marlboro Masters of Formula 3. And the flags proclaimed ‘Jos The Boss’ in honour of the young Verstappen who, they were sure, was about to take the world of F1 by storm. The Netherlands and Zandvoort had lost their Grand Prix after the 1985 race, yet still the country retained a motorsport culture and was crying out for an F1 star. “We never had a talent that big in our country,” reflects Frits van Amersfoort, whose first visit…

After such an impressive start to the campaign, Aston Martin’s Red Bull-worrying form seemed to tail off in the lead-up to the summer break. What happened? We’re not where we want to be. We started the season very strong: the second or third-fastest car in some races depending on the track. But in more recent weekends, they’ve been more challenging for us. So, we definitely have a few things to work on to get back to where we want to be. That being said, it’s been a huge step up from last year and I know the team is motivated to keep pushing for more. Where has the car performance dipped and how can you retrieve it? Well, going around the corners faster and down the straights faster – that…

Open water Sailing, fishing… Just anything to do with being on a boat, being on the water. I feel like it’s one of the best ways to just recharge my batteries, to be able to get a mental reset. And even water sports such as wakeboarding, that’s some of my favourite things to do when I’m in my off time. NFL I love American sports. I am a big NBA fan as well but, if I’d have to pick one, I would go with NFL. Miami Heat, Miami Dolphins are definitely my favorite teams. Miami through and through! I try and get to a game whenever I get a chance. Drake My hype song is Lose Yourself by Eminem. It’s always been that song to get me in the mode…

BLOOD ON THE CARPET AT ‘TEAM ENSTONE’ Mercedes swears by the ‘no-blame’ culture at Brackley and its ex-head of strategy James Vowles is at pains to instil something similar now he’s in charge of Williams. Meanwhile, the latest Alpine management merry-go-round shows it operates to a philosophy of ‘blame everyone’. Laurent Rossi, the now-former CEO, embodied this. After a turbulent start to 2023, he arranged an interview with French broadcaster Canal+ to label his employees as “amateurish”. Shockingly, this didn’t improve internal morale. Perhaps that’s why, around this time, chief technical officer Pat Fry decided to pack his bags for Grove, having been sold a more stable vision by Vowles. Little wonder Alain Prost has since declared Rossi to be “an inept manager who thinks he can overcome his incompetence…

OLEG KARPOV Oleg talked through Max Verstappen’s stratospheric rise in F1 with the man himself, via a series of iconic pictures (p32) MARK GALLAGHER On top of his usual excellent business column (p29) Mark has also taken a look at what exactly 'Brand Max' entails (p42) MARCUS SIMMONS Autosport’s deputy editor investigates the long journey Holland has taken in its dogged pursuit for a bona-fide Formula 1 hero (p46) ANDY HONE Andy was on hand to capture Alex Wurz being interrogated by the editor for a fascinating and revealing Long Interview (p52)…

By the time Q1 started in Spa I’d had enough rain to last a lifetime, soaked through to the bone every day. But a few minutes before the session started the sun actually came out. When this happens and the track is still wet you can get some really dynamic pictures so it makes all the suffering worthwhile. This shot is from the first flying lap. F1 tyres disperse water so quickly that a dry line will appear within three or four laps of running. You need to work out the correct balance of camera settings very quickly to achieve the moody backlit look and capture the maximum amount of spray before the window closes. Photographer Andy Hone Where Spa, Belgium When 5:11pm, Friday 28 July 2023 Details Canon EOS-1DX…

There was a plan put in place for the Alpine Formula 1 team to start winning. It was said to be a 100-race project, although some uncertainty remains over when the clock started – not that this appears to matter now since neither Laurent Rossi, the man who set the target, nor Otmar Szafnauer, the man Rossi appointed to carry it out, are involved with the team anymore. Rossi was reassigned from his position as CEO of the Renault-owned Alpine brand to a nebulous role in ‘special projects’, while Szafnauer has departed to look after his garden. “I don’t know when that 100-race [plan] started. But for me it started 30 races ago, I was told. So, to have 70 races left to do it, which is less than three…

PUTTING A NUMBER ON HISTORIC AERO FIGURES Feedback is always welcome but when one of our loyal readers, Ben Halford, asked me to write about the historical development of aerodynamic efficiency, I hadn’t appreciated what a rabbit hole I was about to disappear into. Firstly we need to establish what we mean by aerodynamic efficiency and how we express it. In this context efficiency would be expressed as the total downforce divided by the total drag. Here comes the first problem. While it’s been possible (albeit difficult) to pull together some numbers for downforce, it’s been much harder to get drag figures – so for the most part we’ll focus on downforce here. Again we need to define how we will express downforce. It could be expressed as a force…

Shock signing August 2014: “No risk, no fun,” says Red Bull ‘driver advisor’ Helmut Marko as he signs a teenager to his Formula 1 junior team. Just three days after his 17th birthday Max takes part in Friday practice of the Brazilian GP to prepare for a full-time drive in 2015. First points March 2015: At 17 years and 166 days, Verstappen becomes F1’s youngest points scorer, finishing seventh in Malaysia. The FIA then changes the rules to forbid drivers younger than 18 from competing in F1. Three awards December 2015: Max is rewarded for a stellar first F1 season: ‘Rookie of the Year’ and ‘Personality of the Year’, plus ‘Action of the Year’ for his overtake on Felipe Nasr on the outside of Blanchimont at Spa. First victory May…

How do you reflect on the Hungarian Grand Prix, your first race back on the front line? I made a point to enjoy it all. Even the media day, there was a lot of attention. I joked that it was like I’d won a world championship. There was so much interest, but it was something you have to soak up and enjoy. I was knackered so on the Monday, I was very low-key and reflected on it. I think the main thing was, yes, I was happy with my performance. It was a more enjoyable experience than I’d probably found myself in during the last year or so. That was really important. A lot of the time we’re driven so much by the result. Our happiness is dictated by whether…

YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF Bosco Quinn. There’s no reason why you should. Richard ‘Bosco’ Quinn liked to keep a low profile – which wasn’t particularly difficult when working with the garrulous Eddie Jordan. The two had met in the early Eighties when the telephone engineer from Dublin helped – perhaps it’s more accurate to say ‘found himself persuaded to assist’ – Jordan in his early attempts to become a racing driver. It says much about their growing relationship – not to mention the way things worked back in the day – that Quinn, despite having no training as a mechanic, was despatched to the Ralt factory in Weybridge to build an RT3 in readiness for EJ’s 1981 F3 campaign. By this stage, Jordan had wisely decided his talent lay…

La Source is such a unique place to shoot a race start and I make no apologies for coming here year after year. Although this time around I was the only photographer here… There’s a great shot my father took from the other side, in the 1950s, with another photographer standing on this spot as a Vanwall went past. Back then it was just a grassy bank. It’s a lot safer now but still a heart-in-mouth moment as the cars head into the corner. You can almost touch them. I know Carlos Sainz had an opinion about Oscar Piastri’s role in this collision but, having looked through the sequence, I would say it was 50/50. Photographer Steven Tee Where Spa, Belgium When 3:03pm, Sunday 30 July 2023 Details Canon EOS-R3…

It’s never great to see crashes unfold but if you’re on hand to document them then you need to do it. I was standing high up on the natural escarpment overlooking the no-name corner, shooting through a 600mm lens with a slow shutter speed to give an impression of speed as the cars went over the kerb. It’s quite a challenge because the 600mm is unwieldy. As team photographer for Aston Martin I was naturally following Lance through the corner. He was on slicks as the track was drying in SQ2, probably a few minutes too early since he ran out of grip mid-corner. When that happened I hit my emergency button on the camera, which is programmed to change the setting to a faster shutter speed to freeze the…

@_markgallagher FIRED UP? ALPINE MOVES ARE A SIGN OF RENAULT’S INTENTIONS If anyone thought that Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo was in any way content to see Alpine trail around in the midfield, this summer changed all of that. In the space of just five weeks he sanctioned the introduction of a new equity partner and followed up with a robust management clear-out. Since Renault is investing billions in the Alpine brand, targeting an ambitious seven-model range and almost £7billion in revenue by 2030, it’s not surprising the leadership in Paris feels underwhelmed by the lack of progress on track. Cue the changes. To start with we had the news that Maximum Effort Investments, led by Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds, has teamed up with Otro Capital and Redbird Capital…

AS Max Verstappen lines up to join Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Niki Lauda, Jackie Stewart and Jack Brabham as a triple world champion, the 25-year-old Dutchman is already one of the biggest and most marketable stars in Formula 1 history. The fact that he is joining the ranks of the sport’s top 10 championship winners while only mid-career leaves plenty of room for more sporting records to be broken. Now tied to Red Bull until the end of the 2028 season, by which time he will have turned 31, Verstappen has a base contract and bonuses which will ensure a financially sound future for him and future family generations. Talks of driver salary caps are, for the moment, off the table. While the usual clickbait speculation on the internet places…

There are those who used to say former driver Alex Wurz ruined Formula 1. He was, after all, among the key architects of the halo – back when it was fashionable among the opinionati to heap ordure upon a safety development which has now saved several lives (and, as Alex says, “hasn’t lost a single fan”). It’s little wonder that a man who still holds the record for the fastest F1 accident of all time – he was travelling at 189mph when an incorrectly mounted tyre burst at a Paul Ricard test – should be an advocate of safety, with a firm grip on the baton once held by Sir Jackie Stewart. Why, you ask, does a driver who retired from F1 16 years ago still quietly wield so much…

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