Innehållsförteckning för July 2022 från AUTOSPORT

Bouncing issue causing continued team strife The seasons change, but the fundamentals of Formula 1 never really do. Abu Dhabi and the rancour of 2021 is gradually receding, and Red Bull anyway has new fish to fry this year thanks to resurgent Ferrari, but off-track the battle is still very much on with Mercedes – and the FIA. Last month, Stuart Codling’s excellent Flat Chat column detailed concern among drivers – voiced eloquently by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz – that he and his colleagues are being bounced into oblivion by F1’s new generation of ground effect cars, which also afflicted his predecessors 40 years ago. The day before Canadian GP practice, the FIA issued a technical directive and pledged to convene a special technical panel with F1’s teams to “define measures…

Ferrari’s form in Baku seemed much better than expected, given the track configuration favoured Red Bull... on paper. It was good for the championship to see Charles Leclerc stick it on pole position, less so to watch both Ferraris grind to a halt and make it much less of a race. Rewind to Saturday. There’s a lot to like about Baku from a photographic point of view. The timing of the quali session, in the early evening, gives you this lovely shaft of light on the section between Turns 10 and 11. It picks out the foliage overhanging the circuit and casts a nice shadow from the car. Plus the Ferrari is a fantastic shape, especially from this angle. Where Baku, Azerbaijan When 6.17pm, Saturday 11 June 2022 Details Canon…

You always have to be on the lookout for ways to do something a little different. Shooting through the Armco isn’t unique – heaven knows, F1’s legion of media centre ‘influencers’ were out doing it with their cameraphones every session – but the key is to lift the shot somehow. I’d been shooting through the barrier in the tunnel during FP1. The cars are nice and close, but nothing really stood out. I was planning on going somewhere else for FP2 but on the way through the tunnel I saw how the sun was creeping round and flooding the exit with light, so I stopped. The contrast really adds dynamism to this angle. Where Monte Carlo, Monaco When 5:47pm, Friday 27 May 2022 Details Canon EOS-R3 14-35mm lens, 1/16000th @…

OPTIMISM IS RICCIARDO’S RAISON D’ÊTRE Optimism is such a valuable aspect of life. We are bombarded with evidence that proves the benefits to health, reduced stress and pathways to a more successful life. Many sports stars have grown up with it, and there was a clever call in late 2020 when Daniel Ricciardo was given the title ‘Chief of Optimism’ by the Australian telecommunications company Optus – to be an inspiration for customers and staff. Daniel often puts a smile on faces around him, and his enthusiasm for the whole world of motorsport is infectious. Team members get a lift from his bounce, fans queue up to get a glimpse of his cheeky grin as he heads for the paddock, and his entertaining podium celebrations when he’s drinking fizz from…

Last year the British Grand Prix was the first race to welcome back fans in large numbers. How important was that for the future of Silverstone as a business? It certainly was important. A few weeks before last year’s race, it was unclear whether any sporting event would be having meaningful numbers of spectators. It took six months of hard work to explain we were capable of hosting a large-scale outdoor event safely. The big change for us was having a sell-out event on our hands. That enabled us to remind the fans, when this year’s tickets went on sale, that 2021 had sold out and our advice was to move early and buy tickets promptly. We sold out of race-day tickets by the end of January this year and…

1 Ferrari engine failures hand victory to Red Bull Charles Leclerc described the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as his “third disappointment in a row” and it’s easy to see why. After notching up his fourth consecutive pole position Leclerc lost ground at the start, then regained it thanks to an opportunist pitstop under a Virtual Safety Car, only to halt with an as-yet unexplained engine failure. Coming after the retirement in Spain and Ferrari’s operational fumble in Monaco, this was yet another setback to Leclerc’s title hopes. Ostensibly this gift-wrapped another 1-2 finish for Red Bull, with Max Verstappen leading Sergio Pérez, but the championship leader was far from out of the picture, even though he benefitted from his team-mate making way for him again. Ferrari built through practice, fitting a…

THE MAIN EVENT One of the longer tracks in the F1 calendar is followed by one of the shortest. Greedy local landowners forced the former Österreichring to shrink when it was redeveloped in the 1990s. Now under the ownership of the Red Bull empire, it’s become a hub for all sorts of activities besides motor racing, from hiking and mountain biking to fine dining in the restaurant which overlooks the picturesque Styrian foothills. This year the Red Bull Ring is one of the three venues to host a Sprint event, which entails a rejigged schedule in which qualifying is held on Friday. With more points up for grabs this year, the Sprint could develop into an eventful encounter – with a bit of crash damage to fix afterwards… 2021 RACE…

AN OUTBREAK OF THE BUDGET CAP BLUES Much guff has been spouted over the matter of F1’s budget cap but now, perhaps, the subject has finally crossed the Rubicon (some might even say it has long since jumped the shark, if such a collision of cultural-aquatic metaphors were permissible in these pages). McLaren, the team which squawked longest and loudest for the cap to be set as low as possible, has now publicly capitulated to the inevitability of breaking it. “We are at a position where we can’t make the cap anymore,” team principal Andreas Seidl told reporters at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. F1 is an expensive business. This is a known. It is hardly the most extraordinary revelation since Archimedes realised his bath was too hot. For many years…

OLEG KARPOV Oleg sat down with Max Verstappen this month, for our exclusive cover feature (p30), and also played chess with Mick Schumacher (p56) MATT KEW Autosport's Formula 1 editor Matt takes a look at the form of the three home drivers ahead of the upcoming British Grand Prix (p40) STUART CODLING Codders has had a chat with F1 returnee Alex Albon (p48), and has also crafted a piece on the Red Bull RB5 for our NTWAC feature (p74) DAMIEN SMITH Damien concludes his superb series on the history of Brabham, detailing the team's final success before its slide into oblivion (p64)…

It’s no secret that I’m a huge Fernando Alonso fan. I’ve had the privilege of working with him, on and off, since his early days as part of Renault’s driver development scheme. So it was fabulous to see him seizing the moment on Saturday in Montréal when the weather was changeable and the levels of grip thoroughly uncertain. He’s still got it. What a pity the race came unglued for him – I’m not sure this stop came at the right time. This is a classic panning pitstop shot with a very slow shutter speed, about as low as you’d want to go, to set up the motion blur. The Alpine is really good for shots like this because the colours of car, crew and driver really pop. Where Montréal,…

ASTON CHANGES RE-OPEN COPYING CONTROVERSY The Spanish Grand Prix is traditionally a race where the first major updates of the season are seen and this year, although no longer the first European race, every team except Haas brought some development to their cars. What caught most people’s attention, though, were the changes made to the Aston Martin – which many felt bore more than a passing resemblance to the Red Bull as raced from the beginning of the season. It’s perhaps unfortunate the Silverstone-based team drew such focus having already been subject to intense scrutiny in 2020, after producing what many dubbed ‘The Pink Mercedes’, a clever replica of the successful 2019 works Mercedes car. But this time was very different in many ways. The 2020 Racing Point RP20 –…

ANYONE COMPLAINING about Miami ought to have seen Las Vegas in 1981 and 1982. As temporary tracks go, Caesars Palace was similar to any COVID test centre found adjacent to your local airport in recent years. You know the sort of thing – an abandoned car park with haphazard lanes marked out in zig-zag fashion by plastic barriers. The only difference between this and Las Vegas was the defining edges in Nevada were made of concrete and no masked person was wielding a swab with menace when you eventually reached the finish. That said, the Americans came close to getting up F1 noses by implying the grand prix – the final round of the championship, no less – was not a patch on IndyCar racing and just a side attraction…

1 Verstappen produces the drive of a champion This was Max Verstappen’s most impressive display since Imola. Outqualified by Sergio Pérez in Monaco and Baku and seemingly out of sync with Red Bull’s RB18 – compromised particularly by its understeer tendencies – Verstappen was back to his best in Montréal. Give him a wet track and a car with which he feels comfortable and there are few, if any, who can match him. In Canada, Verstappen was imperious in leading each segment of qualifying on a gradually drying circuit – while Pérez was nowhere and ultimately crashed out in Q2. Carlos Sainz (always strong in the wet himself), George Russell, and particularly Fernando Alonso, all variously snapped at Verstappen’s heels – but even though chief rival Charles Leclerc was played…

THE MAIN EVENT Though just 10km inland from the spectacular French Riviera between Marseilles and Toulon, Paul Ricard feels more remote than it is since it lies atop a plateau and is serviced by small, winding roads which can make race day traffic a grind. Jackie Stewart won the first grand prix here in 1971, and the track gained a reputation for hosting Monza-style slipstreaming races thanks to the ultra-long Mistral Straight, named after the wind which blows down here from the valleys to the northwest. The circuit was refurbished as a test venue in the early 2000s, hence the border of striped high-grip asphalt and the proliferation of different layouts, although the GP uses a very similar layout to the original one – with the exception of the Mistral…

It was a storming drive from Max Verstappen to win the Canadian Grand Prix – one of those races where just as you’re starting to think the outcome is a bit of a formality, something happens to disrupt those expectations. Although from a purely functional point of view, as a photographer this puts you in a quandary: you want to watch the last couple of laps unfold but you have to get to the podium to shoot that… Speaking of the podium, this was a peculiar one to shoot because the organisers have put in a balcony with glass panels on the front. Is it a health and safety thing? The reflections were pretty terrible. Where Montréal, Canada When 3.55pm, Sunday 19 June 2022 Details Canon EOS-1DX MkII 70-200mm lens,…

You might have seen a similar angle to this if you follow the various Formula 1 correspondents on social media: I was able to gain access to a balcony in the building where the media centre is located, the advantage being a little bit more height and not having to shoot on a cameraphone through a grubby window pane. What a grim afternoon this was looking at this point. When you’re out there you’re not necessarily plugged in to everything that’s going on, so the scenario with the starting procedure wasn’t all that clear. What was obvious was how difficult the conditions were – check out all that spray just as they were trundling round! Where Monte Carlo, Monaco When 3.19pm, Sunday 29 May 2022 Details Canon EOS-1DX MkII 16-35mm…

VETTEL: MORE THAN JUST AN F1 DRIVER Two weeks before senior civil servant Sue Gray published her report into Number 10 Downing Street’s Partygate furore, Sebastian Vettel gave his verdict on Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “When you are in that position there are just certain things that you can’t pull off,” said the four-time world champion, a man not unused to pushing the limits. “In the end it’s the Prime Minister who made the law and then breaks the law.” “I’m the father of three kids,” he continued, “and if I’m trying to explain to them something that I think is really important on how to behave, and I do the exact opposite… I am the least credible person in front of them. There are certain things that come with…

Nelson Piquet failed to qualify for the 1982 United States Grand Prix in Detroit. A week later in Montréal he flashed across the finish line to win for Brabham – and, more significantly, for the first time with BMW’s turbo four-cylinder. That landmark couldn’t have been better timed, amid heightening tensions as one of Formula 1’s greatest team-manufacturer associations threatened to detonate before it had truly hit full boost. Nothing is more evocative of the cool 1980s than Brabham and BMW, mated together within Gordon Murray’s striking blue-and-white Parmalat wonders. But for all the stylish achievements this was a tempestuous, flawed partnership that could and should have achieved much more. Even at its height a year later, when Piquet’s late-season momentum swept him to an irresistible second drivers’ crown, rarely…

1 Ferrari blunder hands victory to Pérez “I don’t think I’ve ever driven in the wet here,” said Charles Leclerc after taking his second consecutive Monaco Grand Prix pole. “So it’s going to be tricky.” In hindsight these words seem prophetic, though ultimately it was a lapse in Ferrari’s operational slickness rather than a failure of Leclerc’s virtuosity which cost him the win. Sergio Pérez’s Q3 crash consigned both Red Bulls to the second row of the grid and, because the race began in extreme wet conditions behind the Safety Car, over an hour later than scheduled, unusually the result of the Monaco GP hinged on strategic timing of pitstops. On a drying track, Pérez was the first of the leaders to come in for intermediates, at the end of…

THE MAIN EVENT Straddling Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire, the speedbowl which hosted the very first world championship GP had a very short life as a wartime airfield before it was adopted by racers. It’s changed almost beyond recognition since then, but the challenges remain consistent: this is a fast, physically tough and rewarding track to race on. The prevalence of fast corners means most drivers rate Silverstone very highly but these characteristics also make the track tough on tyres. F1’s new generation of cars make their downforce differently and it should be easier to follow each other through sections such as the Maggotts-Becketts complex. But the additional weight of the new cars may also tell through these quick changes of direction, punishing the tyres even more. 2021 RACE RECAP Silverstone hosted…

SILVERSTONE AND FORMULA 1 Authors Anthony Meredith and Gordon Blackwell Price £14.39 amberley-books.com Silverstone seldom stands still. The home of the British Grand Prix – and the first circuit to host a round of the world championship – has evolved continuously since an enterprising bunch of ex-servicemen covertly broke in to race their cars around the former RAF base in the years immediately after WWII. From oil drums and straw bales to a cutting-edge racing facility with multiple layouts, Silverstone has adapted to survive as a venue. And it’s now a year-round business, with a hotel and museum, a Porsche driving experience on site, and even (coming soon) a kart track. It’s even got solar panels on the roof of the ‘Wing’… Authors Anthony Meredith and Gordon Blackwell trace the…