Spa-Francorchamps. The very words have a sense of excitement, of anticipation, don’t they? Grand Prix cars howling and wailing through the Ardennes, swooping up and down across the valley. Oh yeah, Eau Rouge may be easy flat in a modern car, but Spa is Spa, and it’s good.

And another thing. It is five hours by road from the south of England, the Channel Tunnel making this trip the simplest it’s ever been. Lots of Brits will be there, waving their flags and banners every time ‘our Lewis’ or ‘our Jenson’ go screaming by on another lap of what is still a magnificent racing circuit, even if it’s not the spooky challenge it was in days gone by.

This year the teams go to Belgium after a month’s holiday, an enforced shutdown when – for two weeks – no work may be done on the cars. The drivers will be chomping at the bit, the mechanics will be refreshed and the engineers will have been dreaming up yet more tweaks in the quest to beat those pesky Red Bulls. Just as McLaren, and possibly Ferrari, began to catch up along came a month’s break in the season. It is now or never if anyone is to have the faintest hope of catching Herr Vettel before they go to Brazil in November.

So what makes Spa-Francorchamps one of the great circuits, one of the races you always anticipate with pleasure? Many things, really, but above all it’s the chance to see Formula 1 cars let loose at full chat around a naturally flowing piece of asphalt that dips, dives, climbs and snakes through a valley in the dark green forests of the Ardennes.

Arriving is good. As you wind your way through the woods you can tune in to the circuit radio station, start to get excited. Then you hear the cars, like wild beasts rampaging around beyond the trees that encircle the car parks. These days, sadly, you can’t tell which car is which from the engine noise like you could when Ferraris made their own music and Matras, or Cosworths, sang another kind of song. But despite the homogeny of modern times, this is still a wonderful place to watch an F1 driver at work.

I go in, not to the paddock or pits, but to the top of the hill at Eau Rouge, known as Raidillon, where the cars appear as if about to fly into the sky. Then it’s up into sixth, seventh and flat out down the long straight to Les Combes where Mika Häkkinen so famously outfoxed Michael Schumacher in 2000 when faced with a backmarker at nearly 200mph. From here you may walk as far as you please, pausing to goggle at the sheer grip and grunt of these machines, the commitment of the drivers, and the ridiculous speed with which they change direction. Or walk the other way to Blanchimont where the raw speed beggars belief.

I first saw Jenson Button in a Grand Prix car here in 2000, in a competitive Williams, in tricky weather conditions. He qualified a superb third and finished fifth. It was clear to me and countless others that – given the right opportunities – here was a very talented driver who had earned his rapid rise through Formula 3 to the top level. Took him nine years to get his title… no wonder he looks so much more at ease these days.

So, once you’ve had your fill of the skills on display at a proper circuit, you return – ears ringing – to your hostelry, study the times over a good Belgian beer, eat too many chips with mayonnaise and wonder how we ever ended up in places like Abu Dhabi or Sepang. All Grand Prix racing is good, and fascinating, but European races remain the best.

And Monza is next. Joy. Pure joy. Racing cars, pasta, Parmesan and Chianti. But that’s another story for another day.

Who will win at Spa on Sunday? I have no idea. A month is a long time in modern F1 racing. But, forced to predict, I reckon it’ll be a McLaren.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The British Grand Prix is fast approaching and this week Damien Smith and I discuss the race and the new pit and paddock complex at Silverstone. We also talk about Williams’ decision to use Renault engines next year and the new partnership between Virgin Racing and McLaren. We also have a brief look at the Imola 6 Hours and the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

As always, let us know what you think about the news.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Or, if you’d like to download it…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

As Fernando Alonso chased Nico Hulkenberg in the early stages of the Brazilian Grand Prix, it was apparent that on the long climb at the end of the lap the Ferrari was making little impression on the Williams, and you had to be impressed by what Cosworth has achieved this season. Rubens Barrichello suggests that ‘driveability’ isn’t all it might be, but on horsepower – so long as the engine is reasonably fresh, anyway – it apparently lacks for little. Pretty impressive, you’d have to say, for what is supposedly a ‘customer’ engine, supplied to four teams: whatever else Lotus, Virgin and HRT have been short of in their debut season, it hasn’t been grunt.

Alonso found himself in the unusual position of chasing Hulkenberg because the young German – although swiftly dispensed with by the Red Bulls – had succeeded in putting his Williams on pole, and it was pleasing that this should have occurred at Interlagos, where the team’s last victory – by Juan Pablo Montoya – was scored six long years ago.

The manner in which Hulkenberg achieved his pole position reminded me rather of qualifying for the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in 1975, when Jody Scheckter – in freezing conditions – threw his Tyrrell around with such vigour that he alone got decent temperature into his tyres, and achieved a time no one else could approach. In the case of Hulkenberg, a wet Interlagos was drying out by the end of qualifying, and he – one of the first out on slicks – drove as quick an out-lap as he dared, got his tyres up to temperature, and went for it, setting a time more than a second faster even than the Red Bulls.

As we saw so often in the season past, Adrian Newey’s wonder cars duly waltzed it in the race, but Alonso wasn’t very far behind Webber at the flag, and might have been able to exert a little more pressure had he not lost a significant amount of time behind Hulkenberg in the early laps. The importance of qualifying is perhaps even greater today than at any point in the past.
Most would agree, I think, that on many occasions in this era of Formula 1 the highlight of the weekend – in terms of excitement – is Q3, that final 10-minute period when only the 10 fastest cars are out, and the track is relatively uncluttered. Since refuelling was dropped, thank God, so the need to ‘qualify with fuel for the first stint of the race’ has gone with it, and thus the cars are in pure, ultra-light ‘qualifying spec’.

Think of Singapore. Alonso stole that race from the faster Red Bull of Vettel because he drove a perfect qualifying lap, and Sebastian, heading for pole on his final run, lightly clipped a guardrail. That meant starting second, and although he pressured Fernando for the entire race, second was where he finished, too. Saturday, in other words, decided Sunday, and often it has been that way because overtaking, as we know, is extremely difficult with F1 cars of the contemporary era.

The top six drivers in the 2010 World Championship represented three teams. At Red Bull, Vettel out-qualified Webber 12-7, at McLaren Hamilton beat Button 14-5, and at Ferrari Alonso was ahead of Massa 15-4. Ten times Vettel started from pole, followed by Webber (five), Alonso (two) and Hamilton and Hulkenberg (one apiece).

No wonder the young man looked so gratified in Brazil. It’s a tragedy that financial considerations – Hulkenberg isn’t loaded down with personal sponsorship – have obliged Williams to part with him, but Nico will surely get a drive elsewhere for 2011. Most drivers, after all, go through an entire F1 career without once starting from the front.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Group Lotus CEO Dany Bahar announced at the Los Angeles Auto Show on Thursday that Lotus would build engines for the IZOD IndyCar Series’ new 2012 formula. Few details were revealed at the announcement, including who will design and build the engine, although Bahar’s comments suggest Lotus would do the work on its own without a partner like Cosworth.

“What we’re trying to do with the Lotus brand is leverage our heritage, which is all about motor racing,” he said. “We’re taking racing seriously. We don’t just want to put a sticker on a car that we did not have an interest in building. We want to fight with the big guys.

“We started this year with a very small activity with Takuma Sato in the KV Technology team. It was just one car to understand Indycar racing. It was an opportunity for us to become a real contender. The series is developing well and I think it fits perfectly with our abilities and strategy in the US, which is our biggest market.

“So we took the decision to build our own engine. By doing that we are going to be the underdogs fighting Chevy and Honda. But that’s fine. It’s all about competition.”

Bahar confirmed that Lotus would develop its own ‘aero kit’ for 2012. “We will be designing our own chassis and own aero kit,” he said. “We want to compete by designing our own cars and hope other teams can profit from our design. We’ve started already investing in developing the right aero kit and engine for 2012.”

Bahar also said that as many as four Indycars will run in Lotus colours next year. “We’ll be expanding our activities in IndyCar with our partner KV Technology. There will probably be three or even more cars in our livery.”

Kevin Kalkhoven owns the KV team with former driver Jimmy Vasser. He also owns Cosworth in partnership with Jerry Forsythe. Kalkhoven was conspicuous by his absence from Thursday’s Lotus engine announcement and did not respond to requests to comment on the news. So we await further details with interest.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Last week I enjoyed a couple of days at Cosworth in order to write a story for the magazine about the company’s expansion in recent years into businesses beyond motor racing. Cosworth was bought from Ford six years ago by Kevin Kalkhoven and Jerry Forsythe and under CEO Tim Routsis’s leadership the renowned engine-building company has moved aggressively into many other non-racing businesses which now comprise three-quarters of Cosworth’s income.

Among other things Cosworth builds UAV engines and data loggers for the aerospace and defence industries, electronic data loggers for the marine and aircraft industries, monitoring systems for clean technology windmills, engines and tuning components for the road car industry and has expanded into many other areas of mechanical and electronic engineering.

Cosworth also returned to Formula One this year and has been quite successful with Williams who will continue to lead the company’s F1 attack next year. The people at Cosworth are proud that – with Williams at least – their latest F1 engine has proven itself competitive with the heavy hitters. They’re also proud that prior to next weekend’s inaugural Korean Grand Prix their V8 stands as the only engine in F1 with a perfect reliability record.

Cosworth intends to continue to compete in F1, but the focus for the future is on its diversification, which has made the Northamptonshire company infinitely more stable and profitable. CEO Routsis credits Cosworth’s racing success as the key to its expansion outside the sport.

“I think it would be true to say the brand name was pivotal in the success of the diversification of Cosworth,” Routsis remarked. “I would go as far as to say that if we had exactly the same people, skills and equipment but we hadn’t got the brand name from racing the story may well have had a different ending.

“I’m glad to say that by the end of 2007 we had got to a position of being able to win substantive multi-million pound orders in adjacent industries and by the end of 2008 the business was solidly profitable. By the end of 2009 it was completely debt-free and this year the business has doubled over the size it was this time last year. So it is a very counter-trend story in today’s economy.”

Routsis has no doubts that F1 and racing in general must adapt to the changing times both technically and economically. “In the longer term I think the sport has some challenges in front of it,” Routsis observed. “It has to address its perceived image of offensive excess in certain areas. That is certainly something that is recognised by the thinking people within the operations of Formula One. A huge amount of effort is being put in place to try and map out a future which preserves the things that are best about Formula One, but equally recognises that the world is a changing place and Formula One has to fit with the world. It cannot take a risk of becoming anachronistic because if it does it won’t have a future.

“Our expectation is that we will be present in the sport in 2013 – when the new engine regulations come in – as providers of an entire powertrain. We will expand away from the traditional areas of just providing the internal combustion engine. What’s very clear is if you look at the technology road maps both in sport and automotive, powertrains are going to be about much more than just the internal combustion engine. That’s where Cosworth is going to be positioning itself in both the sport and the premium performance, low-volume automotive market.”

Over the past five years Cosworth has adapted superbly to the changing world. Here’s hoping F1 and motor sport in general can learn from Cosworth’s successful transformation.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The guests of honour at this weekend’s Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca are Sir Stirling Moss and Dan Gurney. The irrepressible Moss will make his return to US competition driving his own Porsche RS-61 following last spring’s terrible elevator accident, while Gurney and a fleet of All-American Racer’s Eagles – from F1 to Indycars, Can-Am and IMSA GTP cars – will be celebrated in a private reception at the track on Saturday evening.

Without doubt Moss and Gurney number among the greatest drivers from the 1950s-60s. They were team-mates in Lucky Casner’s Camoradi ‘birdcage’ Maserati in 1960, scoring a classic victory in miserably wet conditions in the Nürburgring 1000Kms. But Stirling and Dan were also fierce competitors in F1, long-distance sports cars and American sports car racing. Moss introduced the Lotus 19 to North America by winning the inaugural professional race at Mosport in June ’61, and that autumn Dan gave Frank Arciero’s Lotus 19 its debut and battled with Stirling in the sports car races at Riverside and Laguna Seca.

Of course, Stirling’s career was cut short by his crash at Goodwood in 1962, but at that time Dan was beginning to expand his horizons to become a team owner and innovator of the first order. It began when Dan shoehorned a Ford V8 into his Lotus 19, marking of the start of the Anglo-American chassis/engine combination that blossomed into Group 7 in Europe and triggered the creation in 1966 of the legendary Can-Am series.

At the time Gurney was hatching the first of his remarkable line of Eagle F1 and Indycars. The 1967 Eagle-Weslake V12 is reckoned by many to be one of the most beautiful and effective F1 cars of all time, and the 1972 Eagle-turbo Offy dominated Indycar racing through the early ’70s. In Jerry Grant and Bobby Unser’s hands the Eagle became the first car to lap a closed circuit at over 200mph.

Two of Dan’s proudest creations were the 1981 Eagle-Chevy Indycar and the Eagle Toyota GTP car from 1992-93. The ‘81 Eagle was designed by Trevor Harris and was a ground-effect car of a different colour, creating its downforce in a manner unlike the Lotus 79 and its followers. Harris and Gurney called the system ‘Boundary Layer Adhesion Technology’, and the different-looking car proved very quick, with Mike Mosley scoring a famous victory from the back of the grid at Milwaukee in ‘81 and Geoff Brabham running away from the field at Riverside until the car suffered a transmission failure.

The other thing about the ‘81 Eagle is that it was powered by an all-aluminium Chevy V8 built and developed at AAR’s shop in California. It was a classic case of Gurney pursuing his own path against the dominant turbo Cosworths of the day and a true expression of his American hot-rodder’s heart. Fans loved the car and engine, but over the next few years CART’s team owners, in their wisdom, decided to restrict and effectively eliminate both car and engine from the rulebook. Silly boys…

In closing, I have to add that I rate Dan as America’s greatest racing man. Why? Because he won in everything he raced – F1, Indycars, Can-Am, long-distance sports cars and NASCAR – and also enjoyed a rare second act as one of the sport’s most accomplished and innovative team owners and car builders. On Saturday evening, wherever you may be, raise a glass to toast Moss and Gurney for their many achievements as both racers and gentlemen.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Parnelli Jones is one of the living legends of American racing, up there in the pantheon with Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney. Jones dominated three of the seven Indy 500s he started and won the race in 1963, beating Jim Clark. He looked to be a clear winner again in ’67 with Andy Granatelli’s STP turbine car, but a driveshaft bearing broke with only four laps to go and after the race Parnelli retired from driving open cockpit cars.

Indianapolis, USA. 30th May 1966. Parnelli Jones (Shrike-Offenhauser).

Parnelli continued to race in Trans-Am, Can-Am and off-road cars and trucks. He won the 1970 Trans-Am championship with a Bud Moore Ford Mustang, beating Mark Donohue and Penske Racing by a single point when Trans-Am was one of the USA’s top racing series, brimming with manufacturer-backed teams.

Can-Am race. Riverside, California, United States. 29 October 1967. Parnelli Jones (Lola T70-Chevrolet), 4th position.

He also won the Baja 1,000 in 1971 and ’72, and his resume includes a second career as a team owner in partnership with Vel Miletich. Vel’s Parnelli Jones racing won the Indy 500 with Al Unser in 1970 and ’71, three consecutive USAC championships in 1970-72 with Unser and Joe Leonard and a total of 40 USAC races between 1968-77. VPJ also produced the first Cosworth-powered Indycar, developed by John Barnard and driven successfully by Unser, and a similar F1 car raced by Andretti from late 1974 to early ’76. VPJ’s cars were usually beautiful and often revolutionary.

Ontario, California, USA. 3rd-10th March 1974. Al Unser (Eagle-Offenhauser), 2nd position, with Parnelli Jones.

Jones became a very successful Firestone tyre distributor and property developer in Southern California, and today, at 74, he remains as sharp as ever, and as knowledgeable a man about racing as anyone alive. Parnelli is delighted to see a unified IndyCar series emerge from the sport’s long civil war, but he emphasizes that the real work begins now.

“We need to build respect for Indycar racing again and the only way we’re ever going to get there is to make some dramatic changes,” Jones observes. “It’s a great start that the two series have merged, but it’s not the answer. When you’ve got 50 cars like NASCAR, then you’ve got something. It’s been embarrassing to go watch qualifying at Indianapolis in recent years. There’s nobody there. We used to have 250,000 people show up for the first day of qualifying. But today, we don’t have the respect for the Indy winners that we used to.”

Like many of us, Parnelli believes the most important factor is for the sanctioning body to take control and devise a new formula that will create plenty of competition among engine and car builders.

“Before we go forward they’ve got to step back and take a long look,” he says. “You can’t let the manufacturer run the series. What made all the series in the world in the first place, even NASCAR, is having all those different types of cars for people to root for. But it’s easier said than done.

“They’ve got to get more than one manufacturer. I have nothing against Honda, but right now Honda is calling the shots. NASCAR controls not only the drivers and teams but also the manufacturers, and that’s what Indycar racing needs to get back to.

Parnelli Jones brings the 1968 Lotus Turbine Indy Car back to the pits after taking a ceremonial lap of the track prior to the start of qualifying. 84th Indianapolis 500, Indy Racing Northern Light Series, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 28 May, 2000

“We need to have competition and we need to look at it not just from a technical, Formula 1-type mentality. We need to look at it from an entertainment value because we have to compete against so many other entertainments in this country. It’s not about going out and seeing who’s the best racer and how many laps he can lead or how quick he can lap the field. Those days are gone.

“We need to be entertaining but you’re not going to get there with one manufacturer supplying the same thing to everybody because there’s no entertainment value.”
Jones believes the best way forward is to design a rocker arm engine formula, and that in the long run this would bring manufacturers back into Indycar racing in the best possible way.

“They ought to go to rocker arm engines because you can buy all the parts in the US,” he explains. “Get rid of the manufacturers. Let them go by the wayside and you would have the Childresses and Hendricks building engines for Indy. Make them 260 or 270 cubic inches and you can buy all those parts. Not everyone could build a Hendrick engine but they could grow into that.

“Don’t call them stock-blocks. Call them rocker arm engines and you could have guys building Chevies, Fords, Dodges and Toyotas. Then the manufacturers would come back and start supporting the teams that are running their product. But this time the sanctioning body controls it.”

Tony George (below) and the IRL might do well to consider Parnelli Jones’s ideas of how to secure a healthy future for Indycar racing.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The inaugural Formula 5000 race in 1975 at Long Beach.

I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of covering all thirty-four Long Beach Grands Prix, from the inaugural Formula 5000 race back in 1975 through eight Formula One races from 1976-’83 and twenty-five CART or Champ Car races from 1984-2008. This year’s race was Champ Car’s swansong in the beachside California city as the defunct organisation’s Panoz DP01-Cosworth turbos raced for one last time before the unified Indy Racing League arrives in town next year. So Long Beach ‘08 marked the end of a quarter century of the sweet sound of turbocharged engines wailing through the sunny California air and as the drivers cruised into the pits at the end of the race and the turbocharged engines – the signature song of Indy car racing – fell silent, the moment brought tears to some eyes.

For the next year or two, the familiar whine of Cosworth’s turbo V8 will be replaced by the harsh, coarse noise from Honda’s much less powerful, naturally-aspirated V8 IRL engine and there’s no doubt that the vast majority of fans and competitors would love to see the IRL adopt a more powerful, turbocharged engine formula as part of its new formula for 2010 or 2011.

1976 Grand Prix of Long Beach, California, USA. March 26 – 28 1976. Niki Lauda (Ferrari 312T), 2nd position.

Like Mario Andretti, I’m among those who believe the new IRL formula must create spectacularly fast and demanding cars to drive. We think there must be a much greater difference between straightaway and cornering speeds. We also believe the new formula must inspire competition between engine and chassis manufacturers as well as adopting some serious elements of green technology. Over the upcoming month of May at Indianapolis I will discuss these issues with many people in the sport and will write about these conversations in the pages of Motor Sport later this year.

And as I reminded many people at Long Beach this year, back in 1975 at the inaugural Formula 5000 race – won by Brian Redman in a Haas/Hall Lola T332C-Chevrole – the garage area boasted no fewer than forty-two cars built by eight different car constructors. Thirty-nine of those cars started the two qualifying heats and because Bill Simpson’s Berta didn’t make it the first Long Beach race featured seven different car builders making this year’s race pale in comparison.

Brian Redman with the trophy from the Formula 5000 race in 1975.

If American open-wheel racing is to enjoy a resurgence under the IRL’s unified banner it must rediscover this essential nature of the sport. The IRL’s new formula for 2010 or 2011 must dispel the banalities of spec-car racing and attract a trove of competitive engine and chassis builders. That’s the only way Indy car racing and Long Beach will thrive again.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

As NASCAR’s Big Show moves from Daytona to southern California, news broke this week that IRL and Champ Car are on the brink of announcing a formal merger. The great chimera of reunification of American open-wheel racing is at hand after a bitterly debilitating twelve-year civil war.

Will this desperate, eleventh-hour deal save Indy car racing and mark the beginning of a long road to a successful rebirth? Or will the damage done prove too difficult to repair?

Obviously, it would have been much healthier to have done the deal three or four months ago before both series announced their 2008 schedules with their own contracts and commitments, and there’s sure to be plenty of fall-out from stitching Champ Car’s remnants into the IRL at this late date. What of the dozen Champ Car races and their local fans and media left in the lurch, disenfranchised by reunification?

What about Panoz and Cosworth, also apparently left with the short end of the stick? And it will also be a terrible thrash to get Dallara chassis and Honda engines into the hands of Champ Car’s teams so they can do some basic testing before they start racing the cars and engines against the IRL teams. You can imagine plenty of room for grumbling from many sides.

The big challenge remains the same. Leadership is desperately needed to heal the wounds, get the series going again in the right direction and create the right formula for the future that will attract engine manufacturers, car builders, sponsors, fans and serious media coverage.

The first step appears to have been taken. The next series of steps will be even more difficult.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine