Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i AUTOSPORT

The 2021 Australian and Chinese Grands Prix had recently been postponed as this issue of GP Racing closed for press. With everything else going on amid this latest wave of the global coronavirus pandemic, it’s easy to feel like history is simply repeating itself and we’re running nowhere fast – like hamsters on a wheel. But I want to forgo the negativity and focus on reasons for F1 fans to feel cheerful heading into 2021. Firstly, we know F1 has a credible protocol for keeping its show on the road. As our business expert Mark Gallagher explains (page 30), F1 has gone to extraordinary lengths to mitigate the threat COVID-19 poses to its operations. Coronavirus has taken a severe toll, and whether F1 can withstand mutations and variants remains to…

01 PÉREZ REPLACES ALBON Can Red Bull now challenge Mercedes for titles? 02 COVID CHAOS DISRUPTS CALENDAR New season, old problems for promoters 03 MERC SPONSOR BUYS IN WILL PÉREZ BE RED BULL’S MISSING LINK? PÉREZ IS NOW AMONG THE MOST PROFICIENT IN THE VITAL SKILL OF MANAGING PIRELLI’S DELICATE RUBBER, A PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTIC WHICH IS NOT LIKELY TO CHANGE THIS YEAR 01 Red Bull now has the last two grand prix winners of 2020 on its books, having hired Sergio Pérez to replace Alex Albon, who will instead race a Red Bull-backed Ferrari in the DTM. It will be the first time Red Bull Racing has looked outside its young driver programme for a new recruit since Mark Webber joined from Williams in 2007. The likelihood is that Pérez…

HOW GROSJEAN SURVIVED MAY STAY A MYSTERY The 2020 Formula 1 season will be remembered for many things. The relentless schedule of 17 race events completed in 165 days will certainly not be forgotten by those who participated, and the intense midfield battles occupied the minds of the majority of teams. For fans, the return to some classic tracks, plus the introduction of new ones, will be remembered. But if one were to choose a single event that will be talked about for some time to come, it would undoubtably be the fiery accident suffered by Romain Grosjean in Bahrain. Accidents are part of motorsport. Any workplace can be dangerous, but motorsport must rank alongside military combat as one of the most dangerous occupations. In spite of this, and as…

FORMULA 1’S RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC provided a beacon of hope to sports fans around the world in 2020, as FOM, the FIA, teams and race promoters somehow pulled together a 17-race world championship in spite of the chaos wrought by COVID-19. This came at a cost, however, as at least £2.5billion in financial engineering took place to save the sport and its constituent teams from disaster. It is worth reflecting upon the fact that F1 staged its 2020 series against a catastrophic backdrop in terms of the harm to human life and global economic disruption. By the end of the 2020 well over 88 million people had been infected by the virus, and 1.9 million died as a result. With global travel halted and lockdowns…

PEDRO RODRÍGUEZ PICTURES IN JANUARY 1993 THERE WAS A TOUCHING EVENT... at Daytona Beach. At this cathedral of stock car racing, they were naming a road course turn for Pedro Rodríguez, and present for the ceremony was his mother. No, she said, she bore no grudge against the sport which had taken both her sons. They had savoured their brief lives. Daytona was always good to Pedro. Twice he won the 24 Hours, but an earlier victory, in 1963, was perhaps the most crucial of his career. The annual sportscar race was then run over three hours, and Pedro came to it grieving the loss of his brother and not sure he wanted to continue. Winning swept away most of his doubts. Both Rodríguez brothers had immense natural ability, and…

GLENN DUNBAR As with several other photographers, Glenn shoots on behalf of a team – and that, in 2020, meant staying in that team’s ‘bubble’ throughout the season. He delivered a new perspective on Racing Point’s breakout year. ZAK MAUGER The greatest thing to come out of Guernsey since the literary and potato peel pie society, Zak got more game time in F1 last year after several seasons of focusing primarily on F2. That’s one good outcome from the pandemic… SAM BLOXHAM Edinburgh-domiciled Sam was better travelled than most during 2020, covering Formula E and the Le Mans 24 Hours as well as selected grands prix as part of the Motorsport Images trackside photographic posse. MARK SUTTON With an eye for the quirky and an uncanny knack of being in…

ANDREW BENSON The tricky question of what exactly makes the best F1 drivers stand out gets the attention of BBC Sport's chief F1 writer this month (p40) STEVEN TEE Steve is the man in charge of LAT's intrepid snappers and his and his team's best images from 2020 can be found on pages 86 to 99 MARK GALLAGHER Mark tries to explain the financial implications of the COVID-19-ravaged 2020 season and how F1 and the teams have coped with them (p30) ROBERTO CHINCHERO Roberto analyses what Ferrari got wrong in 2020 and the measures the Scuderia is taking fix those issues for the upcoming season (p54)…

WHEN CONTRACTS BECOME A LITTLE COMPLICATED... With Lewis Hamilton brake-tested by COVID-19 and George Russell testing positive for talent, the Sakhir Grand Prix prompted much debate about driver contracts in that calm, knowledgeable arena known as ‘social media’. Opinions centred around suggestions that Mercedes should sack Valtteri Bottas in favour of the man whom he outqualified by 26 milliseconds or – shock horror – the notion that Toto Wolff could slash his driver budget by opting for Russell over seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton. If it passed Toto’s mind that he should sign all three of them in tribute to one of Monisha Kaltenborn’s less desired legacies, I’m sure his brain will have moved that thought straight to trash. Sauber’s Kaltenborn, it should be remembered, turned up in Melbourne…

John Hogan, who died in January of a Covid-related illness at the age of 76, was a pioneering commercial figure in Formula 1 who commanded significant influence in the paddock. But he was also so much more. ‘Hogie’, as he was universally known, was a genuine motorsport enthusiast whose intuitive understanding of F1 made him a popular character and close friend to many drivers, including James Hunt, Niki Lauda, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. In F1 circles, Hogie will be remembered as the real ‘Marlboro Man’ (even if he didn’t wear the hat), having joined parent company Philip Morris in 1973 as the cigarette brand was embarking on its long commercial relationship with F1. Until 2002, when he finally left the company, Hogan was Marlboro’s man in the paddock who…

ABITEBOUL HANDED ALPINE PASS OUT It’s said that all political careers end in failure. Thrusting young people with ambition align themselves with the most powerful and influential stars in their firmament, only to suffer the consequences when those stars eventually diminish or blink out. So farewell, then, Cyril Abiteboul – or Cyril Irritable, as one rival team principal nicknamed him – whose departure from Renault was marked by the classically understated medium of a tersely worded press release in early January, a week before the company provided a first peek at how its newly rebranded Alpine F1 team might look. Luca de Meo’s appointment last July as chief executive of the Renault Group – a long-term replacement for the disgraced Carlos Ghosn – naturally suggested that change might be coming,…

Before Checo checks out We’re always on the hunt for new angles on established venues and sometimes ideas just come up through casual conversations. In this case, Sergio Pérez’s manager was telling me what a great view he had from his hotel room. While still obeying the biosphere protocols I was able to shoot from his balcony, with a variable-density drop-in ND (neutral density) filter in the adaptor I use to fit my older EF lens onto Canon’s new R5 mirrorless camera body. With this you reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor, enabling you to run a slower shutter speed and achieve motion blur, even on a wide-angle lens. Where Yas Marina, Abu Dhabi When 3.39pm, Saturday 12 December 2020 Details Canon EOS R5 12-24mm lens, 1/4 @…

THE HEADY MIX OF ENTERTAIMENT AND SPORT The worlds of entertainment and sport are distinctly separate and yet the element of entertainment within sport is often what puts a smile on faces. In recent years, there’s been a rise to that element within Formula 1, created by a superb mix of people. In 2016 Jay Hunt, then boss of Channel 4, took control of terrestrial F1 coverage in the UK and wanted to make a distinct change to the way it was delivered on screen. While I kept my role as commentator, a new frontman was announced. Steve Jones had been a successful TV presenter in the world of entertainment for some years when he received a call from Hunt: “She asked me if I liked F1 and I said,…

Shortly before tying up third place in the constructors’ championship at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, McLaren announced the partial sale of McLaren Racing to a US-based investment consortium for £185million. Under the terms of the deal, which values the company at £560m, the consortium will take an initial stake of 15%, growing to 33% by the end of 2022. MSP Sports Capital is the lead investor, along with The Najafi Companies and UBS O’Connor, a subsidiary of the Swiss bank which offers wealth management services, including hedge funds. There is some overlap between the investors – Jahm Najafi is a partner in MSP as well as being the founder and owner of his eponymous private equity company. And all three entities enjoy prior connections with McLaren Racing CEO Zak…

START OF THE YEAR Kimi Räikkönen Alfa Romeo “I thank all the GP Racing readers for this award. Going from P16 to P6 within a lap was obviously quite good, but when you’re in the car you don’t really focus on the overall gain, you are just looking at the next move. It’s only when you watch it all back that it really dawns on you – that was a good lap! Hopefully next year we will be a bit further up the grid and we won’t need to overtake that many cars…”Kimi Räikkönen The Portuguese Grand Prix Kimi Räikkönen fans didn’t have much to cheer in 2020, as Alfa Romeo suffered a competitive slump of a similar magnitude to Haas. Ferrari customer status was not the thing to have…

1 PUTTING EVERYONE IN THE SHADE In the sweltering midsummer Barcelona heat, Lewis Hamilton walks to his garage with one thing in mind: utter domination. In the coming Spanish Grand Prix he will lap all but two of his rivals 2 A POINT TO PROVE Racing Point hoped ‘cloning’ the 2019 Mercedes would be a shortcut to success, but the road to victory was tough. Here in Mugello Lance Stroll would crash out and Sergio Pérez fight to fifth 3 A FRUSTRATING ’LOS Carlos Sainz’s pain is palpable as he extracts himself from his McLaren after the Italian Grand Prix. At the end of a topsy-turvy race he was less than half a second away from a maiden F1 race win 1 DEFLATED AMBITION The British Grand Prix was defined…