Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2022 i AUTOSPORT

After so many years of watching the silver (and black) cars dominate Formula 1, it’s difficult to fully comprehend what we’re now witnessing. Watching Lewis Hamilton – a seven-time champion – struggling to escape Q1 at Imola, asking how far off the pace he is, describing the gap to where he belongs as “crazy”, seems unthinkable when you consider this same team won a record eighth consecutive constructors’ world championship less than five months a What a difference a winter makes… though perhaps the writing was on the wall much sooner. Two significant rules changes, back-to-back, have derailed the mighty Mercedes winning machine. Not since 2009 has Hamilton begun a Formula 1 season this badly. “There are people that watch and say that I’ve never had a bad car,” he…

PICTURES 01 VOLKSWAGEN IN “FINAL EVALUATION PHASE” OF F1 ENTRY 02 HAASWON’T REFUND CANCELLED RUSSIAN SPONSORSHIP 03 FREIGHT EXPECTATIONS: CARGO WOES HIT F1 01 The subject of furious speculation in recent months – and, indeed, years – the Volkswagen Group’s Formula 1 entry is believed to be a formality now, although the company has yet to make an official announcement. After a board meeting in early April, the company did confirm plans “for a potential Formula 1 entry of the two Group brands”, those brands being Audi and Porsche. Initially, it was expected that a decision on the F1 programme would be taken in March, but the discussion of the matter was postponed owing to the war in Ukraine. Now it has finally taken place, but the Volkswagen Group is in no…

Standing in sub-zero temperatures in Moscow’s Red Square, Narain Karthikeyan, Tiago Monteiro and Robert Doornbos welcomed the opportunity to try out some traditional ushanka fur hats. It was February 2005, the last car launch for Jordan Grand Prix and the first outing for F1’s newest team owner, Russian-Canadian commodities trader Alex Shnaider. A military band played, the Kremlin’s walls and domes of Saint Basil’s Cathedral providing backdrop. Shnaider was gone 18 months later, the team rebranded as Midland, then sold to Dutch group Spyker. If that deal heralded the start of Russia’s involvement in contemporary F1, it also illustrated a degree of unpredictability. How little we knew. Vladimir Putin’s unwarranted war in Ukraine has caused untold human misery and made Russia a pariah state. Although inconsequential by comparison, F1 has…

PICTURES THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS HAVEN’T been easy for Guenther Steiner. Across 2020 and 2021, the Haas team he leads scored three points – which came from just two races out of 39. The season preceding these two barren years had provided scant returns too. Last year felt particularly bleak. With a chassis that hadn’t been developed for almost three years and a pair of rookies as its 2021 line-up, Haas was coming to races with no hope of points. “It’s always difficult to digest,” Steiner tells GP Racing. “I mean, you know that on Sunday night you will not go home happy. When you fly back, especially if you have to go on a long flight, it’s quite tiring, because you think about ‘why the hell do I do…

ANDREW BENSON Andrew tries to unravel the poor performance of the new car from Mercedes, F1's premier team over the past eight seasons (p30) MARK GALLAGHER Mark found out how Melbourne welcomed F1 back (p50) and also compared Aston's current struggles with those of Jaguar (p56) OLEG KARPOV Guenther Steiner reveals to Oleg how hard it was to keep everyone at a now-rejuvenated Haas motivated over the past three years (p44) LUKE SMITH Luke looks into the reasons F1 has signed up for a third US race from 2023, and why it is returning to Las Vegas after 40 years (p38)…

PICTURES Formula 1 in Miami is a big deal. It’s a lively, happening city with great vibes that I discovered for myself in the late 1990s while commentating on races from Homestead. F1 has managed to immerse itself into an even more central part of town and connect with an existing sports environment that provides a real gem. Add in the glamour and it’s an event that was a sell-out before tickets even printed. Growth of interest in the United States was always going to be key for F1 owner Liberty Media when the company took over from Bernie Ecclestone in 2017, and it has clearly made rapid progress. There was record attendance at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas last season and now a third American race –…

WHAT HAS GONE WRONG AT MERCEDES? The team that has won a record eight consecutive constructors’ championships since the start of Formula 1’s hybrid-engine era is floundering at the start of the 2022 season. At the time of writing, after the Australian GP, the W13 is an average of 0.847s off the pace in qualifying. Ferrari and Red Bull are in a league of their own at the front, and Lewis Hamilton appears to have no more of a chance of avenging the controversial loss of an eighth world title in Abu Dhabi last year than Max Verstappen’s new rival, Charles Leclerc, did of winning a first at the same point a year ago. Formula 1’s much-vaunted new rules have caught Mercedes on the hop, and the team is scratching…

PICTURES FORMULA 1 RETURNED TO AUSTRALIA WITH a weekend festival of sport which, in a world laid low by war and pandemic, was good for the soul. It was three years since Hamilton, Verstappen et al raced around the city’s Albert Park, two years since that ill-fated Friday 13th in 2020 when F1, the FIA and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation cancelled that year’s event to the disbelief of spectators queuing at the gates. “I was there and couldn’t believe it,” said Craig, a diehard F1 fan who told me of his annual pilgrimage from Queensland’s Gold Coast. “I won’t even tell you what it cost me and I ended up spending the weekend with some disappointed fans drinking our sorrows away.” But he had come back, and the disappointment…

PICTURES The ‘old man’ with the long (fake) beard and walking stick gingerly waddled to the green and gold Formula 1 car sitting on pole position. Jack Brabham was all too used to the wise-cracks about his age, so couldn’t resist a comical retort. But behind the stunt and the good-natured laughter it triggered, there was also a dash of genuine niggle. Yes, he’d turned 40 in April, and yes, before this season he hadn’t won a pointspaying grand prix for almost six years. But look at him now, here at Zandvoort for the 1966 Dutch GP – already a winner twice and leading the standings. In F1’s ‘return to power’ season, as engine capacities doubled to three litres, Old Man Brabham had pulled a technical masterstroke and was winding…

A sliver of hope for Silver Arrows As the final laps of the Australian Grand Prix unfolded and the finishing order consolidated behind a no-doubt-relieved Charles Leclerc, a separate but related race began – to secure a spot to photograph the podium. I went up on the TV tower with plenty of time in hand to get an elevated perspective on the podium, so in the closing laps I was just looking around for other potential shots while I was there. This one presented itself: a pan using the catch fencing to create an interesting graphic effect. The Mercedes looked particularly nice in the afternoon sunlight – and it was a nice result for the team too, even if a little luck was involved… Photographer Carl Bingham Where Melbourne, Australia…

PICTURES A new word was on everyone’s lips after the first test of the radically new 2022 cars. That word was ‘porpoising’ – and actually it wasn’t that new, as the few of us still active in F1 who were also involved in the days of skirted ground effect cars remember the phenomenon well. In fact, this troublesome effect is not just historic, as anyone who has worked with contemporary LMP cars knows. Like the new generation of F1 cars, sportscars have, for some time, incorporated design features which make porpoising prevalent, and engineers of these cars know how to tame it. But what exactly is porpoising? Many will say it is an aerodynamic effect, but that is only partly true. It is a fact that we only see porpoising…

“I told myself I’d never come back…” Dr Stuart Price makes no secret of his unease returning to Las Vegas in The Hangover 3. And rightly so. In the first edition of the comedy film trilogy, he had removed one of his own teeth for a bet, got married to a stripper and stole a tiger from Mike Tyson – all in one night in Vegas. Formula 1’s sojourn in Sin City in 1981 and 1982 may have lacked such fictional chaos, yet it also came away with a sour taste. The grand prix in the car park of the Caesars Palace casino proved so uninspiring it became the standard against which all bad race events since have been measured. Though both events were title deciders, the desert’s extreme heat…

PICTURES AN ICONIC BRITISH sportscar brand with a rich motor racing heritage. An ambitious owner deciding that the best way to achieve success in Formula 1 is to buy an independent team with a race-winning pedigree, rebrand it in racing green, with a star Ferrari driver slotted in for good measure. The team is launched to much fanfare and attention. Britain’s answer to Ferrari. Except seventh in the constructors’ championship is nothing to write home about, and all this new venture can manage. The role of team principal is unenviable, ultimately untenable. Management changes become the order of the day. Such was the Jaguar Racing Formula 1 team. Any similarities with the Aston Martin F1 team are purely coincidental. Ford’s purchase of Stewart Grand Prix, rebranding it as Jaguar, with…

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COACHBUILT WHISKY Price £42 coachbuiltwhisky.com Who knew Jenson Button was partial to a wee dram? The 2009 world champion, in partnership with entrepreneur and whisky expert George Koutsakis, has launched the Coachbuilt whisky brand. The two were introduced through mutual friends while Jenson was in the process of relaunching the coachbuilding company Radford. While rare, aged and limitededition releases are in the pipeline, the core product is a blend of liquids from Scotland’s five iconic whiskyproducing regions of Campbeltown, Highlands, Islay, Lowlands and Speyside, married in premium sherry casks. It is described as “full-bodied, intricate and well-balanced with notes of summer fruits and subtle spice, followed by toffee, chocolate and a touch of citrus”. Or at least that’s what was scribbled on the note our managing editor found in his…