Innehållsförteckning för November 2020 från AUTOSPORT

Now we’ve got your attention with this month’s bold cover image, let’s talk about Sebastian Vettel’s impending switch from Ferrari to the team known as Jordan/Midland/Spyker/Force India/Racing Point, soon to be known as Aston Martin. We’re well aware this forthcoming rebranding exercise will involve British racing green coming back into Formula 1 in some way, shape or form – but we’ve also learned that initial designs for next season’s colour scheme were rejected for not including enough pink… Whichever way you slice it, Vettel will be looking pretty in pink next season. However Lawrence Stroll chooses to dress his people – let’s not forget Racing Point is not becoming a ‘works’ outfit in the technological sense of Ferrari, Mercedes or Renault, rather rebranding a partner team in the style of…

01 HONDA CALLS TIME ON F1… …and says it isn’t coming back, ever 02 SCHU’S KNOCKING ON THE DOOR Mick Schumacher in the frame for Alfa seat 03 EX-FERRARI MAN TAKES TOP F1 JOB 01 RED BULL SCRAMBLES FOR ENGINE OPTIONS Honda’s commitment to Formula 1 beyond the end of the 2021 season has long been the subject of speculation. But even so, its announcement that it would withdraw (though the official phrasing was “ending its participation”) came as a surprise to many – including, GP Racing understands, staff within the teams it supplies. This is unequivocally the end of the F1 road: Honda boss Takahiro Hachigo declared during the official press conference that there would be no “re-participation” further down the line. Honda intends to refocus its considerable R&D…

WHY EVERYONE IN F1 WANTED TO ‘PARTY’ It was Lewis Hamilton who, in 2018, coined the term ‘Party Mode’, to describe the engine settings that gave maximum performance, and in doing so brought to fans’ attention procedures that actually go back way before the introduction of the hybrid power unit in 2014. Even the venerable Cosworth DFV had some adjustability on its fuel injection, and some historic racers still know that the trick to starting these was to click the cam on the fuel metering unit to ‘full rich’ and then back to ‘one off lean’ when the engine warmed up. When racing at altitude, in Mexico for example, the engines ran better with the cam set at ‘full lean’. The advent of electronic engine controls initially just controlled the…

GP Racing is trying not to panic. We’re minutes away from speaking to Kimi Räikkönen and the doors to the Monza ‘Media Meeting Area’ are seemingly locked. “It’s fine,” we think, clearly exasperated, “he’s only notoriously difficult to interview and hates to be dragged away from the parts of Formula 1 he actually enjoys…” A text to the FIA’s media delegate, another to Will Ponissi (Alfa Romeo’s press attaché), a few moments of struggling to banish our unhelpful inner monologue, and we’re saved! A circuit press officer arrives – and reveals the locked door isn’t the right one, and the correct one just needs a good shove. Mercifully, she holds back her thoughts on our obvious inadequacy… There’s no time to focus on the embarrassment – we’re in, and Kimi…

END OF THE LINE. Williams F1, or Williams Grand Prix Engineering as it was at its founding in the mists of 1977, will race on next season, its name reassuringly branded into the new and more equitable Concorde Agreement beside all its rivals. But is it still ‘Williams’ without Frank? Not really. Now 78 and not in the best of health, he hasn’t run the team for years. But Frank remained its beating heart – until 3 September 2020, the Thursday before the Italian Grand Prix. Our last chapter of this wonderful, quirky, often thorny odyssey coincides with a monumental – and monumentally sad – occurrence: Frank Williams has left the building. But it didn’t have to end this way for the great man and his daughter Claire, de facto…

LUKE SMITH Luke, Autsoport's F1 reporter, looks at how Sebastian Vettel will fit in at Racing Point/Aston Martin in 2021 after his switch from Ferrari (p34) DAMIEN SMITH All good things come to an end. The final part of Damien's superb history of Williams fittingly concludes with the team's sale (p62) ALEX KALINAUCKAS Interviewing F1's most experienced driver, Kimi Räikkönen, was Alex's task for this month, and he managed to get Kimi laughing... (p42) STUART CODLING Stuart finds out from Daniel Ricciardo and Cyril Abiteboul what exactly is behind Renault's renaissance this season (p46)…

Q1 How many world championship F1 races did Nelson Piquet win: 23, 24 or 25? Q2 Who won the 2010 Bahrain GP, held on a lengthened layout of the normal circuit? Q3 Kimi Räikkönen has led 83 F1 races in his long career, but which was the first? Q4 Which driver won the last world championship race of the 1950s and the first of the 1960s? Q5 Who was the last Portuguese driver to race in the Portuguese Grand Prix and in which year? Q6 Which driver broke Riccardo Patrese’s record of 257 GP starts, which had stood for 15 years? Q7 Renault’s last podium as a manufacturer, prior to the 2020 Eifel GP, came at the 2011 Malaysian GP, but which driver claimed it? Q8 How many times did…

WELCOME TO F1’S ‘PIRANHA CLUB’, CYRIL It’s a long time since Ron Dennis welcomed Eddie Jordan to the Piranha Club. Inevitably the membership has changed over the years, but the club is thriving despite Liberty introducing a more collegiate style of governance the previous management would never have permitted. The cutthroat nature of Formula 1 remains. It’s not for the faint-hearted, and while it’s nice to be popular, it’s rather better to be hard as nails, politically astute and successful at keeping the shareholders on side – something that team principals learn quickly. One such is Cyril Abiteboul. He has had a good year, as Renault has scored a podium for the first time since its return to team ownership in 2016, and the 43-year-old Parisian has secured the team’s…

For Vettel, the path had seemed obvious. Despite the tension that had brewed through 2019 amid Charles Leclerc’s emergence, and the five-year deal his young team-mate was rewarded with for his fine start to life at Maranello, Seb still felt a new contract offer for himself seemed likely. But Ferrari had other ideas. Talks were never opened with Vettel, the Scuderia’s focus instead shifting to signing Carlos Sainz from McLaren, thus making Leclerc the new team leader and the man on whom it wanted to stake its future. It was never a situation Vettel thought he would be in, nor one he has ever suffered previously. He had never needed to go out in search of an F1 seat before, always being coveted. Now he was weighing up not only…

BACK IN 1979 WE DIDN’T HAVE...  post-race press conferences in Formula 1, but sometimes there would be an informal ceremony, and they had one such at Silverstone, where the atmosphere was unusually emotional: Frank Williams was a winner at last, and everyone wanted to share his joy. At first, he could barely speak. Then someone gave him a whisky, another a lit cigar, and Frank – a lifelong teetotaller and non-smoker – gamely sipped the one, puffed on the other. “Thank you, thank you so much,” he murmured, and there were tears in his eyes. After a few minutes his driver came in, dabbing at his face with a towel, for the afternoon was warm. On the podium, in deference to the team’s Saudi sponsors, he had toasted victory with…

Turning Sochi into Suzuka Sochi Autodrom is nobody’s idea of a photogenic circuit: it’s flat and the corners look homogenous. Nevertheless the current cars look fantastic, and with the right light you can make something happen The weather was great this year, giving a good quality of light – although for this image I took advantage of the shade to recreate one of the popular shots at Suzuka, where the cars dip under the flyover. By exposing the image for the shadows, where the car is, the highlights are blown out so you get an almost pure white background. It’s my little tribute to a great circuit which, very sadly, we won’t be visiting this year. Where Sochi, Russia When 12.27pm, Saturday 26 September 2020 Details Canon EOS-1DX MkIII 500mm…

PORTUGAL PRIMED FOR MORE DRAMA The return of the Portuguese Grand Prix gives me goosebumps. In 1985 I watched Ayrton Senna claim his first grand prix victory at Estoril on TV, at a time when I was going through difficult decisions about my own future. For a couple of hours, I lost myself in the majesty of his driving in appallingly wet conditions, thrilled to see Lotus win for the first time since 1982. Three years later I competed in a support race at the 1988 GP. Estoril was a fabulous circuit to drive – fast and challenging, and at that particular event a key moment occurred in the ever-fermenting relationship between Senna and Alain Prost, in their first season as team-mates at McLaren. Unusually, Prost qualified ahead of Senna…

GP Racing: Your company’s background is based in the mining industry, rockfall protection and roadside barriers – how did you make the leap over to motorsport? Jochen Braunwarth: In developing our products for slope stabilisation and rockfall barriers, we did extensive field testing because we wanted to demonstrate they had been scientifically evaluated and could guarantee a certain level of safety. We created this mesh out of high-tensile steel wire and we’re the only company in the world currently capable of manufacturing this type of wire. Our introduction to motorsport came about through coincidence: there was a German speaker working at the FIA Institute when it was looking into this area, and he reached out to us. At the time the FIA was more interested in our testing capabilities than…

AKI HINTSA MURRAY WALKER ROSS BRAWN MARIO THEISSEN FERNANDO ALONSO ADRIAN NEWEY DIETRICH MATESCHITZ CHRISTIAN HORNER MARTIN BRUNDLE DONALD MACKENZIE At the start of the new millennium, Aki Hintsa opened the eyes of the F1 paddock to new dimensions of performance. Hintsa was not a driver or a designer. He had no prior connection to motorsport. He was a doctor, and the potential he explored was not mechanical but human: the mind and body of the athlete in the cockpit. In 1998 and 1999 he had been alongside Mika Häkkinen as his fellow Finn secured his two world titles at the expense of Michael Schumacher. Häkkinen knew of Hintsa’s work with the Finnish Olympic team, and that Hintsa had spent time as a doctor and missionary in Ethiopia, where he…