Jenson Button is a class act. In the ‘green room’ before the podium ceremony he smiled and warmly congratulated the new World Champion as he walked through the door – then firmly made it clear that he won’t forget Sebastian Vettel’s ruthless chop at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix.

“Didn’t you see me at the start?” asked Jenson. “You were behind me,” replied an audibly defensive Sebastian. “I was on the grass,” said the race winner, and then laconically: “So that’s how we’re racing then.” No sulking, no histrionics and totally magnanimous towards the deserving World Champion. But he made his point.

As we have come to expect, Button drove a beautifully judged race around the glorious Suzuka circuit, conserving his tyres in what was a tough race for the Pirelli rubber and only pushing when he really had to. That included the final laps of this hard-fought Grand Prix as the McLaren man had to put a spurt on to defend his lead from Fernando Alonso. He had enough in hand, but only just. Having crossed the line, Button pulled up at the pitlane exit, his McLaren short of fuel. It’s become a cliché… but as victories go, there were echoes of Alain Prost.

Vettel had every reason to savour his moment as the youngest back-to-back World Champion. But his actions at the start undoubtedly cast a faint shadow over his crowning glory.

Starting on the dirty side of the front row, Button still made the better get away and had the momentum to charge into the lead. But Vettel clearly had no intention of ceding. He’d said before the race he wanted to win this title from the front and wouldn’t be racing simply for that vital single point, and so it proved. Button wasn’t alongside the Red Bull by any means, but still he was left with no option but to trim the grass on the approach to Turn 1, a moment that allowed his team-mate Lewis Hamilton to sweep around him to claim second place.

“He’s got to get a penalty for that,” said Button on the radio at the end of lap one. But no. Vettel hadn’t done anything illegal. The stewards took another look at it and decided upon no further action. We’ve seen the Vettel chop before, during his first championship year (remember Hockenheim and Silverstone 2010?). Within the rules, it’s not deemed as foul play – but that doesn’t mean it’s not wrong. It’s an ugly tactic – and a dangerous one, too.

Vettel had his lead, but with tyre degradation a heavy factor here at Suzuka he couldn’t just put the hammer down to break from the McLarens. Behind Hamilton and Button, Alonso passed his Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa – who had outqualified the former double World Champion – with a DRS-assisted move into Turn 1 at the start of lap six.

After his recent troubles, Hamilton’s gifted second place might have given him hope for a turn in fortunes. Such thoughts would have been wiped out on lap eight as the team notified him that he had a slow puncture on the right rear. Button passed him at Spoon and Lewis made it back to the pits, at least losing a minimum amount of ground in the process. He only lost a single place, to Alonso.

Hamilton’s first pit visit was only a lap ahead of Vettel’s first scheduled stop for another set of option Pirellis, with Button, Alonso and Mark Webber coming in a lap later. Massa made his stop next and emerged behind his ‘mate’ Hamilton and set upon the chase to claim fourth place from the McLaren.

Vettel’s second stint lasted just 10 laps before he was in again, and likewise Button was in a lap later. But this time Jenson had the pace to gain his revenge for the chop. He returned to the track ahead of his rival, in a lead that would prove to be decisive.

But for his team-mate, it was a case of here we go again as Hamilton clashed once again with Massa. On lap 22 Felipe edged alongside Lewis on the outside line as they approached the chicane – and as they had in Singapore, they came together. Hamilton claimed the small, useless mirrors on F1 cars left him with no awareness that Massa was there, and his ignorance of the Ferrari’s position was obvious. There were echoes of Spa and his frightening crash with Kamui Kobayashi, but this time at slower speed both cars survived, although Massa lost some bodywork in the incident. No major drama then, but for Lewis it had been a clumsy moment once again. The 2008 World Champion would later describe his race as “shocking”, and by his high standards it was an accurate assessment.

Massa’s debris and more elsewhere on the circuit brought out the safety car shortly after. At the restart, Button bunched the pack (perhaps over-doing it as they approached the chicane), then made his charge across the line ahead of Vettel, Alonso, Webber, Massa, Hamilton and Michael Schumacher.

Having lost the lead in the second round of stops, Vettel dropped another place at the third and final pit visits. Alonso’s Ferrari stopped four laps later than the Red Bull and grabbed second, but Sebastian wasn’t about to settle for a safe third – to his credit. He harried Alonso and looked set to use his DRS to take the place back, only for traffic (in the form of Jerome d’Ambrosio) to thwart him. His angry fist-waving as he passed the Virgin Racing car gave further indication to Vettel’s determination to win his title by going for “glory”. The lad can never be accused of lacking ambition!

As the race entered its closing stages, it became obvious that Button was far from home and dry. Alonso was still well within range of the McLaren – but crucially not quite within the one-second DRS range to deploy the wing down the start/finish straight. Button responded to the threat and kept Fernando at arm’s length to claim his third win of the season. Given his affinity with Japan and his love of the country, his victory was a popular one.

Vettel made the podium to claim his historic second title, ahead of team-mate Webber, Hamilton and best-of-the-rest Schumacher, who even lead the Grand Prix with an out of sequence strategy.

Sauber’s Sergio Perez scored an excellent seventh, ahead of Lotus Renault’s Vitaly Petrov and the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg, who scored the final point having started from the back of the grid.

Next stop, Korea. The championship is over, but in reality it has been for most of the season. Still this season offers much to keep us hooked.

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Sebastian Vettel. Red Bull. Possibly the four most typed, texted and tweeted words in the world of Formula 1 racing these past few weeks. I make no apology, then, for veering away from the talk of the town to a very different part of our racing universe.

But before I do, may I simply add a thought, without using those four words? This young man has been a pure joy to watch, an athlete absolutely at the top of his game in a supremely clever car. He will, in my view, be a deservedly popular World Champion for the second year running. Would he be dominant in a McLaren or perhaps a Ferrari? Who knows? Probably not, but that simply isn’t the point. All great champions have been given a near-perfect car in which to display their talent. This young lad is on his way to claiming a place among the ‘greats’ of our sport.

Anyway, away from all this, we are less than a month from one of the best events in the calendar and one which looks like being better than ever in 2011. For an increasing number of drivers, mechanics – and writers – the start of autumn means a visit to the coast of Portugal. From October 20-23 the magnificent Portimao circuit will host the third Algarve Historic Festival, an event that is rapidly establishing itself as the perfect way to combine some thrilling racing with a short holiday in the Portuguese sunshine. This year the festival coincides with half term, so we can expect the paddock to be full of wide-eyed youngsters who missed out in previous years.

One of the best things about the event is the circuit. The Autodromo Internacional Algarve, or Portimao as it’s better known, is a giant of a race track, a true drivers’ circuit that is just crying out to be used for a Grand Prix. But that’s not likely to happen any time soon. It is fast and very demanding, dipping and climbing around an amphitheatre that gives spectators a fantastic view of the action. This is a track of the old school, but with modern facilities and safety measures. Which is just as well because it is not a place for the faint-hearted. The best of the historic racers climb from their cars beaming from ear to ear.

This year most of the 250 cars already entered will come from Britain where, as we know, historic racing is on an all-time high thanks to events such as the Goodwood Revival and Silverstone Classic.

Promoter Francisco Santos, a former Ford works rally driver, is bullish despite the economic woes of the Eurozone. “We still need more cars for the F2 race,” he tells me on the phone from Lisbon, “but all the other grids are just about full and we will have 300 cars for our third festival. Of course it is also a big party, a chance to enjoy the sunshine, and Motor Sport readers will love to see the Anciens Pilotes, who include Tony Brooks, Richard Attwood and Maria de Filippis (above).” So will this Motor Sport writer.

If you still have some euros, get yourself down to the Algarve and enjoy some great racing before the nights close in and we head into winter. See you there.

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Monza on my mind. Sounds like some kind of Italian country and western song, if you can imagine such a thing. But this is not a race report – you can read that elsewhere on the website. This is about the piece of theatre that is mighty Monza as seen from the paddock at Silverstone. All will be explained.

Monza has always been on my mind in September, ever since my first visit to the Autodromo Nazionale in the Royal Parco di Monza just a few miles from Milan – and even when I’m 1000 miles away watching the Le Mans Series cars in the Autosport Six Hours at a windswept Silverstone. The Gran Premio d’Italia at Monza remains one of my all-time favourites. No matter if the race is less than exciting, if the magnificent old circuit has been ‘reduced’ from its former glory. Well, they’ve put in chicanes and taken away the tree that stood in the run-off at the Ascari chicane. Ascari is by far the best of the ‘squiggles’ that were introduced to take some of the heat out of the place. But what matters is the place, the electrifying atmosphere, the history that oozes from the buildings, the trees that line the Lesmos and the old concrete banking that still lurks in the woods above the new track. And Parabolica – now there’s a big, bad, brave old corner in any car.

When first I went to Monza, in 1966, our grandstand seats had been double-booked. No matter, we squeezed in among the tifosi, stood and cheered when the Ferraris streaked past on that seemingly endless straight. It was like finding yourself sitting with the Barcelona fans when you’ve gone to Spain to see Manchester United. Best not to cheer for the Brits or you might find your space has disappeared. I say space because in those days we sat on concrete steps that stretched back from the trackside and up into the semi-darkness of the vast old grandstand opposite the pits. The noise was – and still is – quite incredible. The cars at full throttle all the way from the Parabolica, the crazy tifosi at full volume, and a commentator going mad because the red cars are not on the pace. And that’s worse than not going to Mass.

That’s how it was and that’s pretty much how it is. Yes, the grandstands have been made more comfortable, the pits are bigger and smarter, but the race day traffic is even worse. Patience is a virtue when making your way from Milan to Monza.

So, seeing Monza on the TV screens at Silverstone, the feeling remains. The cars coming out to practice on Friday brings it all back, even if the Audis and Peugeots are whistling round Silverstone just yards away. Monza is fast, the fastest in the world in fact, but an Audi or a Peugeot flat out at Silverstone is an impressive sight. They are so much quicker than the rest of field in this multi-class championship, in a different league technically, financially and philosophically from the petrol-engined cars. The best of both worlds then last weekend – Audis and Peugeots braking impossibly late, gobbling up the straights, headlights on to wake up the backmarkers – and then on TV there’s Sebastian Vettel power-sliding the Red Bull through Ascari and streaking down to Parabolica. Untouchable on this form, Vettel is simply a joy to watch this season.

One of the most over-used words in the English language these days is passion. But passion is truly what Monza means – whether or not you support the Scuderia. There is no other race where you feel such devotion. It is one thing to see a Grand Prix car brake from 210mph, point to the apex and disappear again in the blink of an eye. It’s quite another to see it surrounded by the noisiest, most passionate racing fans in the world. On Sunday Vettel led home four World Champions while, for me, there was another champion – magnificent Monza itself.

If you saw the scenes below the podium, you’ll know what I mean. And this on a day when Red Bull beat Ferrari. Meanwhile, another Sébastien – Bourdais, teamed with Simon Pagenaud – won at Silverstone for Peugeot after a dogged battle with Audi.

Hope you made the most of Monza because next we go under the floodlights in the virtual reality of Singapore where the crowd is invisible.

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A very good Grand Prix, and for the first dozen laps a great one. True, eventually the inherent superiority of the Red Bull RB7 asserted itself at Spa, so that Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber scored a comfortable enough 1-2, but in the first part of the race the action at the front was frantic – indeed four different drivers led before an accident on lap 13, which eliminated Lewis Hamilton and brought out the safety car. At the finish Hamilton’s McLaren team-mate Jenson Button was third, followed by the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso and the Mercedes of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg.

It’s been said before, but it can never be said enough times: take them to a proper circuit, and you get a proper race.

Qualifying at Spa is invariably unpredictable, sometimes chaotic. The weather sees to that, and it’s been that way since the running of the first Belgian Grand Prix here, back in 1925. Fickle doesn’t make a start on it. Torrential rain can materialise from nowhere, and it is not unusual for one part of the circuit – at 4.35 miles it’s the longest in Formula 1 use – to be bone dry while another is streaming.

Conditions on both Friday and Saturday were mixed, but very rarely was the track entirely dry, and after qualifying all the drivers lamented the lack of dry running, for the the forecast for race day suggested that the sun would shine.

For all the uncertain conditions it was the usual suspects who figured most strongly in qualifying. There were, however, some anomalies. Right at the beginning of Q1, for example, Schumacher’s Mercedes shed its right rear wheel on the climb to Les Combes.

The Spa circuit is situated only 50 kilometres from Kerpen, Michael’s birth place, so he not surprisingly refers to it as ‘my garden’. In the days of his pomp he won here six times, and he had reckoned that the Mercedes, while not competitive with Red Bull, McLaren or Ferrari, might be better suited to Spa than some of the recent F1 venues. In that he was right – team-mate Rosberg qualified fifth – but it was hardly surprising that he was dismayed by the thought of starting dead last. This weekend, after all, marked the 20th anniversary of his Formula 1 debut.

If Schumacher didn’t figure, neither – more suprisingly – did Button. In Q1 Jenson was fastest of all, predictably much at ease in the sort of mixed conditions in which he excels. In Q2, too, he topped the lists for a while, but in the late minutes the track was drying fast, and the name of Button began sliding down the list. It didn’t look like a problem, for he was surely capable of responding, and thus he backed off, cooling the tyres, having been informed by McLaren that there was time for one more quick lap.

There wasn’t, though. By the time Jenson made it back to the start-finish line the allotted time had ticked away to zero, and he found himself out of Q1, back in 13th place. And frustrated, you might say.

And there were others, too, notably Alonso. An abiding problem for Ferrari this season has been getting heat into the Pirelli tyres – in a normal summer, with plenty of races in hot weather, this would have become a virtue, of course.

As it is, we have had a succession of races run in unusually cool conditions, and if that has hampered Ferrari it has very much aided McLaren, where there is no problem getting the tyres up to temperature – indeed on hot days it works against them.

Alonso was well in the mix through most of qualifying, and indeed set fastest time in Q2. In Q3, though, he was delayed by Perez on two of his laps, and on the last one slowed at the chicane to let Webber through, fearing that otherwise he might get a penalty. When Alonso is slower than team-mate Massa it raises eyebrows; when he is a second slower something somewhere doesn’t compute. Eighth was not where Fernando had expected to start.

Vettel-Hamilton-Webber is how the first three lined up, but this wasn’t a typical Vettel pole position. In Q1, he admitted, he didn’t feel comfortable with the car. “Then, in Q2 I discovered Spa again – and in Q3 everything was fine. On the last lap I pushed as hard as I could…”

Most of the time Webber looked the more likely of the Red Bull drivers to take pole, but in the end Mark – celebrating his 35th birthday, and also the signing of a new contract for 2012 – set third best time, beaten to the front row by Hamilton.

Lewis always excels at Spa. “I had pole for about five seconds,” he said, after setting his time at the very end of the session, “but then Sebastian came over the line…”

En route to his fastest lap Hamilton was undoubtedly… muscular as he passed Pastor Maldonado’s tardy Williams at the final chicane, but really he had little option. After the chequered flag had fallen the two cars made contact as they went down the hill to Eau Rouge, and while neither driver appeared entirely blameless the Venezuelan was adjudged more culpable than Hamilton, and ‘fined’ five grid positions. Lewis got away with a reprimand.

Undoubtedly the most startling performance in qualifying came from Bruno Senna, seventh for Lotus Renault GP, three places ahead of team-mate Vitaly Petrov. Ayrton’s nephew has been drafted into the team for the rest of the season, replacing the disappointing Nick Heidfeld, who was frequently outpaced by Petrov. Given the testing ban, Senna has had almost no cockpit time this year, and his showing certainly raised an eyebrow or two.

The circumstances of qualifying created an interesting scenario for race day – when rain threatened, but never materialised. As we have said, it’s a long lap at Spa, and in Q3 the drivers – very much keeping the weather in mind – stayed out on one set of tyres rather than the usual practice of running a quick lap, changing to a new set of tyres, then running a second quick lap. In normal circumstances, therefore, you start the race on a lightly used set – but at Spa the top 10 drivers went to the grid on tyres that had done 20 or 25 miles. Throw in the fact that there had been very little dry running, and it was hardly surprising that the drivers were a little apprehensive.

“We were going very much into the unknown today,” said Webber, “in terms of what the tyres might do – and I’m not just talking about blisters…” Vettel agreed: “When the front tyres blistered, there was a lot of vibration, and it really wasn’t very comfortable going into Eau Rouge or Blanchimont like that. In the end, we’re sitting in the cars…”

As a rule of thumb, then, the intention was to change tyres as soon as practicable, to get rid of the set that had run in Q3. Medium and soft were the compounds brought by Pirelli on this occasion, and of course the top 10 drivers necessarily started on soft. Button, though, hadn’t made it to Q3, and was therefore able to take a different tack, and start on the medium tyres.

Although the start was reasonably straightforward, there was chaos at La Source, as invariably there is on lap one. Senna, sadly, undid all his good work in qualifying by slamming hard in Jaime Alguersuari’s Toro Rosso, which had started an impressive sixth. And behind them cars started bouncing off one another.

“I got a terrible start,” said Webber. “The anti-stall kicked in, and I thought I’d get passed by about 30 cars – but fortunately most of them hit each other at the first corner…”

The sensation at the start was Rosberg, who came out of La Source with only Vettel ahead of him, and on the long climb to Les Combes – the designated ‘DRS Zone’ at this track – Nico was able to take the lead quite easily.

This was to become a phenomenon of the afternoon. Some are in favour of DRS, and some are not, but either way there was no doubt that at Spa the zone was too long, making overtaking too straightforward. Any driver leading another narrowly out of Eau Rouge was like a tethered goat. On lap three Vettel took back the lead from Rosberg in exactly the same way, and we would see it time and again throughout the race.

Sebastian immediately began to pull away, but after five laps was into the pits, keen to get rid of that first set of tyres. Webber, indeed, had stopped a couple of laps earlier than that, as had Button, who had had his required run on the medium Pirellis, and wanted to be on the soft ones as soon as possible.

In the first part of the race, though, the man really going motor racing was Alonso. From his eighth grid position Fernando was up into fifth by the end of the first lap, and on the second he got by Hamilton. By lap six he had also passed Massa and Rosberg, and that – given that Vettel had pitted by now – took the Ferrari into the lead.

Alonso made his first stop on lap eight, and that briefly put Hamilton into the lead – until he came in on lap 10. Briefly Rosberg was now in front once more, but in a staggering demonstration of his confidence in the Red Bull – and in his own abilities – Vettel passed the Mercedes on the outside at flat-out Blanchimont…

That was a move to make you doubt your own eyes – and there had been another a couple of laps earlier. As Alonso accelerated down the hill to Eau Rouge, immediately after his stop, Webber was closing on him – and going into the first, left-hand swerve, he went by! No one could ever remember a pass – a competitive pass – being made here in any F1 race at Spa, and it said much for both drivers that the moment didn’t end in tears.

“Yeah,” Mark agreed, “it takes two guys for that situation to work out OK. Fernando’s a great driver, and he’s also smart enough to know when enough’s enough. Believe me, there are a lot of guys I wouldn’t have tried that with…”

On lap 13 Hamilton, running fifth behind Kobayashi’s Sauber (which had not yet made a stop), overtook – DRS again – on the hill, but as they approached Les Combes Kamui closed again, and was almost alongside (on the outside) as they reached the turn-in point.

Perhaps Lewis had not expected the Sauber still to be close at hand. Whatever, he steered slightly left, giving himself the ideal line into the corner – and the cars touched. At once the McLaren pitched into the guard rail more or less head on, and when it came to rest there was initially no movement from the driver. Eventually Hamilton stirred, and removed the steering wheel, but he seemed shaky as he stepped out, another to rejoice in the strength of the contemporary Grand Prix car.

As soon as the safety car was deployed, Vettel dived straight into the pits, and really this put his victory beyond doubt, for when they were given the signal to go again, three laps later, he was on new tyres, where his rivals were not. Although Alonso led them away again, it wasn’t long before Vettel was able to DRS him on the long hill. And once into the lead anew, Sebastian pulled easily clear.

His team-mate might, who knows, have been able to go with him had he, too, stopped for tyres as the safety car came out. “I radioed in,” said Webber, “saying that I wanted to come in, but I never heard anything back…” As it was, Mark had to run a very long stint on his second set of tyres.

The final round of pitstops, at which most drivers were required to take the slower, medium compound tyres, began on lap 29, with Alonso followed by Vettel on 30 and Webber on 31. On lap 32 Button, who had been making striking progress, was also in – but he of course had started the race on the medium tyres, and was therefore able to stay with the soft ones.

On lap 37 Webber passed Alonso again, this time less dramatically (DRS on the hill) than before, and began slightly to close on Vettel. But the pattern was now set, and the Red Bulls simply swept on to the finish. Alonso, meantime, had no answer for the soft-tyred Button, who moved by – yes, DRS again – on lap 42, thereby claiming the last spot on the podium.

The other talking point in the late laps concerned the Mercedes drivers. Schumacher, having started from the back, indeed drove an extremely good race at this track he loves, and was up to sixth, behind team-mate Rosberg. We began to wonder if ‘team orders’ – now fully legal again, of course – might come into the reckoning…

Finally there came a message on the radio: ‘Nico, we need you to save some fuel…’ Given that three of the 44 laps had been run behind the safety car, that seemed a touch unlikely, but Rosberg duly acquiesced, and the Mercedes hierarchy had the finishing order it perhaps preferred…

Three races – Silverstone, the Nürburgring, the Hungaroring – had gone by since the last Red Bull victory, and some had begun to wonder if perhaps a little of the earlier magic had been lost. On the strength of Spa, they should not put too much store by that theory. “The car,” said Vettel, “was simply fantastic today – maybe the best it’s been all season…”

Button, meantime, was left to ponder how different his race might have been, had it not been for that ‘communication’ mistake in qualifying…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

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

Welcome to another ‘week in motor sport’. There was plenty to talk about this week and I sat down with features editor Rob Widdows to mull over the Hungarian Grand Prix and the news of new deal with Formula 1, Sky and the BBC.

I am sorry that we’re back to our usual editing quality, but we’re in the process of finding a budget and hope to return to the professional format as soon as possible!

As always, let us know what you think about everything we discuss.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Or, if you’d like to download it…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The British Grand Prix at Silverstone. What a wonderful event it is, and what a race it was. As with so many things British, the weather played its part in a tumultuous weekend.

Ferrari is back in the game. Fernando Alonso began his day in the Ferrari 375 in which José Froilán González scored the Scuderia’s first Grand Prix victory at Silverstone in 1951, finally beating the previously all-conquering Alfa Romeos. That day González completed 90 laps in not much less than three hours, while 60 years on Alonso was home and dry after 52 laps in a little over 90 minutes.

The Commendatore would have been proud of the Scuderia in Northamptonshire. I wonder how much difference it has made to put Englishman Pat Fry in charge on the pitwall.

As has become my custom, I headed for the banks around the circuit from which you can best feel the cars, gauge the relative performances around this challenging track.

The man standing next to me had one of these new-fangled telephones which somehow receives the internet. So we knew roughly what was going on from our vantage point on the bank at Maggotts. Only the British could name a corner on their Grand Prix circuit after those horrid little squirmy things that some folk use for fishing bait…

To walk from Copse down to Maggotts and Becketts during qualifying is still one of the great motor racing moments. The noise, the speed, the way these cars change direction, the sheer grip produced by all that downforce. I mean, Copse and Maggotts are ‘easy’ flat in a balanced car with the weight of several small elephants pushing it into the asphalt.

The British GP at Silverstone survives as a very special sporting event because Formula 1 cars on this circuit are at the limit of their performance, demanding absolute precision from the drivers. Not wanting to get involved in the trek backwards and forwards from the new pits and paddock, I preferred to stand with my fellow fans and join in the banter about who looked quickest and who looked to be struggling for grip and balance. And here the British weather played its customary joker.

Practice on Friday was a washout. In the middle of July! So the teams went into Saturday with precious little meaningful tyre or fuel data. And then it rained again – in the last few minutes of Q3, if you please. At Maggotts we were the last to feel it. Red Bull captured the front row but Alonso lurked ominously close in a much-improved Ferrari. That evening the ever-enthusiastic Robert Dean, who looks after Bernie Ecclestone’s car collection, showed Signor Alonso the essentials of the 1951 Ferrari he was to drive on a parade lap on Sunday morning. Needless to say, the double World Champion was soon comfortable with clutch, gearbox and bump-starting the glorious red car. On Sunday he had it power-sliding. Forza!

Lots of good things happened at Silverstone. For us in the crowd, we can thank Damon Hill for encouraging the FIA to allow spectators onto the track after the race. It was a good move and a great end to a great day. In the paddock not everyone was happy. A hairline crack appeared in the perfection that has been Red Bull, the strain showing on the faces of Messrs Newey and Horner, mistakes in the pitlane and team orders visibly angering Mark Webber. And there was mounting frustration at McLaren, which has a lot of work to do to get back in the hunt. Neither driver is happy and, like Webber, must be considering their options. Meanwhile Ferrari, with a clearly defined number one driver and new updates pouring out of Maranello, won the race on pace, and not because the others fell over themselves. Intriguingly, its cars were fastest of all in the middle sector of a track that on paper suited Red Bull.

As this increasingly unpredictable season reaches half-time, Alonso is a staggering 92 points behind Vettel, but there’s half a season to run. Let’s just hope it’s all as thrilling as Sunday at Silverstone. The gloves are off, as are all bets. Anything can happen from here on in, blown diffusers or no blown diffusers.

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The night before the British Grand Prix Fernando Alonso murmured that he thought he really might be able to do something about the Red Bulls this time. He wasn’t overt in his remarks, for that is not Alonso’s way, but merely made the point that of late Ferrari’s race pace had been appreciably more competitive than in qualifying. Even when a second or so from Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber on Saturday, he had been able to show them something on Sunday afternoons – and this time he was within a tenth or so…

An hour or so before the start Fernando took to the track in Bernie Ecclestone’s Ferrari 375, similar to the car with which Froilán González scored the team’s first World Championship victory at Silverstone in 1951. It appeared, in similar circumstances, a few years ago, driven by Michael Schumacher, but Alonso got rather more into the spirit of the thing, and steered the car on the throttle in a manner which would have delighted the flamboyant González. There was a pleasing symmetry about the day, therefore, when Fernando was able to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Froilán’s great day by scoring his – and Ferrari’s – first victory of the season.

There was drama aplenty in this British Grand Prix, and that was good, for the weekend – right up to race time, anyway – was sadly dominated by endless discussion of the wretched blown diffuser rules, which seemed to change by the hour. Not unnaturally it was a matter of overwhelming interest to those directly involved, of course (and every one of them seemed to claim their cars had been more adversely affected than any others), but for everyone else it was simply a consummate bore.

There was unhappiness that a rule change should have been introduced in the middle, rather than at the end, of a season, and bewilderment that the rule change was then amended – and amended and amended…

Eventually one o’clock on Sunday arrived, and it was time simply to get on with it, to go racing. In tricky conditions the day before Webber had taken a very brave pole position, shading team-mate Vettel, with the Ferraris of Alonso and Massa on row two. Jenson Button was happy enough with his position on the grid – fifth – but less so with the fact that his time was a second and a half away from pole. He was, however, a picture of contentment compared with McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who blamed the team for sending him out on the wrong tyres in Q3, and qualified only 10th. He hoped for a wet race, he said.

In part, he got one, at least for a while, for an hour before the start one of the widely forecast showers arrived – but only on part of the circuit. Thus, the start-finish area (now on what used to be the far side of the circuit, of course) was pretty dry, but in other places drivers reported aquaplaning. Although the start was conventional (rather than behind the safety car), the obvious tyre choice was intermediates – which meant, in turn, that the obligation to use both of the slick compounds on offer evaporated.

One of these was the hard compound not seen since Barcelona, where they emphatically did not suit the Ferraris, so it could be that Alonso benefited from a stroke of luck, but on the other hand he claimed that in practice the car now worked very well on the hard Pirellis. “All the recent changes we’ve made to the car have been good,” he said. “We brought quite a big aero update to Silverstone, and everything worked fine. I’m very proud of the team for the recovery they have done…”

Initially, though, it didn’t look as if Alonso – or anyone else – would trouble Vettel this day, the British Grand Prix looking like so many gone before this season. In the – very – mixed conditions Sebastian looked much at ease as he quickly built a lead over Webber, whom he had passed away from the line. Five laps in, he was virtually five seconds to the good.

Alonso ran a couple of seconds behind Webber, but the man really on the move at this stage appeared to be Hamilton, who was quickly up to fifth (from his 10th place on the grid), and picked off Felipe Massa’s Ferrari immediately before the first stops. Although the track had been drying there was some uncertainty as to when the optimum time to go to slicks would be – indeed Webber later said that the leaders probably stayed out too long on the intermediates, nervous of making the switch before the track was truly ready for slicks.

In fact, it was Michael Schumacher who settled the issue – and somewhat inadvertently. On lap nine he rather cack-handedly collided with Kobayashi’s Sauber, which meant an immediate stop. Slicks were put on the Mercedes, and soon Michael was setting new fastest laps, which of course brought the front runners in, Webber, Alonso and Hamilton on lap 12, Vettel and Massa on lap 13.

The stops done, Vettel led from Webber once more, with Hamilton now third, then Alonso, Button and Massa. Next up, after the top six, was the highly impressive Paul di Resta, who had qualified a superb sixth for Force India.

The race was moving on apace, five drivers – Button, Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton, Webber – setting fastest lap on consecutive laps, between 16 and 20. Having been passed earlier by Hamilton, Alonso went by the McLaren again on lap 24, at which point Lewis immediately came in for his second stop.

A couple of laps later Webber was in, but the turning point of the race came on lap 27 when Vettel and Alonso pitted together – and it was Fernando, rather than Sebastian, who came out first, for Red Bull had had a rear jack fail before the left rear wheel had been properly changed.

Initially, it didn’t like look the end of the world for Vettel, who had dropped only three or four seconds – but if he had lost the lead to Alonso in the pits, he had also simultaneously lost second place to Hamilton, who had pitted before them, had tyres that were well up to temperature, and was charging.

Getting by Lewis would not prove to be the work of a moment for Seb – and all the time Fernando was away in the lead, building a gap, looking increasingly unstoppable.

Would Alonso have won, had Vettel not been delayed in the pits? “I honestly don’t know,” he shrugged. “I think we were very quick today, but Sebastian had track position on us at the time, and overtaking – even with DRS – is not so easy here…” From Vettel there was a similar response: “For sure it would have been a very tight race – Ferrari certainly had very good pace today…”

Indeed they did. Once into the lead – with Vettel endlessly frustrated in his efforts to get by Hamilton – Alonso cranked out a whole serious of fastest laps, increasing his lead from two to 10 seconds in a matter of half a dozen laps.

The final round of pit stops began with Vettel, on lap 36, and when they were all done Alonso remained serenely in front, 10 seconds to the good, beyond reach. By lap 50, with two to the flag, he was 20 seconds up, and Vettel now had a new worry – in the shape of his team-mate, whose Pirellis were two laps newer.

Webber had passed Hamilton for third place on lap 46, Lewis immensely frustrated by an instruction from his team that he should save fuel if he wished to make the finish. Once by the McLaren, Mark began making inroads into his team-mate’s four-second advantage, and through the last couple of laps was right on Vettel’s tail.

This was a matter of some concern to the Red Bull, who requested – nay, instructed – that the drivers hold station to the flag, and not put in jeopardy a basinful of World Championship points.

Webber decided that he was a racing driver, quicker at that stage of the race than his team-mate, and frankly admitted that he simply ignored the order, issued four or five times, to keep behind Vettel. In the end Sebastian just kept his second place, but afterwards Mark was completely unrepentant about disobeying his team – indeed he made it clear that he was thoroughly unhappy that such an order should have been made. “Let’s face it, if Fernando had retired on the last lap for some reason, this would have been a matter of fighting for a victory…”

Vettel, it must be said, offered no criticism of Webber’s attempt to get by him – indeed appeared, if anything, sympathetic, as if suggesting that in the same position he would have done the same as Mark. Red Bull has been so much more harmonious this year than last; one hopes this doesn’t precipitate another summer of discontent.

The pair of them went over the line almost as one, and a few seconds later there was more of the same, as Massa – who had closed on the fuel-hampered Hamilton at the rate of three seconds a lap – tried to separate the McLaren-Mercedes from fourth place. Lewis offered what may be termed a muscular defence: at the very last corner the cars touched, and Felipe’s Ferrari ran very wide. He didn’t lift, but Hamilton just beat him to the line.

All at Ferrari were of course ecstatic about Alonso’s victory, 60 years on from that historic day when González beat the Alfas for the first time. “It’s a perfect day,” Fernando beamed. “To win at Silverstone is such a special thing – I think all the Formula 1 drivers feel the same about it. It was a privilege to drive Froilán’s car earlier today, and now Ferrari has won the British Grand Prix again – with just the same passion as then…”

And what of all the debate and dissension regarding the blown diffuser rules? “Well,” said Fernando, “before all this Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren were the competitive teams – and today Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren were the front runners in the race, so maybe too much has been made of it. I mean, I didn’t notice a Force India or a Sauber suddenly competing for victory…”

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Another week, and another ‘week in motor sport’! This time I sit down with editor Damien Smith – despite the fact that the magazine is on deadline – and chat about possible driver movements in the McLaren camp, the possibility of the BBC dropping Formula 1, the situation at Citroen in the WRC and Dario Franchitti’s run of form in the IndyCar Series.

We are creating an audio file at the moment so if you don’t want to watch it, just download that on Wednesday 22nd…

As always though – let us know what you think about all the news.

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Nelson Piquet described driving a Grand Prix car in Monte Carlo as like trying to ride your bicycle around your living room. A victory on the streets of the Principality, he declared, was worth two anywhere else.

Keke Rosberg once likened the flat-out dive down the hill from Casino Square to Mirabeau to being on a toboggan without any snow to cushion the bumps. And Keke was not afraid of anything.
Both these men were racing cars with a manual gearbox, slick tyres and an excess of mechanical grip over aerodynamic downforce. Hence they were very busy in the cockpit, constantly changing gear and correcting slides on the changes of camber. They’d wear out the glove on the right hand, and the sole of the boot on the right foot. Blisters were commonplace at the chequered flag.

Men like Graham Hill – they called him Mister Monaco – and Ayrton Senna made it their own, stamping their authority on the twists, turns and bumps of the streets. And that’s what a great driver does – he takes the little place by the scruff of its impossibly glamorous neck. It is not a place for the faint-hearted.

The Monte Carlo circuit is easier now, but still a huge challenge in a Formula 1 car. As we head towards the race this coming Sunday, I feel as excited and expectant as ever, this Grand Prix being one of my all-time favourite occasions. There is simply nothing like it, there being an element of total madness. Were such an idea to be put forward now it would probably be dismissed on grounds of ‘health and safety’ and lack of palatial facilities. But Monaco survives, and let us rejoice that it does.

The race is something of a lottery, of course, but no less thrilling for that. Despite protestations to the contrary, overtaking is possible, this being proved each year by those with absolute skill and bravery. The streets are the ultimate test of a driver and nowhere else can you get so close to the action on the track. No longer are you able to walk through the tunnel, or stand behind the barriers, but a seat at the swimming pool section, or in Casino Square, is as good a view of an F1 driver in action as you will find.

Every time I walk down to the circuit at the start of practice on Thursday I get goosebumps and feel that surge of excitement as the cars scream up the hill from Ste Devote. I quicken my pace, get out my stopwatch, and make a dash for the nearest vantage point. The media centre is not the place to be. No, you want to be out there, drinking it in, as the cars skim the barriers, blast into blind corners and wail away towards the harbour where they will dash past the yachts in a crazy blur of noise, colour and raw speed. One split second of distraction and the car will be off-line and into the scenery. It is a magical experience for both driver and spectator.

Who will be at the front on Sunday? I have no idea, but all things being equal the best drivers will prevail. So expect Vettel, Hamilton, Button, Alonso and Webber to shine. Red Bull’s aerodynamic advantage will be somewhat constrained in Monte Carlo, while the McLaren is nimble and Alonso will squeeze something out of his Ferrari. If it rains, well, then all predictions are set aside. For once this season a good grid position will be important, with drivers unlikely to be able to storm through the field, so Saturday should be as thrilling as ever. Traffic is the bogey in Monaco, new tyres or not, soft option or hard.

If you have never been to the Grand Prix du Monaco, you have not completed your motor racing initiation. You don’t have to stay in a fancy hotel or visit the Casino, you just have to be there. Yes, it looks pretty on the TV, but on the side of the track, or leaning from a window above, this is a gut-bashingly great motor racing spectacle.

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Some days certain drivers rise above the rest of the field. The Spanish Grand Prix was one of those days for Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton.

The two drivers were in a league of their own on Sunday and it was only some great driving from the German – who had Hamilton breathing down his neck for the last part of the race – that kept him in front.

Even though the Red Bulls had qualified a second ahead of the next fastest runner, Hamilton, it was Alonso that took the initiative in the run up to the first corner and came out in first place from fourth on the grid. It was a typically smart and brave move from the Spaniard. His home crowd was justifiably delighted – if a little amazed – but it wasn’t to last. The Ferrari driver was leap-frogged by Hamilton and Vettel in the stops and then changed to a second set of hard tyres in his third stop when he was struggling to keep Webber behind him. He wasn’t comfortable with them at all and gently slipped down the field to finish fifth, a lap behind the leaders.

Vettel and Hamilton meanwhile drew out a lead at the front of the field. Hamilton just wouldn’t give up though and threw everything at the championship leader. Vettel was without his KERS, yet again, for some of the Grand Prix and it was only thanks to the Red Bull’s superior downforce in the middle sector that held the McLaren at bay down the pit straight when Hamilton was using his KERS and DRS. It was a masterful display of driving from the pair and, without a doubt, helped the race be the most exciting and enjoyable the circuit has produced for a long time, if ever.

Things didn’t go according to plan for Button even though he did manage to finish on the podium with Vettel and Hamilton. The Brit had a terrible start, with far too much wheelspin, from fifth on the grid and dropped all the way back to 10th on the first lap. McLaren quickly did the sums and put Button onto a three-stop strategy rather than a four which he handled brilliantly. Any thoughts that his tyres wouldn’t last and that Webber would catch and pass him in the final stint were rubbished when he crossed the line eight seconds ahead of the Australian.

“I did everything I could,” said Hamilton after the race, “but the Red Bull was just so quick in the middle sector I couldn’t get close enough.” That it was, but crucially the Red Bull was nowhere near as dominant in the race as it was during qualifying. The Circuit de Catalunya is a high downforce track and the very quick cars invariably do well there. The Red Bull was the quickest car throughout the weekend, but McLaren must be delighted by how much they have closed the gap on race pace, especially since it was at a track that rewards cars with plenty of downforce – something the Red Bull has got plenty of.

The DRS zone didn’t make a huge impact during the race as it didn’t start early enough on the pit sraight, meaning that rarely did the following car manage to close the gap. However, this was a truly great Grand Prix, and it’s safe to say that it was thanks to the Pirelli tyres and not the other ‘gimmicks’ as my colleagues Damien and Nigel call them.

So what did everyone think? The best race from Catalunya ever? It will be hard to beat. Do check back with us tomorrow as I will be quizzing Rob Widdows about all the racing over the weekend for our ‘week in motor sport’ video feature. Do leave me a question to ask him below, and don’t go easy…

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Another ‘week in motor sport’ episode where I talk to the editor Damien Smith about Lewis Hamilton’s stunning victory in the Chinese Grand Prix, Mark Webber’s rise through the field and the new ‘gimmicks’ in F1 like the DRS and KERS.

We also discuss Mike Conway’s first IndyCar win, Sebastien Ogier’s second WRC win on the trot and Silverline Chevrolet’s effort to get Jason Plato’s car ready for race 3 in the BTCC at Donington. Oh, and we also touch on two future Grand Prix champions who have just started karting.

The week in motor sport

We hope you enjoy it and – as always – do let us know your views.

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Or, if you’d like to download it…

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We don’t often see Lewis Hamilton well up with emotion, but it was more than understandable as he prepared to step out on to the podium in Shanghai. His victory in the Chinese Grand Prix will go down as one of his finest after a scintillating race that was packed with incident and excitement.

McLaren’s first win of the season, breaking Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel’s seemingly iron grip on the top spot, came through great strategy, wonderful driving – and heart-in-mouth work from the mechanics. A fuel leak as Hamilton prepared to leave his garage to take the start almost destroyed his day before it had really begun. Team principal Martin Whitmarsh reckoned Lewis only made it to the grid with about 10 seconds to spare as the mechanics raced to quell the leak. The boys at McLaren earned their win bonuses in those vital seconds and have every right to enjoy a few Tsingtaos before the flight home.

Dominant pole position man Vettel was on the back foot after bogging down at the start and although he recovered to lead this Grand Prix, his two-stop strategy fell four laps short of delivering him a hat trick of victories for the season.

Jenson Button, starting second, swept into Turn 1 in the lead from the lights, as Hamilton left Vettel scrabbling to hold on to third place from Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes. The two McLarens and the Red Bull ran in close formation until lap 14 when Button and Vettel both made their first stops. Button had already run a lap longer than he was supposed to and then made a glaring error as he tried to stop in Vettel’s pitbox! “I was looking down as I came into the pits,” explained the sheepish Englishman afterwards.

A bemused Vettel followed Button into his pitbox and emerged from the stops after only a slight delay, and in front of the McLaren. Hamilton pitted a lap later, but his hopes of jumping the pair were thwarted after a poor in-lap during which Felipe Massa’s Ferrari passed him.

At this stage, Mercedes had made the biggest gains after Rosberg and Michael Schumacher’s early stops on laps 12 and 10 respectively. Indeed, Rosberg found himself in the lead from Vettel, Button, Massa, Hamilton, Schumacher and a subdued Fernando Alonso.

Meanwhile, Mark Webber appeared to be making little progress from his lowly 18^th on the grid following his troubled practice and qualifying. He’d started the race on the hard prime tyres and only made up a couple of places before stopping for a set of softs on lap 10. It looked like being a long afternoon for the Australian at this stage, but his patience would be rewarded…

At the front, Button would be the first to stop for his second set of Pirellis, on lap 24 – a clear indication that McLaren had chosen a three-stop strategy. Rosberg stopped a lap later, so Vettel now led from Massa’s two-stopping Ferrari. Nico rejoined still ahead of Button and Hamilton, and at this stage it appeared the race might be slipping away from McLaren.

But not for long. Vettel would make his second and final stop on lap 31, leaving him a daunting 25 laps to nurse his tyres to the flag, and a few laps later Hamilton began to make his move. He closed in on Button and made a decisive move on his team-mate into Turn 1 at the start of lap 36. The battle of the two Englishman had been decided.

Lewis followed leader Rosberg into the pits three laps later, allowing Vettel and Massa back in front – and now the chase was on. By lap 42 Hamilton was monstering Rosberg, who offered little resistance at Turn 6 as the McLaren outbraked the Mercerdes. He despatched Massa at Turn 1 on lap 45 and now there were 10 laps for him to catch and pass the World Championship leader.

On tyres eight laps fresher, it was an uneven contest. Four laps from the finish Hamilton looked unstoppable and so it would prove. He jumped Vettel with another terrific move, this time at Turn 7 – pleasingly taking the lead without the need for his rear wing Drag Reduction System.

The race was won, but the action was far from over. Webber was finally feeling the benefit of those fresh soft ‘option’ tyres that his poor qualifying had saved him for the race. His pace towards the end of the Grand Prix, after an aggressive three-stop strategy, was astounding and he closed in on an incredible podium finish. Rosberg was picked off at Turn 6 two laps from the flag, then Button – who admitted he’d uncharacteristically struggled to look after his rear tyres – was powerless to stop Mark sweeping by on the long back straight. From his lowly grid spot, Webber was just seven seconds behind winner Hamilton. It was a performance that might just rejuvenate the Australian as he fights to get back on terms with his World Champion team-mate.

Rosberg scored a creditable fifth behind Button, the Mercedes ace producing the goods to beat Massa who looked much more like his old self for Ferrari in China. He beat Alonso to sixth, while Fernando worked hard to hold off a determined Schumacher. These old rivals had enjoyed a spirited battle earlier in the race, with Alonso pulling off a perfect ‘undercut’ pass on the drag out of the hairpin. That his DRS appeared to be malfunctioning during this battle gave a clue that his afternoon had not gone entirely according to plan.

Hamilton paid great tribute to the team he has criticised of late, while Vettel took defeat with a smile after a day when radio problems had made communication with his pitwall difficult. Once again the team struggled to make its KERS run reliably and the pressure is back on Red Bull and Adrian Newey to solve the problems before the Turkish Grand Prix.

As modern Formula 1 races go, this was one of the best. Yes, DRS is a gimmick, Pirelli has been asked to provide ‘flawed’ tyres and a question mark remains over the benefits offered by KERS. But right now, the combination is creating races full of variables and plenty of passing moves that could never be described as easy. Artificial racing? Maybe. But you can’t deny it’s exciting.

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Adrian Newey isn’t a fan of KERS, but why he would be? Yes, it provides an 80-horsepower boost for a few seconds a lap, but a genius like Adrian has subtler ways of going faster than employing a ‘push to pass’ button, and that’s what it amounts to. At a time when FIA president Max Mosley was insisting that Formula 1 needed drastically to cut its costs, so the governing body introduced KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System), the argument being that it was ‘green’ in concept and the beginning of a path down which F1 must proceed if it were to have any chance of long-term survival. And if it cost a massive amount of money to develop, well, too bad, start serving up cheaper Parmesan in the motorhomes…

For all its green credentials, KERS would never appeal to a man like Newey. For one thing, it is a component on an F1 car over which he has no control; for another, it necessarily screws up the purity of his designs. With or without KERS, the minimum weight limit of an F1 car is 640 kilos, so if you don’t run KERS – as with Red Bull at Melbourne – you run an equivalent weight of ballast, and that’s fine, because you can position ballast and use it to your car’s best advantage. Sebastian Vettel utterly dominated the Australian Grand Prix in a car of perfect balance – without KERS.

Melbourne, though, was a bit of a special case, for it lacks a straight of any consequence. Come Sepang, with two extremely long straights, and KERS simply had to come into the reckoning – even for Red Bull. Even though his team, concerned about a potential problem, requested that he not use it for a portion of the race, Vettel still won again. But Webber, whose system was inoperative from the start, was decidedly hampered. In the circumstances Mark’s fourth place was a great achievement, but on the long straights his lack of KERS invariably kept him from getting within the requisite one second of the car in front – which meant, of course, that he was unable to deploy his ‘moveable rear wing’, otherwise known as DRS (Drag Reduction System).

All initials and systems, contemporary F1, isn’t it? Fernando Alonso had the opposite problem: his KERS was working, but his DRS wasn’t…

Over time all manner of things have been considered to improve the quality of the racing – or, at least, to permit changes in the order. That’s why refuelling was originally brought back, for example, and why, at different times, there has been talk of weight penalties for successful cars (as in the Trophee Andros ice racing series), and more recently proposals of rallycross-style ‘short cuts’ on the circuits – and even sprinkler systems to create ‘rain’.

All these ideas have been a tacit acknowledgement of F1’s ‘lack of overtaking’ problem, and I confess that whenever anything like this comes up I find myself thinking, ‘What would Ayrton or Gilles have made of this?’ Or, come to that, Jenks? And it doesn’t take me long to arrive at an answer.

I really wasn’t surprised that Niki Lauda contemptuously dismissed the ‘moveable rear wing’: “Completely crazy – now the FIA decides where you can overtake…”

Some suggest that these systems are no different from adjustable boost in the turbo era, whereby you could temporarily award yourself some extra horsepower (at the same time knowing that it was eating into your restricted fuel allowance for the race). But that argument is hardly valid – if a following driver whopped up his boost to pass you, there was nothing to stop you doing the same to defend your position.

All cars were operating to the same rules at all times in the race, that’s my point, and surely that is fundamental to anything calling itself ‘Grand Prix racing’. DRS strikes me as akin to investing in the best running shoes for all competitors – and then putting stones in some of them.

By common consent, wet races are invariably far more exciting – hence the ‘sprinkler’ idea – but why is that the case? It’s not rocket science; it’s because there is less grip. No, we can’t un-invent downforce, but surely we can come up with a set of aerodynamic rules that permit cars closely to follow each other through fast corners, perhaps generating downforce from shaped underbody, rather than relying absolutely on external appendage.

“Ah, here’s the purist – the keeper of the flame…” Max would murmur when I arrived at one of his functions, and I couldn’t – and can’t – take issue. I’ve loved Grand Prix racing all my life, and I’ve never cared to see artifices introduced to turn the sport into ‘The Show’, particularly systems – like KERS and DRS – which involve no element of driving skill. Of course I want to see better racing as much as anyone – but it has to be real. Remember the Hanford Wing, which undoubtedly increased the amount of overtaking in CART events on superspeedways, but rendered the races farcical? ‘I pass you here each lap, and you pass me there…’

F1 has surely become way too convoluted and complicated. Some years ago I asked Patrick Head what he would do to improve F1. “Oh, ban wings,” he said immediately, somewhat to my surprise. Then he laughed. “But that would never happen – think of all that lost advertising space…”

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“Fantastic job, fantastic job. In the heat we kept our heads cool,” commented Sebastian Vettel on the radio after he won the Malaysian Grand Prix. “Every week it’s a pleasure driving for you and I’m loving it, I’m loving it…”

I’m sure Vettel is loving his time at Red Bull at the moment as even without his KERS – which stopped working early on in the race – he never looked flustered, or troubled. He has now won five of the six last Grands Prix and he is oozing confidence. No doubt there’ll be plenty to get on with back in Milton Keynes after the KERS systems of both Mark Webber and Vettel failed to work, but you get a sense that any teams that want to compete with Red Bull have their work cut out.

3.2 seconds behind Vettel was McLaren’s Jenson Button who, having qualified fourth, drove a strong race. His team-mate had the measure of him for most of the weekend, and indeed, for most of the race. However, at Hamilton’s third stop the team opted for the harder of the two compounds, his front left took time to be changed, and from then on the Brit struggled to keep the same pace as the leaders. Button, who had been running behind Hamilton, jumped him when he finally stopped for the third time, but even if he hadn’t, there’s no doubt he would have got past soon enough. Only 10 laps later and he was over 15 seconds down the road.

Fernando Alonso quickly closed onto the back of Hamilton’s struggling McLaren, but clipped his front wing on the back of the car while trying to pass and had to pit for a new front nose that lap. If Hamilton thought his troubles were over he was sadly mistaken, as both Nick Heidfeld and Mark Webber closed up onto the back of his gearbox and made their way past soon after, Webber doing so after Hamilton ran wide. After another pitstop to change his ruined tyres, Hamilton finally finished seventh.

It was another good weekend for Renault as after both Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov got off the line brilliantly they maintained a good race pace. Heidfeld finished an encouraging third while Petrov, who had run well for much of the race, finally ran wide and while coming back onto the track managed to traverse a rain gulley that pitched the Renault off the ground. The car came down with an almighty thump and, astonishingly, the steering column came away from the rack leaving him with no steering at all.

Thankfully by this time Petrov was going slow enough to come to a halt a few metres down the road, but no doubt the Russian was cursing his decision to take the rain gulley flat. He may have shown how far he has come on in Australia, where he finished a promising third, but mistakes like that will go down badly with any team that looks set to pick up points.

Mark Webber, Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso finished fourth, fifth and sixth respectively, but it was the Australian that stole the show. On the way to the grid he reported that his KERS didn’t work and it was this problem, combined with a slow getaway, that relegated him to 10th by the end of the first lap.

He recovered well though and got some strong points. However, he has to start beating his team-mate in qualifying and the race to stand a chance of the championship, and at the moment can you see that happening?

It was another good result for Scot Paul di Resta who managed to out-qualify and out-race his team-mate Adrian Sutil. The Force India is clearly off the pace at the moment and there’s no doubt that Sutil and di Resta are getting the most out of the car. The team will be reasonably relieved with their 10th and 11th positions.

So what of next weekend in China? McLaren is undoubtedly closer to Red Bull than it was in testing and the first race. Ferrari seem to have dropped back even further on one-lap pace since Australia, and Mercedes had a woeful weekend in Malaysia with Schumacher finishing ninth and Rosberg a very quiet 12th. It looks like Vettel and Red Bull will be the combination to beat again in seven days time and if the other teams aren’t careful, they could go to Istanbul for the start of the European season with a certain German sitting on 75 points at the lead of the championship.

On Sunday evening Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were each given 20-second penalities. The McLaren driver was given his for making more than one move while trying to block Alonso, and the Ferrari driver was penalised for causing an avoidable accident. The penalties mean that Hamilton drops to eighth place, but Alonso stays in sixth.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Really? Like many correspondents I have, over the decades, enjoyed a fair few free lunches. Only last month I dined at Williams in Grove, the food prepared by two-star Michelin chef Michael Caines. Very Formula 1. There, now you know, this is the world in which I am privileged to live.

The word ‘free’ is, however, easily misunderstood. As you will know to your cost if you’ve been seduced by those dishonest bits of junk that come through the letter box.

Why am I going through this preamble? Because I am concerned about both KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) and DRS (downforce reduction system) in Grand Prix racing. These two devices, or systems, are seen by many as some kind of key to a puzzle – the magical answer to a lack of overtaking. But they are not and never have been the gift of free power, or the gift of a free passing manoeuvre.

Firstly, we cannot possibly judge the effectiveness, or otherwise, of these devices from what we saw in Melbourne. Nor will we be able to make a sensible judgement after Sepang. It will be mid-season before we can talk about how wonderful they are – or how they should be immediately banned. Or, more likely, how they have suddenly disappeared from the headlines.

KERS is painfully expensive. And DRS is horribly complicated, fraught with software glitches and electronic bugs that, for example, would not let Williams open the gap in the rear wings for some laps in Albert Park. Remember, the FIA is in charge of when they may be used, and Charlie Whiting makes the call, not the man in the cockpit. There are going to be toys hurled from prams before too long…

The expense of KERS is universally unpopular, up and down the pitlane, whether you’re Red Bull or Virgin. Some have designed and built their own systems rather than buy one in ready-made. This saves money but, for many teams, has disrupted pre-season testing and therefore reliability. So much time was spent on making KERS work that other areas like durability, efficiency and outright performance were compromised.

Red Bull didn’t use KERS at Albert Park, at least not in any meaningful way. That team, too, has had problems with the device and only got away without using it because the rest of the car is so incredibly good. The installation of this system is not only complex but also involves just about the whole of the rest of the design – because the weight has to be accounted for, and space made for battery packs. And, as we know, weight distribution is God.

Don’t be too surprised if, mid-season, KERS is the subject of robust debate. The teams don’t like it, the costs are hideous and the benefit remains open to question. As for DRS, we wait to see how it works on a circuit with a very long straight and a sharp corner at the end – like Malaysia. But the truth is that neither of these devices will solve the problem of overtaking. Only major changes to the rules governing aerodynamics – and a return to circuits designed for actual racing – will achieve an increase in overtaking.

I am simply concerned that Grand Prix racing has gone one step further into a technological labyrinth, and it should back out again before it gets completely mired in gizmos and post-race arguments. The vast majority of spectators are not bothered about when the KERS battery is charging, or when the rear wing is open or closed. They are there, and in their millions in front of the TV, to be entertained by Grand Prix racing that is worthy of its name, that justifies it being the pinnacle of motor racing.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

We may be one of the oldest motor racing magazines in the world, but we do like trying new things. Our latest idea was to record a very brief round-up of the news each week so that every Monday you can log on to the Motor Sport website and watch a video clip that neatly sums up all that’s happened in the motor racing world over the past seven days.

Well, we’ve given it a go. It may be a little longer than we anticipated and our attempt at a newsroom feel – recording it in front of everyone in the office – may not have been 100 per cent successful, but it’s a work in progress. If any of you heard our first audio podcast you’d be amazed…

So, hopefully the days of reading hundreds of news stories every Monday morning are gone. Maybe…

Let us know what you think as this really is a first attempt. We hope you enjoy it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Or, if you want to download it…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

“That was really controlled,” said Sebastian Vettel over the radio at the end of the Australian Grand Prix. “Thank you very much, very cool.”

His race was indeed ‘very cool’ as having blown everyone away in qualifying – his team-mate Mark Webber included – the German took the lead off the line and only gave it up to Lewis Hamilton during his two pitstops. He drove a faultless race and even though the Red Bull wasn’t equipped with KERS, something that Christian Horner only admitted to after the race, it was clearly the fastest car out there. A worrying state of affairs for all the other teams.

Hamilton had a less ‘controlled’ race as although he managed to keep second place after getting too much wheelspin off the line and momentarily letting Webber through, the underfloor of his car came away later on in the race. Despite the lack of downforce he kept his track position and will be hoping that the car passes scrutineering. Something that team principal Martin Whitmarsh was confident of after the race, but not something that is a dead certain.

Big news came in the shape of Russian Vitaly Petrov though as having got a superb start from sixth on the grid he finally finished third. He didn’t put a foot wrong and proved that he’s not just racing because of the financial benefits to his team. A great result and a fitting tribute to the missing Kubica.

Nick Heidfeld’s race in the other Renault was sadly not as successful. After a poor qualifying left him all the way down in 18th on the grid, the replacement for Kubica had his work cut out. However, although he did finally finish 14th, his pace was nowhere near his team-mate’s. The fact that he was drafted in as a ‘safe pair of hands with plenty of experience’ is all very well – and I doubt he will finish where he did in the next race – but when you’re standing in for Kubica results will be expected. Watch this space.

Other big news was Sergio Perez. The Sauber driver had an absolutely fantastic race and – having pitted only once for new tyres – finished seventh behind Button (6th), Webber (5th) and Alonso (4th). Quite how the Sauber could be so gentle on its tyres is amazing and certainly bodes well for the rest of the season, especially when we go to tracks that are harder on the Pirellis. It was a great way to start a Formula 1 career and hopefully the confidence will be flowing after such a strong start.

So what of all the new rules and regulations? As I mentioned, Red Bull didn’t even run their KERS during Saturday and Sunday having evaluated it on Friday and deciding that it was too big a risk to run. The Red Bull of Vettel was comfortably the fastest car out there, which does tend to suggest that the KERS still needs work. I just wish the rules gave teams that used the technology a bigger advantage. 80bhp may seem like a lot of power – it is more power than some small hatchbacks – but surely with a boost of 150bhp the teams would put more effort into the device and the technology would be advanced that much faster? The rules are set though, and it’s 80bhp that the drivers can lay their hands on when they press the button.

The adjustable rear wing didn’t produce as much overtaking as everyone expected. However, it did solve the problem of being stuck in a slower car’s dirty air to some extent. Yes, the pit straight was not a long enough straight on which to operate it and the effect wasn’t as large as it perhaps could have been, but it did help faster cars close the gap and overtake either into turn 1 or later on in the lap.

One of the best examples was when Felipe Massa was following Sebastien Buemi later on in the race and although he was within one second of the Toro Rosso driver – who was sitting in a car with the same engine as his own – for a couple of laps, it took him two attempts to get past, even with the ability to open the flap on the rear wing on the pit straight. Was it too hard? Too easy? Time will tell. A gimmick? That it is, but as someone pointed out, during the turbo era drivers could turn up their boost to overtake someone which would have had a similar effect.

Finally the tyres. Pirelli have made some big improvements since testing and the four or five-stop race was a pessimistic exaggeration. In the end the most number of stops cars really needed were three, while all the front runners opted for two – bar Perez of course who managed to use only two sets all race. “We have to make some compliments to Pirelli,” said Vettel after the race. Of course, having just won the Grand Prix he wasn’t going to be rude about them.

Albert Park is a different circuit to most though so we’ll have to wait and see how things pan out when we get to Malaysia in two weeks and even China in three. In the meantime – congratulations to a dominant Vettel, a McLaren team that has managed to find a second between testing and the first race, and of course to Petrov and Perez who showed that Formula 1 isn’t all about experience. Just ask Barrichello who had the weekend from hell, spending more time off the track than on…

The two Saubers of Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Perez have since been disqualified for a rear wing infringement. The team has made it clear that they wish to appeal the decision after investigating matters at its factory. Meanwhile, Hamilton’s floor was deemed legal by the scrutineers and his second place remains.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Testing, testing, one-two-three. We are now in the midst of the fourth and final pre-season Formula 1 test at the Catalunya circuit in southern Spain, where it has been unusually grey and chilly. This is the test that should have been in hot and dusty Bahrain…

Pre-season testing can, as we have so often seen over the years, be not only inconclusive but also misleading. This is because there is always a certain amount of smoke and mirrors, some deliberate sandbagging and insufficient accurate information forthcoming on fuel loads and set-ups.

And this year, we should remember, we are dealing with totally new tyre compounds from Pirelli, which has not yet got a race under its belt in any kind of climate. Rubber is likely to be a major factor in early 2011.

Popular opinion – and many engineers agree – is that we are going to see a lot more tyre degradation in the early races than we have previously been used to. Three pitstops are predicted, some saying more, especially if the weather is hot, the surface abrasive. Added to this unknown we have KERS, moveable rear wings and new cars to consider.

Logic says that Red Bull will the early pacesetters, and so it proved on Tuesday in Spain, with Mark Webber (above) top of the timesheets from Jenson Button – by some margin. This does not mean Red Bull is going to disappear into the distance at Melbourne on March 27, but simply that on March 8 the new Red Bull was more sorted than the new McLaren. And that’s no surprise at this stage. In an era when aerodynamics is key, you can expect an Adrian Newey-designed car to be at or near the top of the times.

What will be in many ways more interesting to see is how the two most radical cars shape up against the rest. These are the Williams (below), with its radical rear end and new transmission, and the Lotus-Renault, with its forward-facing exhaust system. If either of these two risky design ideas prove to be the way to go, then the others will have to follow suit, just as we saw two years ago with the Brawn’s double diffuser, when Button’s pre-season testing pace had alarm bells ringing right down the pitlane.

This year we have seen no such clear advantage, although Red Bull is predictably fast. Not far behind is Ferrari, smarting from its title defeat in Abu Dhabi. All Grand Prix teams of any stature play their cards close to their chests, saving their best until the first afternoon of qualifying. And, just to complicate matters, testing is not what it used to be.

In days gone by there was virtually unlimited mileage, the teams under no pressure to get it all sorted in just four short sessions in February and March. And there’s another difference. Test drivers, or reserve drivers as they are now known, have to get some mileage now or never, whereas before they could do their testing while the teams were away racing. And this means – as we have seen in Spain – lots of new, young drivers being given time in the cars when, in a perfect world, they’d be waiting until the race drivers went away to race.

So, we should not be surprised if Red Bull, Ferrari – and possibly McLaren – are at the front of the grid in Melbourne. Button (above) says we should not expect too much, that the car is not the equal of Red Bull or Ferrari, and they don’t have time to catch up before the end of the month. Bad news for McLaren fans.

Oh yes, and we also know that Mercedes-Benz has a great deal of work to do if Schumacher and Rosberg are to be anywhere near the podium. Unless, of course, Mr Brawn has been keeping something up his sleeve…

So end the ifs, buts and maybes. Soon it will be time to race…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Ahead of our Hall of Fame event next Tuesday (February 15), the Motor Sport team sent out a survey to everyone registered on our website.

Usually these things are well beyond my pay grade, but this time I managed to get a quick glimpse of the results. Some were quite predictable – Jim Clark was voted the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time ahead of Ayrton Senna and Juan Manuel Fangio – but others weren’t.

Here are some of the results…

Which is the most memorable F1 car of all time?

1)    Lotus 72
2)    Maserati 250F
3)    1988 McLaren MP4-4

What was the best ever rivalry between F1 drivers?

1)    Alain Prost vs Ayrton Senna (with a staggering 68.5 per cent of the vote)
2)    James Hunt vs Niki Lauda
3)    Juan Manuel Fangio vs Sir Stirling Moss

Which circuit in 2011 do you expect to produce the most exciting F1 race?

1)    Spa-Francorchamps
2)    Silverstone
3)    Montréal

Which will be the most improved team on the F1 grid in 2011?

1)    Mercedes
2)    Williams
3)    Lotus (quite a good call, although even if its cars are comparatively three seconds a lap faster than they were at the end of last season they’ll still be a second off the pace)

Out of the rookie drivers new to F1 for 2011, who do you think will excel?
1)    Paul di Resta (should be right on the pace)
2)    Pastor Maldonado
3)    Sergio Pérez

Which team do you think will be the main contender for the constructors’ title in 2011?

1)    Red Bull
2)    McLaren
3)    Ferrari

Which driver would you tip to win the 2011 drivers’ championship?

1)    Fernando Alonso (with the above answer in mind, it doesn’t say much for everyone’s view on Massa!)
2)    Lewis Hamilton
3)    Sebastian Vettel

So there you have it. What are your thoughts? Do these answers really represent what you think?

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Time flies. Like many other clichés, this is undeniably true. And, believe me, the older you get the faster time flies by.

If you follow a sport your year is pretty much defined by the season, or calendar, and this seems to make the passage of time faster still. No sooner have you seen a person or team crowned champion than it all starts again.

It feels like only last week that the Formula 1 cars crossed the line in Abu Dhabi at the close of another season of Grand Prix racing. And yet, suddenly, it is launch time. Not in the Cape Canaveral sense of the word, but with stages shrouded in dry ice, covers drawn back dramatically and newly-groomed drivers blinking in the bright lights.

By the time we get to Valencia on February 1 we will already be familiar with the shape of the 2011 contenders. Gone are double diffusers, F-Ducts and Bridgestone tyres. New for this year will be the return of KERS, moveable rear wings and Pirelli tyres. But the cars will look pretty much the same as last year to the casual observer, and that’s why launches are not as dramatic as they used to be when the regulations were less prescriptive and designers had greater freedom to express themselves. As things are, the casual observer may find it hard to tell a Mercedes from a McLaren.

Speaking of these two contenders, we see two very different strategies ahead of the first Grand Prix in Bahrain on March 13. Mercedes will unveil its new MGP-W02 in the pitlane on the first morning of the three-day test in Valencia on February 1. Will this be the car that Michael Schumacher needs to prove he still has the old magic? Who knows? McLaren-Mercedes, meanwhile, will not launch its new MP4-26 until after the Valencia test on February 4. This, the team says, is because they will gather data from the new Pirellis before revealing what they consider to be the perfect solution to the media and, more importantly, their rivals.

Six days later, on February 10, the teams will transfer to Jerez for a four-day test before making the trek to Bahrain. Every team will have its own strategy, its own programme of development over the next seven weeks. But you can be sure that the 2011 Red Bull will be one of the last to show its face. Adrian Newey has always preferred to spend as much time as possible in research before committing his thoughts to carbon fibre. To match, or exceed, last year’s results will be a huge challenge. Especially as its rivals have had all winter to study where it was that the RB6 found a second a lap on them.

How much we will learn from Valencia and Jerez is debatable. Claims and counter-claims will be made, we may not be privy to fuel weights on every run, and a Brawn-type advantage, such as we saw in 2009, is a rare occurrence. There is, however, every reason to believe that we are in for another thrilling year and Ferrari, still smarting from the confusion of last November, will be throwing everything it has at the 2011 title.

Off-season? What off-season? Time flies.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Time flies. Like many other clichés, this is undeniably true. And, believe me, the older you get the faster time flies by.
If you follow a sport your year is pretty much defined by the season, or calendar, and this seems to make the passage of time faster still. No sooner have you seen a person or team crowned champion than it all starts again.

It feels like only last week that the Formula 1 cars crossed the line in Abu Dhabi at the close of another season of Grand Prix racing. And yet, suddenly, it is launch time. Not in the Cape Canaveral sense of the word, but with stages shrouded in dry ice, covers drawn back dramatically and newly-groomed drivers blinking in the bright lights.

By the time we get to Valencia on February 1 we will already be familiar with the shape of the 2011 contenders. Gone are double diffusers, F-Ducts and Bridgestone tyres. New for this year will be the return of KERS, moveable rear wings and Pirelli tyres. But the cars will look pretty much the same as last year to the casual observer, and that’s why launches are not as dramatic as they used to be when the regulations were less prescriptive and designers had greater freedom to express themselves. As things are, the casual observer may find it hard to tell a Mercedes from a McLaren. Speaking of these two contenders, we see two very different strategies ahead of the first Grand Prix in Bahrain on March 13.

Mercedes will unveil its new MGP-W02 in the pitlane on the first morning of the three-day test in Valencia on February 1. Will this be the car that Michael Schumacher needs to prove he still has the old magic? Who knows? McLaren-Mercedes, meanwhile, will not launch its new MP4-26 until after the Valencia test on February 4. This, the team says, is because they will gather data from the new Pirellis before revealing what they consider to be the perfect solution to the media and, more importantly, their rivals.

Six days later, on February 10, the teams will transfer to Jerez for a four-day test before making the trek to Bahrain. Every team will have its own strategy, its own programme of development over the next seven weeks. But you can be sure that the 2011 Red Bull will be one of the last to show its face. Adrian Newey has always preferred to spend as much time as possible in research before committing his thoughts to carbon fibre. To match, or exceed, last year’s results will be a huge challenge. Especially as its rivals have had all winter to study where it was that the RB6 found a second a lap on them.

How much we will learn from Valencia and Jerez is debatable. Claims and counter-claims will be made, we may not be privy to fuel weights on every run, and a Brawn-type advantage, such as we saw in 2009, is a rare occurrence. There is, however, every reason to believe that we are in for another thrilling year and Ferrari, still smarting from the confusion of last November, will be throwing everything it has at the 2011 title.
Off-season? What off-season? Time flies.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

It has become a custom for me to offer some predictions for the season ahead. Actually, it has become a source of much amusement and derision among my colleagues, who are never shy of reminding me how unreliable my predictions are. I will, however, continue the custom for those of you who enjoy a bit of harmless amusement.

So, here’s what may happen as we move through a new season of motor racing in 2011. In no particular order:

1. Sébastien Ogier will be a lot closer to Sébastien Loeb and will challenge for the World Rally Championship title.
2. Valentino Rossi will win a race on a Ducati.
3. Audi will win Le Mans.
4. Red Bull will start the season winning Grands Prix.
5. Paul di Resta will impress in the Force India (if he actually gets to drive one of the cars Rob… Ed).
6. Dario Franchitti will win the Indycar championship.
7. Felipe Massa will be replaced at Ferrari during the year.
8. Rubens Barrichello will retire at the end of 2011.
9. Dean Stoneman will be on the podium in GP2.
10. Ferrari will threaten to leave Grand Prix racing if the rules for 2013 are not changed to accommodate a V6 turbo engine.

All nonsense? Yes, probably, but let’s be bold this year. You will have your own thoughts on the season ahead, or you may decide to keep them to yourselves, which is probably more sensible. But remember, I did predict that Vettel would win the Formula 1 title in 2010

While we’re listing things, here’s 10 events not to miss in 2011. Again, in no particular order:

1. The Monaco Grand Prix – F1 cars are as exciting as ever they were on this circuit. Pure drama, with or without overtaking.
2. Indycars on any of the ovals. Still a thrilling spectacle.
3. IRC Ypres Rally. An easy drive from the UK and a lovely town with the service area in the main square.
4. The Goodwood Revival. Simply the best.
5. MotoGP at Mugello. Take a walk around the circuit and be amazed.
6. BTCC at Brands Hatch. Audi joins the fray this year. Great circuit.
7. WRC Rally New Zealand. Breathtaking scenery.
8. Algarve Historic Festival. Sunshine, beaches and mouth-watering cars.
9. The Brazilian Grand Prix. Crackling atmosphere, always a good race.
10. Midget cars on any dirt oval. You can combine this with the Indy 500.

Go on, treat yourself. It will only be more expensive next year. Whatever you do, wherever you are, let’s look forward to another great season.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

On Tuesday it was announced that Richard Petty has bought his NASCAR team from majority owner George Gillett Jr to become chairman of Richard Petty Motorsports. NASCAR’s most successful driver has taken back control of his family’s team in a partnership with Medallion Financial and DB Investments. Andrew Murstein, president of Medallion, said his company had purchased Gillett’s reported US$90 million debt for less than US$50m. Gillett defaulted on his loan earlier this year and was also forced to sell Liverpool FC in October after he and partner Tom Hicks were unable to refinance US$445m in debt to the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Petty’s new partnership ends two years of uncertainty about his team’s future after he sold a majority share to private equity firm Boston Capital in 2008. A few months later a merger was completed with Gillett Evernham Motorsports, but George Gillett has been dogged with financial troubles.

Kasey Kahne (above) has led RPM for the past two years but after a series of disagreements he left the team near the end of this season. Kahne won a few races during his time at RPM before seeing out 2010 with Red Bull’s Toyota NASCAR team. He will drive for Red Bull next year before moving to Hendrick Motorsport in 2012 where he’ll replace the retiring Mark Martin.

Petty takes a one-third stake in the latest version of Richard Petty Motorsports for an investment of “several million dollars”. The 73-year-old will take a hands-on role as the team’s boss. RPM ran four cars this year and will run two Fords next year for AJ Allmendinger and Marcos Ambrose. Roush-Fenway Racing, Ford’s top NASCAR team, will supply chassis and engines. Australian Ambrose has shown lots of ability during the last two years with JTG Daugherty Racing after breaking into NASCAR in 2007. Allmendinger came up through Formula Atlantic and Champ Cars, demonstrating plenty of talent before moving to NASCAR in ‘07 with Red Bull and then joining Petty last year.

Stanley Tools will sponsor Ambrose’s car and Best Buy will back Allmendinger. Andrew Murstein told the New York Times that without the weight of Gillett’s debt burden, Petty Motorsports’s finances are in good shape and will enjoy US$30m in sponsorship next year. Medallion Financial, by the way, finances the purchase of taxi medallions in New York, Boston, Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Petty’s team is NASCAR’s oldest, starting in 1949 with Richard’s father Lee doing the driving. Lee won 54 races and three championships before Richard took over, winning 200 races and seven championships. In total the team has won 273 first-division NASCAR races from more than 3300 starts. We wish the King the best of luck on his team’s 63rd season.

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

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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OK, I’m back.

Apologies for the silence but it proved to be somewhat tricky to send dispatches from the Grande Festival de Classicos at Portimao, this being due to the internet service suffering from intermittent failures without any warning. We, that’s the man from Autosport and I, considered demanding our money back, but we’d had such a good time at this terrific historic event in Portugal that we struggled on in silence.

Thankfully we were able to file our stories on Sunday night. Otherwise the editor in London would not have been impressed. Suffice to say, this is one of the highlights of the historic calendar, along with Goodwood, Spa-Francorchamps and Monza. It is also a highlight for those who participate for two main reasons.

One, most racers like to play golf, and the Algarve coast appears to have more golf courses per square mile than anywhere else in the world. Two, the Portimao circuit is a modern classic. Designed by former bike and car racer Paulo Pinheiro, it is a spectacular challenge for drivers and a wonderful place to watch. There’s a full report in the next edition of the magazine but I do urge you to get to this event if you can.

All in all, quite a weekend for us racing fans. In the media centre at Portimao we could watch MotoGP in Australia, DTM in Germany and the Rally of Scotland – simultaneously on three separate screens… what a remarkable world we live in today.

And that’s not to mention all the football. Not a good weekend for my aforementioned colleague and I. He being a Liverpool fan and I being a Manchester United fan, it would have all been rather depressing had we not had to go outside and write about some great motor racing

There was much talk in the paddock about Mark Webber going to Ferrari next year and about how Valentino Rossi will struggle to get to grips with the Ducati. I’m not saying the former is true, and I’d be surprised by the latter, but both are good things to gossip about at the bar after a day’s racing.

Rumours are rumours until they come to pass. Back in reality, Skoda did another great job in Scotland with yet another win for the talented Juha Hanninen who’s had a fantastic year in the highly effective Fabia. Guy Wilks was fast too, but failed to get to the finish. Only nine cars got to the end of this extremely tough rally. And what about Casey Stoner? A much-needed boost for Ducati and certainly Mr Rossi will have taken note of Stoner’s pace. Not one of the greatest MotoGP events but nonetheless an interesting result, Stoner and Ducati having been much stronger in the last two races. And the win moves the Aussie into third in the championship with two races to go, just eight points ahead of you-know-who…

We move on this weekend to what will be a very intriguing Grand Prix in Korea. The fascination is partly because nobody’s been there before, so all the pre-race data will have come from simulators, and partly because it will be interesting to see just who works best under the mounting pressure. The wire is fast approaching and this season will go all the way. Now is the time to see who can handle what is a very tense situation. Will the Red Bulls get tangled up in internal strife and allow Fernando Alonso to come through? Will the McLarens come good just in time?

These and other questions will be answered by Sunday night. But we won’t have all the answers for another few weeks. Ah, the anticipation… just how racing should be, and has been all season long.

Back soon with more ramblings as winter lurks on the edges of autumn here in England. And it could be an interesting winter. Will F1 testing be restored? Possibly. Will F2 champion Dean Stoneman get a drive at Williams? Will Webber go to Ferrari? Will Michael Schumacher be sufficiently impressed with the new Pirellis and his new Mercedes-Benz?

I’m not making any predictions. Not yet, anyway.

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As I write, there is some uncertainty that the Korean Grand Prix – a race no one within the sport, save Bernie Ecclestone, seems to want – will actually take place. Deadlines for track inspections and signings-off have been missed (and not by just a few weeks, either), and for reasons not immediately clear the Korean organisers appear to be cut far more slack than is normal for Formula 1’s powers-that-be.

Given that there has always been minimal enthusiasm for this race in the paddock, many will be only too glad not to have to schlep to the Far East for the third time in a month. But the five World Championship contenders – or some of them, anyway – necessarily feel differently, for if Korea evaporates, only three Grands Prix will remain on the 2010 schedule.

If you’re Mark Webber, that won’t cause you too much concern, for you lead the World Championship by 11 points, and one fewer race means one fewer opportunity for the rest to catch you; if, on the other hand, you are Fernando Alonso or Lewis Hamilton or Sebastian Vettel or Jenson Button, you want as many chances as possible to do just that.

Be it three races or four, we are now into the red meat of the World Championship, and usually by this point in the season we are down to two, rarely three, protagonists. The fact that five drivers still have a shot is testimony to the extraordinary year F1 has had: three teams have produced cars good enough to win several Grands Prix: Red Bull has six, McLaren five, Ferrari four.

Whereas both Red Bull and both McLaren drivers have won races, however, only Alonso has won for Ferrari – yes, I know you can argue reasonably enough that Felipe Massa would have won in Germany, were it not for the ‘team orders’ imposed that day. But the fact is that, although Massa drove a fine race, only circumstances at the start – poleman Vettel delaying both himself and Alonso – put him in a position to win. Hockenheim apart, Felipe has not looked like a potential winner this year.

That being so, Ferrari some time ago opted to concentrate – in terms of the World Championship – on Alonso, and rival teams have criticised it for so doing. Never at Ferrari – even in the autocratic days of Michael Schumacher – is there an official number one driver, but usually someone, simply by being clearly quicker, becomes the de facto team leader, and the situation with Alonso and Massa reminds me rather of that in the mid-70s with Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni.

Going into these crucial end-of-season races, therefore, Alonso has one clear advantage over his rivals for the championship, in that he does not have to fight his own team-mate. His team’s decision is already taken, whereas Red Bull and McLaren still have both drivers in contention, and the time awaits when they have to put their emphasis on one, and require the other to play a supporting role. Red Bull has suggested that that time has not yet come, and McLaren has been even more bullish, suggesting that it would never favour one of its drivers over the other (even though this has not always been the case in the past).

Of course it may not come to that: while unlikely, it is not impossible that Webber and Vettel, Hamilton and Button will go off to Abu Dhabi still with at least a mathematical chance of lifting the 2010 World Championship.

In Singapore Massa, thanks to a gearbox problem in qualifying, started stone last, and therefore was never in a position to be of assistance to Alonso. As we know, Fernando’s superb drive brought him 25 points, but had Felipe started from a normal grid position he might well have been able to steal points from some of his team-mate’s rivals – if not Vettel, then certainly the hobbled Webber, who finished third.

Alonso has no real need to worry about Massa’s points tally, for Felipe is too far behind to become a factor in the title race, but of course he would appreciate it deeply if Felipe could keep a rival out of third or fourth place or whatever. Webber, on the other hand, has to worry about Vettel, and Hamilton has to worry about Button.

In 1973 Lotus won the constructors’ championship with seven victories in the 15 races, four to Ronnie Peterson, three to Emerson Fittipaldi. Tyrrell was runner-up with five wins – but all of them went to Jackie Stewart, who won the World Championship.

In 1986 Williams easily won the constructors’ championship with nine victories in the 16 Grands Prix, six to Nigel Mansell, three to Nelson Piquet. McLaren was runner-up with four wins – but all of them (together with a great many second places) went to Alain Prost, who won the World Championship.

Only three years ago McLaren drivers Hamilton and Alonso finished the season with 109 points apiece – but finished second and third in the World Championship behind Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen, who had 110.

In every case two ‘number one’ drivers won a lot of races – while another driver, in a slower car, nicked the title. If Christian Horner and Martin Whitmarsh stick to the bitter end with their policy of allowing their drivers to race each other, I will admire them for it. But then I’m not a sponsor…

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