Tabla de contenidos para July 2024 en AUTOSPORT

Out there in the real world, on the Thursday before the Monaco Grand Prix, American documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock died from what were described as “complications related to cancer”. Spurlock’s most famous work is the 2004 doc Super Size Me, in which he exposed the fast-food industry’s profit-driven push to encourage poor nutrition… by charting the effects on his own body of only eating at McDonald’s and never turning down the ubiquitous offer to ‘Super Size’ each meal. Among those effects are lethargy, palpitations, depression and alarming weight gain. Formula 1 has indubitably been lethargic in recognising, or at least addressing, the competitive issues wrought by the cars piling on the pounds in recent years. Getting them to hit the minimum weight limit has perhaps induced palpitations among the engineers…

01 X+Z=CONFUSION Warnings over next-gen tech rules 02 COURAGE UNDER FIRE Pérez extends but must try harder 03 ASIAN PERSUASION F1 eyes new venues in the Far East 01 2026 F1 CAR REVEAL PROMPTS NEW QUESTIONS The FIA has released the first images of the new generation of F1 cars and backed it up with much more detail than before about how these cars will run. But while some areas have become clearer, many questions remain unanswered – and have been joined by some fresh ones as a consequence of the FIA’s reveal. The technical regulations have yet to be published and ratified, so what the FIA has shared with the world is more draft than definitive. But some fundamentals won’t change. It’s been known for some time that the FIA is pushing…

REMEMBERING A BRITISH GRAND PRIX GREAT The thrill of seeing a British driver going well at Silverstone is always special. New F1 winner Lando Norris achieved his first British Grand Prix podium last year as Lewis Hamilton took his 13th, just a few seconds behind. 70 years ago Stirling Moss was on target for a first home world championship podium in a truly competitive F1 car. The event proved fundamental to his future as one of the greatest motorsport drivers ever seen, a career which earned a knighthood and which recently was remembered at a poignant memorial at Westminster Abbey to celebrate his life. F1 in 1954 was different yet the fundamentals of delivering results were much the same. 30 front-engined cars lined up on the Silverstone grid for a…

GP Racing: You’ve been involved with the Las Vegas race since the start, but also with Liberty Media. Tell us about the work you do… Renee Wilm: I’m a deal lawyer by training and I’ve been working with the John Malone group of companies since the 1990s. I’ve been fortunate to work on the big transactions we’ve done at Liberty Media and, as you can imagine, deals with SiriusXM, Atlanta Braves and DirecTV are always complex and challenging. In 2016 I flew to London as we were looking at Formula 1. I led that transaction, I remember we raised money through many different methods and it was one of the most complicated closing days I’ve ever experienced. We were excited about the acquisition and saw a tremendous opportunity, particularly in…

ALEX ALBON Williams F1 driver “I got my racing license when I went from seven to eight years old, at Silverstone. They had a little kart track set up, with a guy who reviewed your driving to see if you were safe, and I took a written test: what’s a yellow flag, what’s a green flag, right foot throttle, left foot braking, and so on. And then they gave you your racing license. That’s my very first memory of the place and I remember it clearly, like it was yesterday. I still remember the one question I got wrong, which was “When is scrutineering?” “Before that, I went to watch my first Formula 1 race. This was the early 2000s, the generation of Michael Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello, Juan Pablo Montoya.…

1 Was McLaren undone by Lando’s first or second stop? Max Verstappen has now won 50 of the 75 races held since the beginning of 2021, giving him a win ratio of 66 per cent. His triumph in the Canadian Grand Prix was considered by some as payback for Miami, in which the inopportune deployment of the Safety Car cost him victory. In Montréal, race leader Lando Norris fell foul of a Safety Car intervention. But was it that or a subsequent pitwall decision to delay moving to slicks which cost Norris victory? Canada was a race in which the strategists on the pitwall needed brains as sharp as the supernumerate contestants facing the numbers game on Countdown. The Montréal weekend was constantly interrupted by storm cells which bubbled up…

OLEG KARPOV Oleg has had a busy time interviewing RB’s Yuki Tsunoda (p58) and shadowing Gary Gannon, Nico Hülkenberg’s race engineer (p76) MATT YOUSON Tom McCullough, Aston Martin’s performance director, has revealed to Matt the challenges of setting a car up for Silverstone (p46) DAMIEN SMITH McLaren’s last Honda-powered winner, the MP4/7 as used so well by Ayrton Senna, gets Damien’s attention this month (p68) JAMES ROBERTS On top of his usual race report duties (p88), our former Associate editor asked F1 luminaries what makes Silverstone so good (p52)…

MONTE CARLO OR BUST: TACTICS VS STRATEGY For many the 1982 Austrian Grand Prix will be remembered for the incredibly close finish as Elio de Angelis’s Lotus claimed victory from the Williams of Keke Rosberg by just 0.05 seconds. For me, however, the outstanding memory was being in the pitlane as Nelson Piquet came in for what was the first planned pitstop for tyres and fuel of the modern era. I was with Toleman at the time and although both our cars retired early, I’d stayed on the pitwall to watch the race unfold. In those days there was no pitlane speed limit and the velocity at which the car entered the pits was staggering. The stop itself took around 25 seconds, ten times today’s standard. It was the start…

Many people complain about being busy when in fact the opposite can be rather ghastlier. Little wonder, then, that Otmar Szafnauer has embarked on a new business venture while serving a contractual “non-compete” period after his Alpine departure last summer. That project is EventR, a logistics app designed to simplify the process of ushering racing teams to their destinations and back again (though it could just as easily be used to corral those attending a stag do, for instance). Many businesses in the F1 world still rely on multi-page spreadsheets to ensure everyone arrives at the right place at the right time and has accommodation – and a place in a hire car. This isn’t the first time Szafnauer has gone digital while his F1 management career has been on…

THERE ARE SEVERAL THINGS BRITAIN still does very well: a proper bacon sandwich; a well-organised queue; a high-speed FIA Grade One circuit. There aren’t many venues on the calendar that challenge a Formula 1 car across the full range of its capabilities – but Silverstone occupies an exalted position within the handful that do. It tests the bravery of the driver as it does the dark arts of the designer. The skillset of the race engineer also gets thoroughly worked over too. The circuit mods in 2010, designed to make Silverstone more bike-friendly, created a more nuanced Arena layout for F1 cars. Instead of being a high-speed monster it became a high-speed monster… with some really complicated slow bits. The bluff, old traditionalists may choke on their cucumber sandwiches but…

You know the drill: the ‘team radio’ banner pops up on screen and, a second or two later, amid crackles and the aural backdrop of engine blare, a driver’s voice emerges – generally raised in a tone of tetchy complaint, sometimes at an outright screaming pitch. The voice that responds is usually altogether more measured, both in tone and content, delivering the likes of “copy” or “understood” (or indeed some other variant of “just shut up and drive the car”) in the manner of an airline pilot informing the cabin crew to take their seats for landing. This is the voice of the race engineer. Yet they are not just there to act as a verbal punchbag for those occasions when the tyre strategy hasn’t worked out. The race engineer…

1 Max’s virtual insanity It’s not uncommon for NASCAR drivers to participate in two races in one weekend (or the occasional post-race punch-up). It’s also been known for racers to cross disciplines and start the Indianapolis 500 in the afternoon and jump on a jet to compete in the Coca-Cola 600 later in the day. But it’s rare indeed for F1 drivers to submit to what might be viewed as “distractions” – unless, of course, they’re at the top of their game in their primary job. When Max Verstappen crossed the finish line to win the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix with McLaren’s Lando Norris in his wheeltracks, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner congratulated Max for his second triumph of the weekend. The previous evening – and on race day morning…

21-23 June 2024 Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya THE MAIN EVENT Once Formula 1’s testing venue of choice, Barcelona has slid out of fashion in recent years. Its very ubiquity in winter and (occasional) mid-season testing – owing to the varied nature of all the corners, which give the cars a broad-spectrum workout – made for processional races. Now the budget cap has pushed testing over to the Middle Eastern leg – and the final insult has come in the form of F1 tying up a 10-year deal with Madrid to host the Spanish Grand Prix from 2026 onwards. That may not be it for the Catalans, though, since the promoter still holds out hope for F1 to continue here under another title, as when Jerez hosted a European GP in 1997…

@Nauckas facebook.com/gpracingonline WHY IT’S WRONG TO WRITE-OFF ESTEBAN OCON It was one of those endless moments that precedes catastrophe. Esteban Ocon’s Alpine A524 sent skywards, its left-rear having thumped the right-front of team-mate Pierre Gasly. In the gaudy opulence of Monaco’s Larvotto district, the resulting crash to earth was to be just as jarringly costly. Ocon had been under strict instructions not only to not attack the lead Alpine car, but help it – Gasly started 10th and was essentially nailed on for his first point of 2024 given Monaco’s overtaking void. The botched pass put Ocon out of the race, his rear suspension destroyed, and incensed Alpine team principal Bruno Famin. The now one-year team boss has an oft-incomprehensible approach to communication with the media. But he vowed drastic…

A blue, black and silver arrow A lot of people say current F1 cars look portly, inelegant and cumbersome. Perhaps they’re just looking from the wrong angle. From above I think the current generation of cars have a certain elegance. Since I was shooting for McLaren this weekend I had access to the team’s hospitality suite overlooking Sainte Dévote. The main aim was to get a wider view of the race start but you can also go in tighter for a pan shot at a slow shutter speed that gives a real impression of the cars’ pace as they pass beneath. So I went there during FP3 for that. This one of Lewis is the best of the bunch because of the smoke from his right-front tyre. Photographer Glenn Dunbar…

TIME FOR RED BULL TO GO BACK TO BASICS It’s late 2004 and I’m sitting across the aisle from Dietrich Mateschitz in the cabin of his Falcon jet as we wing our way to Madrid for a meeting with Repsol. Long-time Austrian Formula 1 journalist Gerhard Kuntschik sits opposite the man who has built Red Bull into a global phenomenon. Gerhard is interviewing Mateschitz for the Salzburger Nachrichten. Salzburg lies 25km from Red Bull’s HQ in Fuschl am See, while its airport is home to the recently opened Red Bull Hangar 7, one of Mateschitz’s extraordinary creations. At the rear of the cabin sits a grumpy-looking Dany Bahar, one of the executives Mateschitz has charged with developing the company’s F1 programme following its takeover of Jaguar Racing. Christian Horner is two…

10-11 June 2006 GP2 Series The mainstream audience was several months out from learning Lewis Hamilton’s name. But those attending the 2006 British Grand Prix got a taste of what was surely coming to Formula 1. After several years of dominance by Ferrari and Michael Schumacher, ticket sales had been on the wane and many in the crowd had at least one eye on footballing matters in Germany where, on the Saturday, England faced Paraguay in the first Group B game of the FIFA World Cup. “Genius” was how our sister magazine Autosport described Lewis’s outstanding drives in the two GP2 Series races which formed the top of the supporting programme at Silverstone that year. “On a weekend when World Cup fever swept across the home of British motor racing, his…

Watching my brother Thomas race Racing is my biggest passion. It’s what I love most. So I watch it all: not just F1, but also the WEC, ELMS, GTs, all the lower-formula categories – and my brother’s karting races. He’s competing in the European and British championships now, and that’s the most nervous I get when I’m watching any race – because it’s my brother, of course. But it’s also very entertaining, because karting always provides good and tough battles, so it’s super-interesting. Tennis This is a new hobby of mine. I went to the Monte Carlo Masters in April and really enjoyed it. Then I went to the final of the Barcelona Open and after Silverstone I’m going to Wimbledon to watch some matches. So I’m really looking forward…

I’M GUESSING THAT LIBERTY MEDIA must have formed a ‘Formula 1 Book Club’. It makes sense. With a massive F1 calendar and so many flights between races, the book club has been established to help team principals while away the hours between bouts of business interrupted by sending their cars on track to run in a DRS train for 90 minutes every other Sunday. Alice in Wonderland appears to be required reading, along with Treasure Island and Where’s Wally (a special F1 edition for the US market in which Wally, when found, is obliterated and not allowed to join in). It seems to me that someone in authority must have been reading Lewis Carroll’s celebrated story of Alice, who falls through a rabbit hole and enters a fantasy world. This…

1 Processional drivers pictured While the debate rages on as to whether Monte Carlo remains a suitable location to host a world championship Grand Prix, there’s no denying it has a mythical quality. Monaco is a unique place, distinct from the Tilkedromes around the world. If you have a ken for rummaging through bargain bins, the editor of this magazine once wrote a book about it. But, as students sitting an exam on chaos theory might well be asked, to what extent did the designer responsible for the Haas high-downforce wing help Charles Leclerc win this year’s Monaco Grand Prix? As the weekend on the Côte d’Azure unfolded, the two Haas drivers became central to the outcome. Procedural post-qualifying technical checks found the DRS flaps on both Haas cars opened…

28-30 June 2024 Red Bull Ring THE MAIN EVENT For the third time, the Red Bull Ring will host a sprint race in addition to the main grand prix on Sunday. And each time it’ll have been under a slightly different regime since the sprint rules have changed four times in as many years since the format was introduced. While the drivers are moaning about the effects of the latest intervention – plus ça change – on the flow of the race weekend, there’s no doubt the sprint is an effective gimmick on this short, frenetic circuit. In its first incarnation the track, then known as the Osterreichring, was longer, faster and rather more dangerous. The greedy local landowners who forced it to shrink in redevelopment ended up doing current…