Innehållsförteckning för May 2023 från AUTOSPORT

There’s no question the Mercedes W14 is a work of engineering art. While much reportage continues to fixate upon on the ‘size zero’ sidepods it’s around the rear of the car – particularly beneath the skin – where the real cleverness and innovation has been focused, as Pat Symonds explains on page 32. Despite the W14’s seemingly improved showing in Melbourne, though, Mercedes remains committed to rethinking the very principles of its car from the ground up. You may find yourself asking why. The fact is that teams amply stocked with brilliant minds aren’t easily fooled by outlier events (although Pat does raise an interesting question over whether victory at Interlagos last year persuaded Mercedes its car concept had more potential). For all that George Russell and Lewis Hamilton headed…

PICTURES RISE OF THE MACHINES: HOW AI CAN BOOST ENJOYMENT Society has been through many revolutions over the years. We tend to think of the industrial revolution which arose in 18th century England as the birth of the technology-based life we enjoy today, but there have been many others. The development of ever more durable materials, the discovery of electricity and the move from nature-based motive power to science and engineering-based systems were ultimately enablers for the sport we love today. The rise of cheap computing power has changed many aspects of our everyday life and has a profound effect on the design and operation of race cars and race teams. The time of the intuitive engineer making relatively simple calculations longhand has been replaced by highly trained individuals with enormously…

PICTURES In my time as chief technical officer at Williams I had the chance to engage with Toto Wolff on a regular professional basis. I really respected his management ability: he knew when to use the carrot and when to use the stick. At this time, while still a shareholder at Williams, he had relinquished any close role to avoid conflicts of interest with his new role at Mercedes. My relationship with him, therefore, was as a customer for the power unit. I perhaps saw more of the carrot than the stick, although there were times when the string that the carrot dangled from was visibly shortened when our team challenged his. My colleagues at Williams, however, were only too aware of his ability to wield the stick since Williams…

Twenty years ago this month, the FIA didn’t realise it had cocked up the finishing order of the Brazilian Grand Prix. It took the persistent detective work of the IT team at Jordan Grand Prix to prove Giancarlo Fisichella had won at Interlagos and oblige McLaren and Kimi Räikkönen to hand back the Brazilian trophy at Imola two weeks later. This administrative muddle ran true to Formula 1 form at the time. Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher, the pre-season favourite, languished a distant eighth in the championship after three races, a situation as unlikely as Jordan winning a grand prix. Eddie Jordan would have celebrated a point for eighth place, never mind the 10 that eventually came his way. The 2003 season was all about survival for Jordan, a mission seemingly made…

1 Pérez wins after Verstappen’s qualifying disaster Max Verstappen’s driveshaft failed during his first run in Q2, leaving the reigning champion 15th on the grid, and Sergio Pérez used the RB19’s speed advantage over the opposition to take pole and then win the race. But as easy as that sounds, few would dispute that Checo had to earn that victory – all thanks to his second stint, during which he kept Verstappen at bay without giving his team-mate a single reason to think about making an attack. The Red Bull pair were 5.4 seconds apart by the time Verstappen moved into second place on lap 25 – and, after a further 25 laps, Checo crossed the line 5.3 seconds ahead of Max to claim his fourth win for the Milton…

THE MAIN EVENT Formula 1’s fi rst visit to Florida since Sebring hosted the 1959 season-closer made for an intriguing weekend. Commercially this is the motherlode for F1’s rights holder: a high-profile partnership with the owner of the Miami Dolphins American football team and a hospitality-friendly trackside setup with high-rolling VIP areas. Interest remains high in the US thanks to the much-vaunted ‘Netflix effect’. While first impressions of the track, laid out by Apex Circuit Design and not Hermann Tilke, were good, a few teething troubles arose with some barriers being less substantial than they should be. Several areas of asphalt had to be relaid after breaking up during practice, and the surface was generally low-grip – especially off the racing line. A fiddly chicane where the track passes under…

@mattkewF1 facebook.com/gpracingonline WHY RED FLAGS SHOULDN’T BE GREY AREAS Formula 1 officiating shouldn’t feel this ad hoc. But too often waiting too long for too debatable a decision gives the impression that there’s someone in FIA race control frantically flicking through a printout of the sporting regulations mid-race, trying to put their finger on what to do next. Consider the Australian Grand Prix. A third red flag created a scenario where a processional finish behind the Safety Car was required (although the clear intention was to have one last go at a green-flag finish). The order for this one-lap act of ceremony, which therefore decided the race classification, was determined by the previous red-flag restart grid minus crashed cars. As such, the 56th lap, when said cars were wiped out,…

Life’s a drag for McLaren Turn 1 at Melbourne always offers you a decent perspective on who’s got confidence in their car and who hasn’t – especially when the weather conditions offer you, as one local snapper pithily put it, “Four seasons in one day, mate…” The MCL60 often looks a bit of a handful through slow corners, even though the drivers say drag is one of its biggest weaknesses. Friday afternoon is where drivers often start finding the limit at corners such as Turn 1, so it’s a great place to wait for an off-track moment such as this. Gravel traps are relatively rare these days and, thanks to a brief shower, a few drivers flirted with it before Lando Norris fell in. Where Melbourne, Australia When 4.17pm, Friday…

PICTURES LET THE RECORD SHOW that when Aston Martin whipped the covers off its 2023 challenger way back on 13 February, claims the team might have simply copied Red Bull were far thinner on the ground. It was an extremely convincing testing display that ignited the gamesmanship as rivals began to insinuate last year’s title-winning RB18 had been gone over with tracing paper. The furore only intensified when Fernando Alonso humbled Mercedes and Ferrari to kick off the campaign with consecutive podiums. In the immediate aftermath of Alonso chalking third behind runaway victor Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez in the Bahrain opener, Pérez twice joked Red Bull had finished 1-2-3. Then team advisor Helmut Marko pointedly asked: “Can you copy in such detail without having documentation of our car?” Perhaps…

LEWIS HAMILTON, LANDO NORRIS and the rest don’t need to tell me about the sinking feeling that comes with discovering you’re lumbered with a dog of a car. I’ve been there more than once when driving a hire car out of an airport parking lot. With deadlines beckoning and press conferences to attend at the track, there’s no time to go back to the rental desk and complain. Coping with a juddering clutch or spongy brakes for the rest of a weekend may be a minor inconvenience compared to struggling with a fundamentally flawed Formula 1 car for nine months, but the feeling of helplessness must be, in my myopic view, very similar. Ask any F1 journalist about rental car shortcomings and you’ll be detained for as long as it takes…

1 Verstappen prevails in chaotic race A brief grassy moment for Max Verstappen during the closing stages proved to be one of the least significant incidents in an Australian Grand Prix which finished under Safety Car conditions after being interrupted by three red flags. Quite apart from the shunts which precipitated those interruptions, as Max began waving to the crowd after taking the chequered flag, he found several members of the audience rather closer than expected and on the wrong side of the barriers – but we’ll return to that subject later. Apart from a brief moment of vulnerability at the first start, this grand prix was another graphic demonstration of the superiority of Red Bull’s RB19. Polesitter Max was unusually cautious – some might even say passive – under…

01 MASSA ATTACK Oi Lewis! Felipe wants his world title back 02 SEE YOU IN COURT Williams faces suit by former sponsor 03 McLAREN RESTRUCTURES TECH TEAM WHY MASSA THINKS “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED” 01 Felipe Massa has not given up on his dream of becoming Formula 1 world champion – and the example being set by Fernando Alonso, who is three months younger than Massa but is still racing, has nothing to do with it. The former Sauber, Ferrari and Williams driver is exploring options to change the outcome of the 2008 championship, which he lost to Lewis Hamilton by a single point. This was prompted by a recent interview with former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. In it, Ecclestone revealed details of the controversial 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, in which…

@benedwardstv PICTURES WHAT MAKES ADRIAN NEWEY SO GREAT? A key pillar of Red Bull’s superb performance is aerodynamic design, and that’s no surprise given technical boss Adrian Newey has been playing with the effects of airflow on racing cars since the early 1980s. The team’s success under revised aero regulations for the current breed of cars is an exemplar of efficient execution. Adrian’s ability to oversee a project which has suffered very little bouncing or porpoising is of no surprise to fellow 1990s F1 designer Chris Murphy. Although they never worked together, there was a strong connection: Chris took over Adrian’s role as designer at the Leyton House team and inherited one of Adrian’s most intriguing machines. In the middle of 1990 the GG901 was uncompetitive but, as Adrian was…

How does the mood in the Ferrari camp compare with early 2021 and 2022? For sure it’s one of the toughest moments – I’m not gonna lie. Since 2021 we’ve been on the way up. And then, this year, we expected at least to find ourselves in a similar position but unfortunately there’s a team named Red Bull that have killed the opposition, coming up with a car clearly superior to everyone else’s. If you look at Ferrari, we’re there with Mercedes. We’re not too far from Aston Martin in race pace, but there’s one team that has nailed it and this puts us a bit on the backfoot again. But at least we know where we got it wrong. It’s very clear to us where the weaknesses of our…

NBA Basketball is one of my favourite sports to watch. Formula 1 has always been my favourite, of course, but the NBA is exciting too. They can really turn the game around very quickly: a team can be down 15 points and everything can change in three minutes. It’s always exciting to watch and a lot of the games come down to the final seconds. Sneakers I love fashion. I’m sure everyone who follows me on social media knows that. It is sort of one of my passions outside of racing. I would definitely like to do more in that area in the future. I’m definitely planning to have a brand and then maybe try to do something in the fashion industry, maybe when I stop racing. I have quite…

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THE MAIN EVENT “The speed is higher in the land of fire” goes the Azerbaijan race promoter’s tagline, an apt way of encapsulating this unique track’s unusual blend of stop-start threading through the city followed by a flat-out 220mph blast along the main ‘straight’ with the Caspian Sea as the backdrop. This mash-up of Monaco and Monza is technically demanding because of these enormous contrasts. Azerbaijan is also the land of ire, for this race has provoked some remarkable confrontations, including Sebastian Vettel’s bout of road rage with Lewis Hamilton behind the Safety Car in 2017 and the contretemps between team-mates Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen a year later. Red Bull’s handling of what Ricciardo described as “a shitshow” was what prompted him to leave. 2022 RACE RECAP Ferrari’s Charles…