Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

I’ve been thinking. Yeah, I know, but bear with me. As the days get shorter, we approach the penultimate race of this extraordinary season of Grand Prix racing. The year 2010 will surely be recorded as one of the great seasons, and certainly it has been the most exciting since this century began.

We can’t wind the clocks back – actually, we’ve just done that in the UK as we move into our ‘winter’ time zone. But, if you skate back over the season so far, even a cursory glance at the races brings to mind one of the most oft-used words in the lexicon of motor racing. If. A short word, but one with so many ramifications.

If Massa had not been forced to allow Alonso to overtake at Hockenheim. If Alonso had not hit the barrier in Monte Carlo. If Button had not left the pits with his radiators blanked. If Hamilton had not crashed at Monza and in Singapore. If Vettel and Webber had not collided in Turkey. If Webber had not thrown it away in Valencia and in Korea. If…

It is a season almost defined by what ifs, and perhaps more so than for many a year. This may be explained by the constant pressure, the constant excitement, or the batch of top drivers in top cars we have right now. Whatever, not once since March has it been clear who would take the 2010 title. Not to me, anyway.

And, even more remarkably, it is barely any clearer as we approach the Brazilian Grand Prix. There isn’t a sport on earth that would not be revelling in such a cliffhanger. And you can bet your salary that Bernie Ecclestone, not to mention the television companies, are doing just that.

OK, it does look a tall order for Button and Hamilton. And to a lesser extent for Vettel, lesser because he has the best Formula 1 car we’ve seen this season. So, it’s down to the wire between Alonso and Webber, right? Wrong. Because we are going to São Paulo, where the weather is fickle and where there is almost invariably some kind of drama.

The great Grand Prix circuits, of which Interlagos is indubitably one, have the elements of drama, tragedy and comedy ingrained into the very asphalt itself. There is the grid, painted onto a steep gradient, and then there is the first corner. There are those long, long corners with their tricky cambers and terrible drainage. There is the crowd, a seething, passionate mass of people who just love this sport to bits. The rickety grandstand opposite the pits trembles with anticipation on the warm-up lap. I am not joking. The drummers and the dancers, draped in national flags, are there at dawn. It is Grand Prix racing at its gladiatorial best.

Yeah, but Alonso will do it for Ferrari, Massa will help him, and Webber will have some kind of stupid failure. Wrong. Anything can happen, as we wait for the lights next Sunday afternoon. What happens at Interlagos, I do believe, will decide the season. A week later, in Abu Dhabi, things will simply be quietly confirmed.

On paper, it has to be Webber. He has the best car and is the man in the lead. On paper, it has to be Alonso. He is the best driver. On paper, it has to be Vettel. He is the man in form, arguably the bravest.

Every Grand Prix at Interlagos is a wonderful event, a thrilling experience, and this year – one way or the other – will be one of the best of them all. If…

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An unexpectedly boring German Grand Prix, this, for Hockenheim usually provides for more overtaking than most circuits, but if there was little excitement, there was certainly controversy. From the start the Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso ran first and second, and on lap 49 they swapped positions, Massa very obviously backing off to let Alonso by.

Immediately there were howls of outrage, for ‘team orders’ are supposedly banned, and a ‘team order’ this unquestionably was, prompting some to compare the incident with the notorious happenings in the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, when Rubens Barrichello was ordered to let Michael Schumacher through.

Team orders are never welcome, of course, most people in the sport feeling that drivers should be allowed to race their team-mates, the only proviso being that they do not ‘take each other off’.

That said, to compare Hockenheim ’10 with the A1-Ring ’02 strikes me as a touch farcical. In Austria Barrichello completely outpaced Schumacher in both qualifying and race, and by the time the order came through from sporting director Jean Todt he had built up a considerable lead, and was not many laps away from the chequered flag. As well as that, the Ferraris were under no threat from any rival – and Schumacher already had an enormous lead in the World Championship. On the run up to the finish line, Barrichello had almost to stop in order to allow him to catch up.

At Hockenheim Alonso was considerably quicker than Massa in qualifying, but being second fastest (to Vettel) he necessarily started on the ‘dirty’ side of the grid, whereas Massa – third – was on the clean side. Away from the grid Vettel predictably chopped across to block Alonso, and as the two of them messed around Massa swooped around the outside of the pair of them.

It was a little like Malaysia, where Vettel snicked by team-mate Webber into the first turn, and the race result was decided right there. So difficult is passing in F1 – particularly between identical cars – that he who leads into the first corner is, all things being equal, going to win the race.

So why did ‘team orders’ come into play at Hockenheim? In their post-race remarks, the drivers offered little clue. Massa was plainly upset by what had happened, Alonso plainly embarrassed. There was a lot of mumbling about it being ‘a good day for the team’, and so on. Massa, asked to comment on the moment he backed off, smiled sadly: “I don’t think I need to say anything about what happened…”

“I think,” Alonso said, “that sometimes you’re quick, and sometimes you’re slow, depending on your tyres…” And Massa allowed that, on the very hard Bridgestones on which they ran for the bulk of the race, he was ‘struggling’ (although it hardly looked that way).

If Ferrari had a concern, it was surely that Vettel still lurked in third place, and not very far behind. Alonso may have been the faster of the Ferrari drivers, but he couldn’t get past Massa. The supposition was that if Vettel mounted a strong late-race challenge, Ferrari considered that Alonso would be better able to keep him at bay. May be right, may be wrong, but that’s what most people thought.

Whatever, the post-race atmosphere was certainly clouded, and that was a pity, because in all other respects Ferrari – after a run of miserable luck – could hardly have impressed more. It was good to see Alonso and Massa in the think of things, where they belong, and where they should have been all season long. “The car has been much better in the last few races,” Alonso commented. “We were very competitive at Valencia and Silverstone – but we came away with no points…”

Despite that, in recent weeks Alonso refused to rule himself out of the World Championship reckoning, and on the strength of the red cars’ pace in Germany he was right to do so. It was good that the Ferraris were so quick, too, for otherwise Red Bull would have been completely unopposed, McLaren being off the pace this time out. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button finished fourth and fifth, banking more World Championship points, but they were fully half a minute adrift of Alonso at the flag.

It was a low-key weekend, too, for Mark Webber, who started fourth after making a mistake on his final qualifying lap, but was obliged to take it easy for much of the race, the team much concerned by his engine’s excessive oil consumption. In the circumstances, Mark was happy enough to come away with sixth place, and eight points. The two Red Bull drivers, incidentally, now have 136 apiece, Webber ahead of Vettel in the standings by virtue of more victories, three to two.

If McLaren had a middling time at Hockenheim, for Mercedes it was not less than disastrous. Initially Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher were encouraged by technical updates on the car, and spoke in terms of qualifying in the first six. When it came to it, though, Rosberg only just made it into Q3 – but Schumacher did not. Both finished in the points, Nico ahead of Michael as usual, but eighth and ninth places – behind Robert Kubica’s Renault – were not what Mercedes was looking for in its home race.

On Sunday evening Ferrari was required to explain its actions to the FIA stewards, and later it was announced that the team had been found in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, and would be fined $100,000. As well as that, the stewards’ statement said, the case is to be referred to the FIA World Motor Sport Council ‘for further consideration’.

Amid all the huffing and puffing and outrage, more reasoned observers considered this a lot of fuss about not very much. “Ferrari were too honest,” one cynic laughed. “All this talk on the radio, all this apologising to Massa… other teams do this sort of thing so much better, don’t they? They slow this driver or that by telling him he’s low on fuel, and need to turn his engine down, or something like that…”

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When it was announced, in September 2009, that Ferrari had decided to terminate Kimi Räikkönen’s contract a year ahead of time, and to put Fernando Alonso in with Felipe Massa, there was no surprise in Formula 1 circles. His first season with the team (2007, when he won the World Championship) apart, Räikkönen’s time with Ferrari had undeniably fallen short of expectations – more often than not, he was outpaced by Massa, a man on a smallish fraction of his retainer.

This has been a pricey season for Ferrari, which has not only had to pay off Kimi’s contract (while he contests the World Rally Championship for Citroën), but also to stump up for Fernando, who may be earning somewhat less than Kimi did (and certainly less than Mercedes is paying Michael Schumacher), but is still at the high end of the pay scale.

I’ll admit that when Alonso’s signing was confirmed I thought it good reason for other teams to quake a little. In the two years when Fernando won the World Championship, 2005 and ’06, Schumacher was still in his pomp, yet Alonso – with Renault – beat him. Put all that talent and commitment to work at Maranello, and how could anything much go wrong? When Fernando won the opening Grand Prix, in Bahrain, it seemed to suggest a stellar season for Ferrari.

As I write, immediately before Hockenheim, that remains the team’s only victory in 2010. All season long Red Bull has had unquestionably the quickest car, but it has been by no means the most reliable – and that, whatever else, has always been one of Ferrari’s strongest suits. When Sebastian Vettel’s car faltered in Bahrain, it was Alonso and Massa who took over.

Since then, though, it has been McLaren which has benefited most from Red Bull failings – and rightly so, because its car has been consistently developed, in the traditional McLaren manner, and if the MP4-25 is not the equal of the Red Bull (particularly in qualifying), in most of the races it hasn’t been far away. Thus, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button sit first and second in the point standings.

Ferrari, meantime, has had a pretty thin season, and although Alonso has predictably outpaced Massa, one may be sure that he never envisaged, at mid-season, being only fifth in the championship, 47 points adrift of Hamilton.

In part this is because Fernando has made mistakes, which is uncharacteristic of him. There have been tangles at the first corner, an unfathomably jumped start, a shunt at Monte Carlo, which obliged him to miss qualifying and therefore start from the back – after being quickest of all in the first two practice sessions…

Many of the mistakes, I would suggest, have occurred because for a long time Alonso has necessarily been driving right at the edge in a car not truly on the pace. After an encouraging start to the season, Ferrari failed to keep pace with the developments other teams were introducing, and only in the last three races have decent innovations come through – in Montréal Fernando was right there, and only a couple of backmarkers kept him from threatening Hamilton in the late laps. In Valencia he was on Lewis’s tail, in third place, when the controversial safety car incident removed him from the reckoning. At Silverstone a drive-through penalty – also controversial – put him out of the points.

In Italy there is much talk of a crisis at Ferrari, and even speculation – misplaced, one hopes – about the future of Stefano Domenicali. Yes, the team has been through a very bad patch, but Alonso continues to insist that he can still be World Champion this year. He loves the team, and they him, but the time has come for a series of good results, and everyone knows it. I’m betting that Fernando will come on very strong through the balance of this season…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

‘Iconic’ is a much overused word these days, and it’s a particular bugbear for one of my team here at Motor Sport. But sometimes it’s a word that’s hard to avoid. Sometimes it’s the first thing that springs to mind when presented with a certain image. And if anything deserves this hallowed status it has to be the Gulf Porsche 917 on the cover of the August issue, perhaps the greatest racing car ever built – depending on your point of view.

Like everything of the ‘greatest ever’ nature, it is purely subjective, of course. It’ll depend on your age, your bias towards sports cars or Formula 1, and so on. And the same came be said for our assertion that 1970, a year of thrills and turmoil in equal measure, is ‘Year Zero for the Modern Age’.

We thought long and hard about such a tag when we decided to theme an issue around a single season, 40 long years ago. It seemed to fit. Rampant commercialism and concerns about safety really took hold in the final years of the 1960s, but certainly on the point of safety this was the year when people finally started to listen to Jackie Stewart. After 1970, the sport had to change.

As Nigel Roebuck writes in his introduction to our special section, this was the year when F1 drivers managed to change the venue of the German Grand Prix from the Nürburgring to Hockenheim at less than six weeks’ notice – all in the name of safety. The deaths of Bruce McLaren, Piers Courage and, later in the season, Jochen Rindt focused the drivers like never before on their attitudes to the sport. Rindt’s own mixed feelings on racing are captured in this issue with an extract from David Tremayne’s new biography. The Austrian would become F1’s only posthumous World Champion. But had he lived, the dangers and loss of close friends appear to suggest he would have retired anyway.

It went beyond safety. 1970 was the start of a new decade where the whole world changed dramatically – in some respects for the better and in others for the worse. The 1960s are often depicted, rightly or wrongly, as the end of the age of innocence. In a decade that featured the assassination of a US president and the futile war in Vietnam that’s perhaps too trite. Nevertheless, it’s a fact that nostalgia for the ’60s remains stronger than for any other decade. Nostalgia for the ’70s is popular, but it’s also remembered as a tougher, more cynical decade. The colour and extravagances of the world today can be traced back 40 years, to a time when the old values, fashions and expectations were being overtaken by new attitudes – with a harder edge. As usual, motor racing ran in parallel to the world at large. Life would never be the same again.

We chose the Gulf 917 as the image most linked to the year even though the monster was actually born a year earlier. It didn’t even win Le Mans in the blue and orange colours. But it’s so familiar, so of the time and – aided by Steve McQueen – so of that specific year.

Perhaps you might disagree with our ‘Year Zero’ premise. If there were such a thing, maybe you’d care to argue it was 1968, or ’69 or ’71… We’ll be awaiting your comments. But in the meantime, whatever your feelings, I hope you enjoy a group of features that will surely entertain you. Just check out this line-up: Rindt, Stewart, Amon, Rodríguez, March, BRM, Porsche 917s – and of course that man McQueen. With that lot, you can’t go wrong!

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

To some degree, it was a risky strategy, but in the end it worked out to perfection, and Lewis Hamilton won the German Grand Prix, thus becoming the first driver to win two on the trot in 2008.

“I’d have preferred it to be straightforward,” Hamilton smiled afterwards, “but it didn’t work out that way…”

Lewis had started from pole position, and confidently seized the initiative from the beginning, pulling away from Felipe Massa’s Ferrari at the rate of half a second a lap, and more. After the first stops his lead stabilised at around 12 seconds, and to that point it had been a remarkably uneventful afternoon.

Then, out of the last corner, the right rear suspension of Timo Glock’s Toyota failed, and instantly the car pitched backwards into the pit wall. Debris was showered everywhere, of course, and as a shaken Glock was helped from the wrecked car out came the safety car.

This happened shortly before the second stops were due, and as soon as pit lane was declared open all the front runners were in – apart, that is, from the race leader. To those watching, the decision to leave Hamilton out there seemed almost unfathomable, and even Lewis was taken aback: “I said to the team. ‘Are you sure about this?’”

McLaren opted for this strategy because, for his last stint, Hamilton was obliged to use the softer Bridgestones, and there were doubts that these could survive the 30 laps remaining to the flag. Therefore, they told Lewis, on the restart he needed to build up a 23-second lead if he were going to retain his lead through his final stop.

After five laps behind the safety car, they got the signal to go again. “I really nailed it,” Hamilton said, “but to build up that big a lead just wasn’t do-able in the time available…”

Lewis came in at the end of lap 50, with 17 to the flag, and when he came back out he was back in fifth place, and looked unlikely to get back to the lead. Fortunately the first man in his sights – team mate Kovalainen – obligingly let him through, and at the same time Nick Heidfeld, who had inherited the lead, made his final stop, so now Hamilton had only Massa and Piquet to worry about.

Yes, Piquet. You read it right. After Nelson had qualified his Renault a lowly 17th, his team sent him into the race with the possibility of a one- or two-stop strategy. On lap 35, immediately before Glock’s accident, Nelson made what was to be his one and only stop, and thus found himself in the pound seats when all those ahead of him made their stops during the safety car period. When Heidfeld later made his stop, Piquet found himself in the lead, no less.

Hamilton, though, was on a mission. On its soft Bridgestones, the McLaren was way quicker than anything else, and Lewis swiftly caught, and passed, Massa in a muscular, but fair move, at the hairpin.

In no time the McLaren was up with the leading Renault, which it passed at the same spot, Piquet offering no resistance worth the name. “I knew Lewis was much quicker than I was, but I also knew that Felipe wasn’t. If I’d tried to keep Lewis back, it would have slowed both of us, and I didn’t want to give Felipe the chance to close…” How much resistance Nelson would have been able to put up against Hamilton is open to question, but, whatever, the thinking was smart, and, after a dreadful start to his Grand Prix career, he did an excellent job in Germany.

At the end of lap 60 the McLaren came by in the lead once more, and thereafter Piquet was able to keep Massa comfortably at bay to the flag. Afterwards Felipe seemed a bit confused by the turn of events: “For some reason the Ferrari has been very difficult to drive this weekend – particularly on the soft tyres. I also had a small brake problem, which slowed me a bit, but…”

Clearly, what Massa was struggling to face was that – for now, at least – McLaren have a performance advantage over Ferrari: not a big one, perhaps, but discernible all the same.

As has been the case too often this year, Massa, not Raikkonen, was Ferrari’s pacesetter at Hockenheim. Following his debacle at Silverstone debacle, Massa was a bit chippy at the post-qualifying press conference, demanding to know why people had suggested he wasn’t very good in the wet. He had won Brazilian kart races in the wet, he protested, which may very well be true, but the fact remains that in the British Grand Prix he spun five times.

Perhaps fortunately for Felipe, the rain promised for all three days at Hockenheim failed to materialise, and Felipe was on good form this time around. Who had the advantage at the moment, Ferrari or McLaren? He said that was too close to call, and predicted that the race would be, “A very big competition between the two teams – between all four cars, maybe…”

The ‘maybe’ of course referred to his team-mate, for a while Kovalainen strongly backed up Hamilton (and, without mistakes, might even have pipped him for pole), Raikkonen’s form in practice and qualifying seemed to suggest he was having one of his ‘off weekends’. And that, given his poor run of results recently, was a surprise, for most expected Kimi to come back strongly here.

“All the way through, we’ve been struggling to find a good set-up,” he said, “and the car seemed reasonably good until the end of qualifying. Clearly, sixth place is not satisfying…”

Nor was sixth in the race, which is where the reigning World Champion finished, and at Ferrari they are quietly beginning to ask questions, one of which is this: can the most highly paid racing driver in history be permitted to have these periods ‘off the boil’?

At the moment Raikkonen’s form is rather reminiscent of the first half of 2007, when he figured much less strongly than expected, only coming fully to life in the second half, when he was routinely scintillating, and went on to steal the World Championship at the last. As things stand, though, Ferrari are privately very disappointed in Kimi, be in no doubt of that.

On home ground, BMW rather fell away this time out. Heidfeld did a good job in the race, remarkably even setting the fastest lap, but he had qualified nowhere, and Robert Kubica said his car was curiously short of grip throughout the race. And it was a disappointing day, too, for Red Bull, neither Mark Webber nor David Coulthard figuring seriously.

Ten races down, eight to go. The advantage tends to pinball between McLaren and Ferrari, and by Budapest or Valencia, who knows, Ferrari may well be ahead once more. But at the moment there is no doubt at all about the driver in form. Hamilton may have had his flaky moments this season, but as the Grand Prix season goes into the homestretch he would be a brave man who bet much against Lewis’s taking the title he so nearly won last year. As at Silverstone, there was something inexorable about this victory: “In the early laps,” Massa said, “I couldn’t believe how quick he was. We need to work very hard – and very quickly…”

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The new issue of Motor Sport, on sale now, is a very special one for all of us on the magazine. Producing each edition always has a ‘labour of love’ element to it, but that feeling was heightened as we worked towards deadline this time. And it was all down to the great man who graces the cover.

As I have written in Matters of Moment this month, Jim Clark died before I was born, but that hasn’t lessened the power of his influence over me. He remains an inspiration to racing fans around the world, from his home town of Duns in Scottish border country to the pilgrims who head to the Indianapolis 500 every year.

To mark the 40th anniversary of his passing, Nigel Roebuck offers a personal tribute to the man who was “everyone’s hero”, as Brian Redman puts it. Also, American writer Robin Miller looks back at Clark’s incredible impact on the Indy 500, speaking to Dan Gurney, Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Parnelli Jones about how this quiet legend won over the tough Brickyard racers.

David Tremayne recounts that final, fateful day at Hockenheim, while Rob Widdows asks Lotus mechanic Jim Endruweit for the insider’s view of what Clark was like. It was a pleasure to put the pages together and we hope it is just as much a pleasure to read.

Back in the current world, we are enjoying the start of what looks set to be a fascinating Grand Prix season. The first race in Australia got a big thumbs up from everyone at the magazine, as you can read in the issue. The loss of driver aids has been a big gain for the sport.

And if you are a motorsportmagazine.co.uk regular, you will have spotted yet another addition to our coverage during the first couple of GPs. Our web maestro Ed Foster, who is one of Motor Sport’s three ‘bloggers’, has been writing frantically during GP weekends, from Friday through to Sunday, to offer his thoughts on the action. He’s also organised for practice times and race results to be added to these special blogs, so please do take the opportunity to read his words and add your own comments. We’d love to spark some conversations between fans on the site, with Ed’s GP coverage becoming a regular feature.

So enjoy our special Jim Clark issue – and keep logging on to motorsportmagazine.co.uk!

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine