Tabla de contenidos para November 2022 en AUTOSPORT

Two world championships now for Max Verstappen, both amply deserved for a driver of his outstanding calibre. Is it too much to ask that when the third one rolls around, it won’t be overshadowed by some absurd, abstruse and arcane procedural shenanigans? I refer not to the fact that the stately process under which print media operates dictated that the cover of this month’s issue went to press before the Japanese Grand Prix weekend (should you be asking the question which will no doubt be screamed when the cover is paraded on social media: “Why no mention of the championship winner, huh?”). It was likely but not certain that Max would get it over the line at Suzuka. This uncertainty extended to the three-lapsplus-40-minutes race itself, during which most observers…

For me this was one of the defining races of the year. By this race – the French Grand Prix, immediately after the half-way point of the season – Ferrari and Charles Leclerc had squandered the advantage they’d built up in those early rounds when Red Bull’s reliability was suspect and the car was a handful. Now, whenever Leclerc was in front, you had the feeling something was about to go wrong. Since it was likely to be the last French Grand Prix for a while, I wanted to get a classic Paul Ricard rear-on shot – like one of those from the 1970s with fat-tyred cars slipstreaming each other into the distance. Charles kept coming round ahead of Max, but for how long? Leclerc’s DNF here turned a deficit…

PICTURES 01 An existing contract with Red Bull and an official confirmation for 2023 with AlphaTauri won’t stop Pierre Gasly leaving the Faenza-based team at the end of this season after all. He will partner Esteban Ocon at Alpine next year. Unable to keep Fernando Alonso and defeated in the dispute with McLaren over the services of Oscar Piastri, the bosses of Team Enstone quickly identified Gasly as a key transfer target. However, getting him under contract would only be possible if Pierre were to be released from Red Bull. Fortunately Red Bull’s ‘driver advisor’ Dr Helmut Marko wasn’t against the idea – after all, in 2024 Gasly would have been a free agent in any case, and Red Bull might have found it difficult to persuade him to sign…

@benedwardstv PICTURES MEXICAN WAVE: TIME FOR A HOME WIN Anniversaries create cause for celebration and have become a useful way for event organisers to ramp up interest. A few weeks ago I was commentating at the Goodwood Revival, a motorsport event based on racing that took place from 1948 to 1966. The organisers generated a huge buzz by marking the 75th year of the Ferrari brand, as well as the recognition of Graham Hill’s first world championship title (1962), which drew in a remarkable collection of assorted racing cars that he had driven. The Mexican Grand Prix is also about to make a big noise about its 60th anniversary, despite being an irregular feature on the calendar during that time. The first Formula 1 race held at the Magdalena Mixhuca…

CV 2014 Co-founder and CEO, Eight Sleep 2012-2014 Co-founder and co-CEO, Global Investment Renewable 2012-2013 European Business Advisor, Relight 2008-2012 Co-founder and co-CEO, Global Investment 2008-2009 Associate, Allen & Overy 2005-2008 Associate, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer 2001-2005 Law, University of Ferrara GP Racing: Your professional background is in law but you’ve also got a background in sport…; INTERVIEW STUART CODLING Matteo Franceschetti: My DNA is as an athlete, a tennis player, I did a bunch of ski races when I was a kid but I was mainly a tennis player. As a teenager I was playing tennis every day. I always loved cars through my dad – he was doing hillclimbing and was the Italian champion twice. I was able to convince my parents to buy me a kart and I…

Jost, last year you finished the European season with 20 points and eighth in the constructors’ championship. A year later, you left Monza in last place with six points. But is it a case of the results not telling the true story? Yeah, the points don’t show the progress we’ve made. I think last year we were good on strategy with changing weather conditions, and that gave us the points in Hungary and Spa. So far this year there’s been no races where, let’s say, you could have different [strategy] choices. This year you’ve had to earn all your points. I think last year we earned the points as well, it wasn’t luck that we scored them. But such situations didn’t occur this year. Also, there’s new regulations, we had…

PICTURES HISTORY OF TYRRELL OF THE PART 3: 1970-71 The Tyrrell Racing Organisation had a new and impressive transporter. The only problem was, it had nothing to put in it. Incredible as it may seem, the reigning world champion’s team found itself going into 1970 without a car to defend the title. Simply put, the obduracy of international automotive politics was allowing no sympathy for a man and his small racing team operating out of a woodyard in Surrey. Ford had ticked every box on the competition blueprint thanks to Jackie Stewart winning six of the 11 grands prix in 1969. But success was to come at a price. In a typically convoluted series of buyouts, T Ken Tyrrell’s association with Matra and Matra had been taken over by Simca…

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THE MAIN EVENT Formula 1 regained a foothold in the United States with this ambitious new-build circuit near the Texas state capital, Austin. As the commercial rights holder builds towards running a third annual event on US soil next year when Las Vegas joins Miami and Austin, it’s easy to forget what a risky undertaking this was before Drive to Survive added rocket fuel to F1’s growth on this side of the pond. From its opening in 2012 the venue has struggled to make ends meet financially, and it has had to weather storms both literally (it flooded after a freak deluge in 2015) and figuratively (losing out on a state subsidy in 2018 then being unable to host the 2020 race owing to the pandemic). Nevertheless this is one of…

THE MAIN EVENT Known under the more prosaic title of Interlagos (literally ‘between lakes’) until 1985, this track was over 30 years old before it hosted its first world championship grand prix. The site is in a natural bowl so its architects took inspiration from a number of sources including the Indianapolis oval and Roosevelt Raceway in Long Island, a sinuous track which packed a great many corners onto a limited piece of real estate. In its original form Interlagos was nearly 8km long, entering a long, banked curve at what is now Turn 1 and following the perimeter of the site before turning back on itself. In fact, for over a third of the circuit (between the Senna ‘S’ and Ferradura) cars travel in the opposite direction to the…

PICTURES @CoddersF1 facebook.com/gpracingonline SQUEEZE AND THEN SQUEEZE SOME MORE… The ‘L’ and ‘M’ in Liberty Media certainly don’t covertly stand for ‘Less is More’. There’s much to be said for the growth of Formula 1 since its American takeover in 2017. Audiences have boomed, revenues rocketed, and investors and commercial partners enticed. But there’s surely a risk that the championship one day, perhaps sooner than later, becomes a victim of its own success. For this, see the record-breaking provisional calendar for the 2023 Formula 1 season with 24 rounds and, thanks to six sprint contests, 30 races. Now, there’s nothing new in highlighting the shortcomings of a new schedule or its constituent events. However, this time around there are more reasons to do so than ever before. Firstly, the monetary…

I liked this shot at the time because you could tell by the body language that, over and above the adrenaline rush these two drivers had experienced while racing each other, there was genuine warmth and respect between them. It’s taken on an additional poignancy since because this – the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix – was a time when the world title fight was very much on, before Ferrari’s challenge fizzled out inconsequentially. What really made this race for me was the balance of performance between the two cars. Max’s Red Bull was showing flashes of the straightline speed that would make it unbeatable later on, but Charles was counterpunching neatly with DRS and the Ferrari’s grunt out of corners. Where Jeddah, Saudi Arabia When 9.53pm, Sunday 27 March 2022…

It’s said that some people make winning look easy. I wouldn’t agree with that all the time but it’s often the case that a great driver can get into a zone where it seems very few things go wrong for them – even when they do go wrong. In 2022 Max had ‘moments’ in Spain and Hungary and still prospered. It’s also possible for a driver to feel nothing goes their way. I’d place this race, in Spa, at the intersection of those two trajectories. Max was mighty, majestic, well into a winning streak. Charles Leclerc had a grid penalty and then got someone else’s visor tear-off stuck in his brake duct. Max’s joy in this shot isn’t just the satisfaction of winning at one of the great circuits, it’s…

02 Red Bull, which won the drivers’ championship last year with Max Verstappen, breached the 2021 cost cap rules. The FIA officially confirmed on 10 October 2022 that the team had failed to comply with the allotted spending limit last season. Innuendo to that effect had been circulating during the weeks beforehand. The initial reports, based on paddock gossip, suggested Red Bull had committed a so-called ‘material breach’ – that is, spent more than 5% over the limit of $145million established in the regulations. In addition, it was reported that a ‘minor overspend’ – by an amount less than 5% over the limit – had been committed by Aston Martin. This spawned a wave of strong statements from the bosses of many other teams – in particular Toto Wolff, whose…

PICTURES WHY RIDE QUALITY ISN’T A COMFORT ISSUE The term ‘ride quality’ is more generally associated with luxury saloon cars than with Formula 1 machinery but, in its own way, it’s equally important to any form of competition car. To understand why we first have to ask what we mean by ride quality. Any vehicle travelling over bumps in a road will experience a vertical force as it traverses those bumps. Some of that force will deflect the tyre sidewall and some will be passed through the wheel to the suspension, where again some deflection will take place. Finally some force will act on the chassis and the driver. The way the force is transmitted and absorbed by the tyres and the suspension depends on their stiffness, and the final…

Carsten Tilke grabs a piece of Las Vegas from the shelf. It’s one part of a model of the forthcoming track in the world’s gambling capital. “You see the Bellagio?” he asks, drawing GP Racing’s attention to the miniature of one of the world’s most famous hotels, along with its 8.5-acre man-made lake and the fountains which dance to music every 15 minutes during the evening. “Here it is. And the fountains.” The 3D printer, housed in one of the rooms of the Tilke Engineers & Architects building in Aachen, is yet to produce the rest of the circuit mock-up. It’s a busy piece of equipment: models which emanated from it adorn much of the three-storey office of the company, located in one of the alleyways next to Krefelder Strasse…

1 Resurgent Pérez takes another street-track win It had been a cruel summer for Sergio Pérez. Through the efforts of the engineers, who have significantly ‘lightweighted’ the RB18, and Max Verstappen, who has already won eleven (by that point) races this season, Red Bull dashed Ferrari’s title hopes. Pérez, however, struggled with the new balance of the car and was looking quite low-key in comparison with his team-mate. After winning in Monaco at the end of May, ‘Checo’ recorded just three podium appearances in nine races. Before the Singapore Grand Prix he seemed at best an outside contender for the victory. Pérez rebuffed the naysayers by winning in a pretty convincing way. It wasn’t a dominating performance as such, but Pérez made the most of his opportunities – and, most…

Red Bull’s double DNF in the season opener put a nagging doubt in your mind every time you saw the cars on track in the opening segment of the season. A hard-fought win in Saudi Arabia showed Max Verstappen had a quick enough car, but then here in Australia Charles Leclerc always seemed to be out of reach during the race – even before Max retired from second place with a broken fuel line. I was on the raised gantry overlooking the first corner. Usually you’re here to capture the inevitable opening-lap fracas and a few overtakes, but it also gave an overhead view of where Max stopped. You could tell by the way he was walking and the set of his shoulders that he was furious rather than disappointed.…

Although it’s a cliché, and a slightly pompous one at that, to describe photography as “painting with light”, essentially that is what we’re doing. And an essential prerequisite of that is, er, light. There wasn’t a lot of that being splashed about at any point during Sunday afternoon at Suzuka this year. There was a lot of uncertainty as the race unfolded about what, if any, points would be awarded. And indeed, Max Verstappen only learned he’d won the championship when he was doing his interviews. The critics disapproved. For purely selfish reasons I’m broadly in agreement. It would have been a lot nicer to get a celebration shot in the balmy afternoon sunshine of Austin rather than this damp and sparingly lit bit of track! Where Suzuka, Japan When…

03 Formula 1 has released the calendar for 2023 – and is now one race short of the goal of 25 rounds a year Liberty Media set after buying F1’s commercial rights. This year, owing to events in Ukraine, F1 will not even reach the 23-race mark. But next season two tracks will return to the calendar and one new one will be added, all contained in a mildly rejigged order which is claimed to chime with F1’s new sustainability ethos. China is scheduled to take place in mid-April, the traditional date for the Shanghai race, for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In addition, as previously known, Qatar will also return to the calendar. The race on the Losail circuit wasn’t held this year, since…

@_markgallagher PIASTRI MOVE CAUGHT ALPINE BY SURPRISE Alpine’s driver woes have not made for great reading particularly if, like me, you have a soft spot for the French brand which Renault boss Luca de Meo has positioned at the forefront of the Group’s sporting ambitions. Only those most intimately involved in the Oscar Piastri saga know the precise detail, though we heard enough via the Contract Recognition Board decision to know that Alpine had failed to get its man because of the small matter of not having a binding contract in place. While Alpine’s CEO Laurent Rossi has cried foul, accusing the Piastri camp of disloyalty, the contract debacle has acted as a brutal reminder of F1’s business environment. To adapt a well-worn phrase, if you no longer go for…

PICTURES & SHUTTERSTOCK In the case of Ferrari’s collapsed championship campaign this year, it’s almost a case of choose your metaphor. It went off the rails; went up in smoke; imploded; fell apart – all apply literally and/or figuratively to a season in which hope and expectation have evaporated for myriad reasons. Yet it all started so well. A close-fought win for Charles Leclerc in the opening race of the season in Bahrain, after a wheel-to-wheel scrap with Max Verstappen’s Red Bull. A similarly competitive second to the world champion a week later in Saudi Arabia. A dominant victory – one of the most convincing all year, as it has turned out – in Australia. Combine those with two retirements for pre-season favourite Verstappen in the first three races, and…

Congratulations are in order with the contract extension news – was it ever in doubt you’d be continuing with Alfa for 2023? To be honest, no. I mean, there was a doubt at the beginning of the season because I didn’t now how my first rookie season would go. But, actually, it went pretty smooth. The team is very happy with the objectives we were able to achieve. And also showing the potential – mainly from my driving. Yeah, I think halfway through I felt like there’s a big chance or a high chance to continue with the team. And [I’m] really looking forward to all the new challenges we’re going to be facing. The team says it’s really impressed with your work ethic and how you’ve integrated well with…

PICTURES SO, YOU SAY FIA OFFICIALS screwed up during the Italian Grand Prix? I tend to disagree. I don’t recall seeing the starter come off his rostrum, stand on Charles Leclerc’s front wheel in order to get a better view of the grid – and then start the race from this precarious post. Believe it or not, something along these lines actually happened 60 years ago this month. To be fair, looking at today’s FIA Sporting Regulations, there’s no precise mention of where the starter should position himself. By my reckoning, there’s more than 3,000 words covering everything a driver should do during the final countdown – almost from the moment he’s been bothered by dumb TV reporter questions as he walks to the grid. You know the sort of…

1 Confusion reigns as well as Max in truncated race Max Verstappen claimed his second world championship in a peculiarly anticlimactic fashion despite winning the rain-delayed and shortened Japanese Grand Prix by a commanding margin. Revisions to the sporting regulations in the wake of last year’s farcical non-race in Belgium had a crucial bearing on how many points could be awarded, but the majority of the teams failed to pick this up – Verstappen himself believed he had fallen short. The final moments of the race and its aftermath therefore played out in utter confusion as first there was uncertainty over whether the race was actually over once the chequered flag had been waved, then disbelief when Max was informed he was the world champion – mid-way through the parc fermé…

THE MAIN EVENT It’s rare for modern racetracks to be completely faithful to their original outlines, since growing car performance and improved safety requirements – and, in some cases, nearby property developments – have dictated changes down the years. But Mexico City’s circuit still follows most of the original lines laid down in 1959 when it was built in what was the Magdalena Mixhuca Sports Park. Given that it lies in the heart of one of the most sprawling cities on Earth, there hasn’t been much room for expansion or adaptation. That’s why its signature corner, the fast 180-degree Peraltada, had to go – the run-off area was dangerously short even in the 1980s, and there’s a multi-lane road on the other side of the fence so it couldn’t be…

HACKETT X JENSON COLLECTION Price £70-£575 hackett.com British menswear specialist Hackett has unveiled its Autumn-Winter 2022 collection in collaboration with 2009 F1 world champion Jenson Button. The ad campaign, shot by renowned fashion photographer Charlie Gray, features Jenson wearing items from the new range while enjoying a variety of autumnal scenes in the country, while “the collection also harkens back to its London roots in its colour palette and sartorial expertise”. Eagle-eyed fashionistas will also note this is the launching pad for a new Hackett brand identity, featuring a new sans serif typeface as well as a simplified version of the famous bowler-hat-and-umbrella logo. RAOUL ‘SONNY’ BALCAEN Authors Raoul Balcaen, Pete Lyons, Jill Amadio Price £30 evropublishing.com Perhaps better known for his antics in drag racing – he’s credited with…