Innehållsförteckning för October 2024 från AUTOSPORT

Money no object? Many fans claim Lewis Hamilton to be the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time. There are those who regard Adrian Newey as occupying a similar plane in the field of engineering. Whether you agree with either or both of these beliefs or not, the proposition of Hamilton driving a Ferrari whose design was superintended by Newey was delicious. Sadly it’s not going to happen, thanks to the depth of Aston Martin owner Lawrence Stroll’s pockets and Newey deciding, at the age of 65, that a Rosetta Stone subscription doesn’t represent a productive use of his time. It’s understood Aston Martin offered Newey $100m over three seasons, a figure that Ferrari wasn’t willing to match – and Newey didn’t want to move to Italy. There had been…

01 MERC’S MAX FACTORING Team still wooing Verstappen 02 A NEWEY DAWN Tech legend joins Aston Martin 03 SWISS ROLE Binotto starts at Sauber 01 ANTONELLI: ONE YEAR TO PROVE HIMSELF Toto Wolff claims it took just five minutes for him to decide who would replace Lewis Hamilton after Lewis informed him he’d signed for Ferrari. But it took seven months to put pen to paper – and this wasn’t because of a shortage at Brackley’s nearest branch of Ryman. Wolff hasn’t really bothered to hide the fact that he’s been trying to lure Max Verstappen away from Red Bull – and he’s aligned his pieces in order to carry on doing so, since George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli have only been confirmed for 2025 for now… Mercedes’ final…

TWIST AND SHOUT: HOW TORSION SPRINGS WORK In this column we sometimes cover quite complex subjects and try to explain them in a Formula 1 context. At other times the subject may seem simple but the nuances add complexity. Equally, I always try to answer questions put to me by readers. So, let’s delve into a subject which occupies the second category: torsion springs. Before answering that question let’s examine just what springs are all about. A spring is simply an elastic component that stores mechanical energy and exerts a force when it’s deflected. The form of spring most people know is the coil spring which can be found in everything from a vehicle’s suspension to a retractable ballpoint pen. If the spring is made of wire of a constant diameter…

At the height of 2023’s most predictable phase, when Max Verstappen victories were as assured as death and taxes, much of the Formula 1 fanbase and fraternity medicated itself on the notion that convergence was around the corner. This isn’t the sort of pursuit that happens overnight. Red Bull’s grasp of the 2022-spec aerodynamic regulations needed to be fully autopsied by the other nine teams to understand where their own interpretations had gone wrong. Even by the start of 2024 it hardly looked as though the teams had made meaningful inroads into the energy drink giant’s advantage. It was hard to assume things would change either, especially on the back of three Red Bull 1-2 finishes in the opening four rounds. Yet, in a surprisingly sudden twist, everything changed. Sure,…

“WITHOUT DOUBT.” George Russell is unequivocal the performance that earned his 2024 Belgian Grand Prix ‘victory’ was one of his best ever in Formula 1. He might have lost his stunning on-the-road victory at Spa-Francorchamps over his car/driver weight total being found to be 1.5kg under the limit post-race, but it was nevertheless a statement drive. Russell had ended up in a winning position that day because he’d understood and then committed to a surprise one-stop strategy that his Mercedes squad had previously discounted. Ultimately, that ended up being part of his disqualification too, since his second-stint tyres wore and lost plenty of mass, likely accounting for much of that missing 1.5kg. But Russell’s decisiveness had been key and it ended with long-time race-leader Lewis Hamilton defeated and initially dejected.…

AMONG THE CURIOUS CUSTOMS of the British and Canadian parliaments is the tradition in which newly elected speakers of the house are ceremonially ‘dragged’ to their chair. Supposedly this faux-unwillingness reflects the frequency with which previous holders of that office were parted with their heads after delivering news the monarch found disagreeable, unpalatable or downright vexatious. Sadly this isn’t true, although Henry VIII beheaded no fewer than three former speakers after they’d left office. History doesn’t record whether Oliver Oakes was dragged to the much-inhabited chair behind the Alpine team principal’s desk on his first day at Enstone. Probably not, since the consequences of falling out of favour here are rather less fatal. As Mark Gallagher points out on p29 of this issue, over the past 16 years the team…

MotoGP My cousin is Alberto Puig, the guy who used to race in 500cc with Mick Doohan and all those guys, so I had my own connection to the world of motorbikes and I still love MotoGP. I have a lot of respect for the riders, because they’re the real heroes of motorsport. I saw my cousin get injured and still race – and the amount of pain they race with sometimes is just unbelievable. So I really admire them. Studying data This is something from my past as a test driver: I enjoy studying data and seeing how other drivers use different styles. When I was at McLaren, there were days where I had to drive first like Kimi Räikkönen and then like Juan Pablo Montoya straight after that.…

OLEG KARPOV Oleg introduces Jonathan Wheatley, Red Bull’s current sporting director, who is set to become team principal at Audi (p66) JAKEBOXALL-LEGGE Autosport’s F1 writer analyses what’s being going on in the 2024 tech war and which team or teams are coming out on top (p32) ALEX KALINAUCKAS Autosport’s GP editor ruminates over George Russell’s performances this year as he’s set to take over as top dog at Mercedes in 2025 (p52) JAMES MANN Another superbly photographed car from James for our Now That Was A Car feature. This month it’s the Brabham BT26A (p74) Thanks to Rebecca Banks, Connor Bean, Michael Clayton, Laila Corin, Roman De Lauw, James Lloyd, Rebecca Leppard, David Leslie, Sara Malocco, Francesca Ulanoff…

@_markgallagher ALPINE: 16 YEARS OF LOST LESSONS Alpine, Team Transition, is again in a state of flux, reaffirming the view that Renault just doesn’t get what it takes to crack F1’s competitive code. When Flavio Briatore was forced out in the wake of the 2009 Crashgate scandal, momentarily banned from all FIA competitions for life, it’s fair to say that most of us thought that would be last we’d see of him. The man who led Benetton to back-to-back world title successes with Michael Schumacher and then Fernando Alonso would still be seen in his capacity as a driver manager. But his career as a team leader seemed to have, ahem, hit the wall. Meanwhile ‘Team Enstone’ has gone on to endure a conveyor belt of senior management (and ownership)…

What was the decisive factor for you in choosing Williams for next year? First of all, I think it was important for me to take the decision before the summer break. It’s been a very tough seven months of my career where I had to deal with everything that happened in January, in combination with having to perform and deliver as a Ferrari driver in a high-pressure, high-tension environment in Ferrari, and having to decide my future. You’re talking to so many other teams, analysing and putting everything on the table at the same time as you’re competing. And when I took the decision, I wanted to be 100% convinced. That’s why I gave myself plenty of time. And I took that decision because Williams is the team that, from…

Ask anyone in the Formula 1 paddock and you’ll get the same response – Jonathan Wheatley is a detail man. His obsessive pursuit of perfection puts him in the same niche as another team boss who entered motorsport via the workshop floor: Ron Dennis. “I’ve known him since my karting days,” David Coulthard tells GP Racing. Latterly DC worked with Wheatley in the mid-2000s as they helped Christian Horner build Red Bull Racing from midfielder to championship contender. “Back in the 80s, Jonathan was a mechanic for a guy called David Cuff – and he always used to wear white gloves when he was mechanicing… which was obviously unheard of at that time! Because karting was dirty and oily and everything, but he just figured out that having clean hands…

IT WAS DIFFICULT TO FALL OUT with Charlie Whiting. Telling jokes was as much his stock-in-trade as reciting relevant passages of the FIA Sporting Regulations. Either way, the delivery would be gentle yet authorative; serious yet underscored by an understanding and a twinkle generated through having previously worked on the same side of the fence as whoever was standing before him. Whiting’s presence as F1 race director remains as much-missed today as it was in the aftermath of his sudden death on the weekend of the 2019 Australian GP. Had Charlie been in Abu Dhabi two years later, it’s a cast-iron certainly F1 would not be subjected to the social media convulsions that continue to blight the sport with dismal frequency today. Coincidentally, the Yas Marina circuit had been responsible…

@Nauckas facebook.com/gpracingonline KIMI’S REAL TAKEAWAY FROM MONZA “What he tried to do, the car can’t take.” Well, perhaps if Andrea Kimi Antonelli had been driving a race-win-challenging Ferrari or McLaren in FP1 at Monza, he might not have crashed. Isn’t this the logical inference of Mercedes boss Toto Wolff’s spin on his junior charge’s shock slip-up 10 minutes into his Formula 1 weekend bow at last month’s Italian Grand Prix, given how that event turned out for the Silver Arrows? The data does indeed show that Antonelli was going quicker than Max Verstappen managed for Red Bull on the lap that ultimately topped that session at the Lesmo 2 and Ascari turns. But in doing this, Antonelli overheated his tyres in scorching conditions and paid the price. Or George Russell’s…

Logan’s run out of time This was one of those accidents that really brings home to you how much energy a Formula 1 car is channelling – and where it goes when the car stops going where it’s supposed to. I was positioned pointing back down the track towards Turns 3 and 4 where there’s a bit of a crest and the opportunity for a nice action shot (in good weather). With that level of zoom I could see as Logan Sargeant came into view that he was a bit too far over. Then he disappeared out of my viewfinder and I heard the crunch as his car smote the barrier. As a professional you try not to panic but it’s difficult when bits of car are flying towards you…

@benedwardstv SINGAPORE REMAINS AN OUTLIER FOR MAX Winning at every grand prix venue on the regular schedule is a remarkable achievement and one Max Verstappen has in view – although he has yet to check Singapore off the list. It’s one of the most challenging tests for drivers as they cope with heat and humidity for almost two hours on a bumpy, twisting surface with the concentration required to avoid errors under the lights. An error cost Max a huge opportunity in 2022 but it wasn’t his mistake. Damp qualifying encouraged teams to fuel the cars for the final session to run non-stop, yet when Max was on a blistering lap he was called into the pits by Red Bull, who had discovered he was about to run short on…

“ONE OF THE TOP FOUR DRIVERS, if not at times the number two driver on the grid.” While you might have to tip your head to one side and gently stroke your chin while parsing the somewhat curious phrasing of this sentence, you can see what Williams team principal James Vowles is getting at, why he views the signing of Carlos Sainz as such a significant step for his team – and why he remains surprised none of the leading outfits beat him to Carlos’s signature. And while Sainz himself might, like any self-respecting racing driver, cavil at this definition of his status oscillating between points four and two without ever hitting the peak, it’s not inaccurate. Carlos arrived in F1 at the same time – 2015 – and in…

What was it like waiting for an opportunity, knowing that maybe there would be no room for you? Did it cross your mind that you might never get a chance in F1? Now I think there’s more realisation of what potentially couldn’t have been, but I never let my mind get to that point where I [accepted I] won’t have this opportunity. I can’t be in the headspace that ‘this can’t happen.’ You know, I was living and breathing it and believing it from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. And I think almost every interview I’ve done this year started with a question about whether it was risky taking a year out, the potential downside that has to it. But Alpine and I…

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