Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2021 i AUTOSPORT

Finally! After seven long years, Red Bull looks like a potential champion again. Everything has seemingly come together with the RB16B – the car looks consistent and predictable, and Honda’s heavily updated engine looks leaner and meaner than ever. Of course, this is not the first time in the hybrid era a rival has put Mercedes under pressure, but never has Mercedes looked genuinely behind at the first race. In fact, this was the first occasion since 2013 that Lewis Hamilton hasn’t qualified on pole for race one… Mercedes admits Red Bull has a significant performance advantage right now, and Max Verstappen is champing at the bit. Only an amazing drive by Hamilton, allied to Max misjudging the move that should have sealed the victory for Red Bull, prevented a…

SUSTAINABILITY SOON TO BE MANDATORY While the main focus of the press release that was issued following the February F1 Commission meeting focused on the still-fluid 2021 calendar and the first outlines of the 2025 power unit and chassis, an innocuous and yet extremely significant statement was also made about sustainability. At this meeting, the FIA announced that both Formula 1 as an organisation and the McLaren and Mercedes F1 teams, as well as three circuits: (Paul Ricard, Barcelona and Mugello), had achieved three-star environmental accreditation to FIA standards. This is the highest level of environmental accreditation in motorsport and it follows the guidelines of both ISO 14001 and EMAS, the EU eco-management and audit scheme. While the organisations that have already achieved this milestone are to be congratulated, particularly…

After nearly four decades in automotive engineering, starting out in powertrain development for BMW’s legendary M division, Jost Capito understands the mechanical heartbeat of motor racing. After leading Volkswagen to World Rally Championship glory in the past decade he’s aiming to help bring Williams back to the forefront of Formula 1 GP Racing: Your predecessor (Mike O’Driscoll) was the CEO of Williams for seven years. What are the challenges involved in taking on a role like this in terms of learning how the organisation works? Jost Capito: A difficult question! You have to come into an organisation without preconceptions. And when you see the team has been 10th for a couple of years now, you have to move the team forward – and believe the team has the potential to…

The performances of Formula 1’s three rookies in Bahrain largely followed the anticipated form book. Yuki Tsunoda showcased the adaptability and penchant for rapid learning that has so enthused Helmut Marko by superbly lapping second fastest in Q1, just a tenth behind Max Verstappen. But he then discovered a “strange” feeling on Pirelli’s C3 compound medium tyre, failing to progress to Q3 while AlphaTauri team-mate Pierre Gasly was eighth fastest in Q2 (on the same tyre) then fifth overall. Tsunoda was pleased to finish ninth after a last-gasp lunge on Lance Stroll, but also disappointed with ground lost on lap one, and the time it took to recover. Nevertheless, Gasly was impressed with Tsunoda: “So far a couple of mistakes here and there but when he managed to put things…

THE MAIN EVENT Few things in Formula 1 say “business as usual” quite as much as Barcelona in early May. The return of the Spanish Grand Prix to its usual slot feels like another small step in the general direction of normality – although this year, of course, F1’s teams will assemble here without the benefit of six days of pre-season testing at the same venue. The Spanish GP traditionally kicks off the first European leg of the season and is the race at which the majority of teams deploy their first major upgrade packages. This year is slightly different in that F1 has shifted back to Europe early, with rounds in Italy and Portugal, so a handful of teams may already have brought car updates. In fact, since the…

DAMIEN SMITH Our former editor-in-chief has penned another fantastic team history and this time it's Lotus in the spotlight. Part 1 starts on page 68 LUKE SMITH Just who Is Yuki Tsunoda? Luke gives us the lowdown on the young driver that AlphaTauri is expecting a lot from in 2021 (p64) MARK GALLAGHER Mark analyses the background to Lewis Hamilton's contract (p54) and delivers a personal tribute to Murray Walker (p32) STUART CODLING Codders interrogates Daniel Ricciardo on his move to McLaren (p40) and George Russell on what he has to achieve this season (p58)…

@_markgallagher NAVIGATING A ROUTE TO THE TOP AT THE FIA Hannu Mikkola’s death has caused the world of motorsport to reflect on a golden age of rallying, when marshals’ whistles would be followed by the deep ululation of an Audi Quattro bursting over a crest. Long before Flying Finns graced Formula 1, rallying was in thrall to the talents of a Mikkola, Vatanen, Alen or Toivonen. FIA President Jean Todt was one of those to post a tribute, noting that the weekend of Mikkola’s passing coincided with the Arctic Rally Finland. Forty-six years ago, Todt was co-driver for Mikkola on the original Arctic, the pair sharing a Fiat 124 Abarth. Later that year they would win the Rallye du Maroc in a Peugeot 504 Ti. It’s worth remembering that our…

GRINS DANIEL RICCIARDO – in fact, his signature 1000-watt smile is briefly all GP Racing can see of him as the rest of his body flickers out of view on screen, briefly replaced by a papaya-coloured board bedecked in sponsor logos. “I seem to keep morphing into the background here…” The slightly surreal practicalities of speaking face-to-face with racing drivers during a pandemic have served up a neat visual metaphor here, so no need to call tech support just yet: Ricciardo is thoroughly embedded at McLaren, even though he’s only completed one race for the Woking equipe thus far. His dalliances with McLaren go way back, much earlier than his previous flirtings with signing up back in 2018; earlier, even, than his furtive acquisition of a McLaren 675 LT while…

1 Verstappen’s costly triple threat Max Verstappen drove the fastest car, topped every practice session and qualified on pole position, but ultimately three key factors denied him the victory his pace merited. First, a differential problem on Verstappen’s RB16B, which caused wheelspin at low speed and hurt him particularly on the run out of the Turn 1/2/3 complex. Despite efforts to fix this, it cost Max 0.3s per lap early in the race. Then there was the fact Mercedes was one of only two teams (the other being Red Bull’s sister squad AlphaTauri) to start this race with an extra set of hard-compound tyres available. This turned out to be the best race tyre. An extra set would have allowed Red Bull to mirror reigning champion Lewis Hamilton’s strategy (medium/hard/hard)…

FORMULA 1 CAR BY CAR 1990-99 Author Peter Higham Price £50 evropublishing.com Formerly GP Racing’s publisher and MD of LAT Images, now a full-time writer and archive scourer, Peter Higham is back with the latest in his series of beautifully detailed summaries of a decade in Formula 1. The 1990s brought consolidation to the F1 grid as the minnows were allowed to fade into the ether, and the governing body fought an ongoing battle to control ever-increasing car performance. There was tragedy, too, in 1994 when Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna lost their lives during the San Marino GP weekend. As with the other books in this series, the story of each season unfolds through a detailed description of each team’s entry each year. And although the grid becomes…

JAPANESE HOPES PASS TO TSUNODA AlphaTauri’s new recruit, Yuki Tsunoda, has already achieved a new milestone in the list of achievements in Formula 1 by becoming the youngest Japanese driver to date. Hiroshi Fushida was the first driver from Japan to put his name in the F1 statistics book when he tried to qualify for the Dutch and British Grands Prix of 1975, but his Maki-Ford F101 simply wasn’t competitive enough to make the grade. So three drivers shared the honour of becoming the first official Japanese grand prix racers at Fuji in the nation’s first world championship event in 1976. While James Hunt battled his way through the rain to earn the title, notable achievements were made by home racers. Kazuyoshi Hoshino was the first to run in the…

2021 Williams Racing, CEO 2017-2020 Volkswagen, Managing director of R brand 2016 McLaren Racing, CEO 2012-2016 Volkswagen, Director of motorsport 2009-2012 Ford Motor Company, Director of global performance vehicles and motorsport business development 2001-2009 Ford Motor Company, Director of special vehicle engineering/performance vehicle line 1996-2001 Sauber Petronas Engineering, Member of the managing committee (COO 1998-2001) 1989-1996 Porsche, Head of motorsport 1984-1989 BMW M Teknik, Powertrain development engineer 1979-1984 Technical University of Munich, Mechanical engineering…

PÉREZ DOESN’T YET LOOK AN UPGRADE ON ALBON ALEX ALBON COULD PROBABLY allow himself a wry smile. So often last season he was (rightly) castigated for failing to perform at the crucial moments, leaving Red Bull disadvantaged in its battle with Mercedes. Red Bull replaced Albon with Sergio Pérez because it felt Pérez’s experience would make up the deficit, but Pérez’s first race with his new team was below par. Impressed by the way Red Bull takes “everything to the limit”, Pérez is so far struggling to find the limits of the RB16B himself. Partly, that’s to be expected. Pérez himself is on record saying it will take five races to get fully up to speed. But he would have expected to make Q3 and finish fourth as a minimum,…

Asked why he put himself forward for the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association director’s chair vacated by IndyCar-bound Romain Grosjean, George Russell explains that he wants to “look back in 20 years’ time and say I was part of a positive change in Formula 1”. It’s not what you might expect to hear from a 23-year-old grand prix driver, especially one whose general lot during race weekends over the past two seasons has been a scrabble to get into Q2 and frustrated attempts to scrape into the top 10. But it says much about how and where George Russell sees himself, and his level of engagement with F1 and the wider world, that he should take on a responsibility some of his more experienced peers have eschewed – and that he…

STRICTLY, I’M AWARE THAT FRANK GARDNER... ...doesn’t belong in a series called ‘Formula 1 Heroes’, as he would have been the first to acknowledge. As far as Formula 1 is concerned, his résumé runs to only eight grands prix starts, plus a handful of non-championship races, all of them – save the 1967 Oulton Park Gold Cup, when he drove a factory Brabham – in uncompetitive cars. Undoubtedly, he had the talent for an F1 career, but perhaps more than any other racing driver I have known, Gardner was a down-to-earth realist. “I liked the idea of F1 as much as anyone – but not at any price. In something competitive, yes please, but I never could see the sense in driving a third-rate car, starting near the back, just…

‘THE WAY IT’S ALWAYS BEEN’ IS NO LONGER AN OPTION Many years ago – 2007 in fact – I was sent to grill the team principal of one of the big-name manufacturer outfits for an entry in GP Racing’s Long Interview series. The conversation came round to budget caps which were, as now, among the issues being hotly debated within the lofty inner circle of Formula 1’s powermongers. “It will never happen,” he said dismissively, waving the question away as if he were enjoying a coffee outside a Parisian bistro and I were a street urchin attempting to sell him clothes pegs or somesuch. “Too difficult to police, I think.” During the course of whittling the transcript down to fill the allocated space I kicked this section into touch, thinking…