Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i AUTOSPORT

Speed. With the possible exceptions of noise and glamour, it’s what drew you to motor racing, isn’t it? Within these hallowed pages this month we embark on the risky business of quantifying speed and establishing who is the fastest, both in terms of the current crop of drivers and the history of the world championship. I say ‘risky’ because any such exercise is bound to be contentious, since it potentially treads on the toes of blinkered fandom and tribal allegiances. So let’s set out our stall right here. Our 2022 ‘Supergrid’ (p38), in which we rank last season’s drivers in order of pace, is as rigorously mathematical and as laden with caveats as it is possible to be, given the obvious differentiator of car performance. Even when excluding factors such…

ON SALE THE 2023 SEASON PREVIEW ISSUE > Hamilton v Russell: who will come out on top? > New boys and old hands… Piastri, Sargeant and the Hulk > Aston’s new factory and Red Bull’s R&D handcuffs > All aboard the team principal merry-go-round > Did the new rules work and what’s changed for 2023? > Our guide to all the teams, drivers and races CONTACT US ON letters@f1racing.com GP Racing, 1 Eton Street, Richmond, London, TW9 1AG…

PICTURES THE HIDDEN ART OF THE FULL STOP Whenever a group of car enthusiasts gather to talk about performance it’s not long before acceleration numbers are bandied about. Very rarely does braking performance get the bragging rights. In absolute terms a Formula 1 car’s acceleration is impressive but not necessarily outstanding, since some hypercars now have power-to-weight ratios approaching that of an F1 car and tyre grip becomes a limiting factor. When it comes to braking, however, it’s a very different story. One of the best-performing road cars, the Bugatti Veyron, can brake at around 1.3g. In this context ‘g’ is a measure of deceleration and is equivalent to losing about 22mph every second. An F1 car’s peak braking deceleration is around 5g, meaning it could lose that 22mph in a…

PICTURES We’re aware that any attempt to rank Formula 1’s drivers in order of speed will provoke an emotional response in some quarters, especially the deafeningly partisan echo chamber that is social media. So we set out clear rules for this exercise based on arithmetic and rigour rather than subjectivity and sentiment. Formula 1 is a complex business and there are many parameters to consider when assessing outright race pace in the current era. To be clear, we only considered races where the top times were set on dry tyres, so unfortunately Japan had to be excluded. Love ’em or hate ’em, sprint races are here to stay, but we haven’t included the best lap times from each driver in the Imola, Austria or Interlagos events. This is partly to…

Fernando, you finally got the chance to drive an Aston Martin F1 car for the first time in the Abu Dhabi post-season test before officially starting work on 1 January. What have been your first impressions? It’s always special, even more when you drive for an iconic brand like Aston Martin. It was the same when I switched to Ferrari as well. Obviously it was only the first day, but you could spot the energy in the team, how motivated everyone is. I felt a very special atmosphere in the garage. What are some of the things you noticed during the test that you need to work on with the team? First the seat! Because it was a little bit painful on the left side. We did 97 laps compressed…

PICTURES THINGS WERE DIFFERENT, THEN. You could be racing on a US dirt oval on a Saturday and attempting to start your first Formula 1 grand prix – the Italian, at Monza – on the Sunday. You could jet overnight from Indiana to Milan, with your chief championship rival as your wing man – the guy for whom you’d also found an F1 ride that weekend with the BRM team, so you could tow each other around Monza’s long straights like you did back home. You could pass through customs and commandeer the waiting Mini, previously steered by a Lotus mechanic, because you, Mario Andretti, and your partner in crime, Bobby Unser, were really in a dreadful hurry. You might even be able to dupe a track security guard by…

PICTURES WHEN MAX VERSTAPPEN files off to the Bahrain Grand Prix – or any F1 race, for that matter – he won’t give a second thought to how his car will get there. It will be assumed that the Red Bull RB19 will arrive as immaculate as it left Milton Keynes. Compare this with the travel arrangements laid out for Denny Hulme in the winter of 1966/67. The world champion-elect had to load his Brabham onto a trailer and tow the BT11/22 behind a Ford Zodiac saloon car from Surrey to Liverpool in time for the race car to be loaded onto a ship bound for New Zealand. The voyage was estimated to take five weeks, during which time Hulme and his boss, Jack Brabham, would take part in the…

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LUKE SMITH Luke canvassed the great and good of the paddock for their quickest F1 drivers. The result is our fascinating Top 50 feature (p20) ALEX KALINAUCKAS Alex, meanwhile, focused on more recent times to discover which driver would head the 2022 supergrid (p38) OLEG KARPOV Oleg had an enjoyable chat with Haas team principal Guenther Steiner for our new and occasional 'Life Lessons' feature (p48) ANTHONY ROWLINSON Mario Andretti’s career, and the return of the family name to F1, were some of the subjects covered in Prof’s chat with the legend (p78) Thanks to Mark Hughes, Rebecca Leppard, Stuart Morrison, Will Ponissi…

@_markgallagher FORMULA 1 HAS ENTERED THE RENT-A-BOSS ERA “I’m not satisfied… We must continue to progress and that applies to the mechanics, the engineers, the drivers and, obviously, the entire management team. Including the team boss. We have seen far too many mistakes, from reliability issues to driving errors and strategic blunders.” The words are John Elkann’s, the Ferrari chairman choosing the eve of September’s Italian Grand Prix to deliver an interview in Italy’s Gazzetta Dello Sport. Hardly a pep talk. Mattia Binotto’s departure two and a half months later didn’t come as a surprise. The Italian media had been trumpeting his replacement by Frédéric Vasseur for some weeks. The Scuderia’s insistence that there was no truth in the story only added to the feeling that Binotto’s time was up. Being…

PICTURES Pit crews relentlessly rehearse their craft. After all, it’s far more logical for teams to save 0.5s every time the tyres need changing rather than risk a prang by asking their driver to find that time on track. But are these practice efforts in vain, or can the slickest of stops define somebody’s day? We’ve rated the fastest stops from 2022 according to the impact they had on the driver’s race, where one signifies no meaningful difference and 10 denotes game-changing transformation. The spread of results certainly shows speed isn’t everything… BAHRAIN Who McLaren – Daniel Ricciardo When Lap 17 Stop duration 2.31s Effectiveness rating Daniel Ricciardo would have preferred not having brakes that threatened to combust every time he so much as looked at the left pedal because…

GROWING UP IN SOUTH TYROL YOU CAN BE ITALIAN AND GERMAN SPEAKING, AND YOU LEARN A LOT MORE, YOU UNDERSTAND THERE IS MORE THAN ONE CULTURE. I think you’re prepared a little bit better for the future. YOU DON’T NEED A TEACHER TO LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE. I LEARNED IT IN A PUB. When I went to Mazda to work as a mechanic I didn’t speak English, because I didn’t have it at school. But I had to speak with other mechanics. I went to one class and left after one hour, thinking, ‘I’m not gonna fucking do that again,’ and went straight to the pub, where I learned a lot more by actually speaking with people. But I think when you speak two languages growing up, it’s easier for…

PICTURES There was something different on the pit straight at Imola. It was small and yet you couldn’t fail to notice it: a Canadian flag on the third slot of the grid. Right where Gilles Villeneuve started his last grand prix on the day he was betrayed by a man he believed was his friend. Shortly after the loss of Villeneuve, an unknown tifoso had stepped on to the track, probably on a day when no one was there. Surrounded by silence, in a sort of personal ritual, he had painted that Canadian maple leaf on the ground. Nobody had the heart to obliterate it, because they all shared the same pain and sorrow. It was still there when the Formula 1 circus arrived on the edge of the Santerno river…

PICTURES @CoddersF1 facebook.com/gpracingonline IS CHANGE AT THE TOP WHAT WILLIAMS REALLY NEEDS? Jost Capito was just five days short of his two-year work anniversary at Williams when news broke in mid-December of his departure. Supposedly, the 64-year old had done team owner Dorilton Capital a massive favour by delaying his retirement by a couple of seasons to helm the private investment firm’s latest acquisition. In late 2020 Capito taking charge felt like a massive coup for Formula 1’s nailed-on backmarker. That sense didn’t diminish when, in March 2021, Capito brought Francois-Xavier Demaison on board as technical director. These pals had been at the heart of Volkswagen’s World Rally whitewash with the Polo from 2013 to 2016. Plus, with Demaison’s heavy involvement in the records-mashing electric VW ID. R, he commanded…

PICTURES 01 CADDY SHOCK Andretti targets F1 entry as Cadillac 02 MEET THE NEW BOSS Half the grid changes leader over winter 03 WHY CHINESE GP MAY RETURN COLD RESPONSE TO ANDRETTI FORMULA 1 BID 01 Amid the soaring success of grand prix racing in the United States, one of America’s premier racing teams – led by the son of a legend of the sport – has revealed it has allied with one of the world’s leading car manufacturers with the aim of entering Formula 1. Yet F1 is unimpressed. Michael Andretti’s desires to launch a new F1 team have been known since February last year, when they were first announced by his father Mario. “Michael has applied to the FIA to field a new F1 team starting in 2024,”…

@benedwardstv PICTURES CAN OCON AND GASLY EMULATE TAMBAY AND ARNOUX? 40 years ago, two French F1 drivers combined their efforts as team-mates to win the constructors’ championship for a key team. Patrick Tambay and René Arnoux achieved eight pole positions and four victories with Ferrari in 1983 but lost out in the drivers’ title battle to Brazilian Nelson Piquet. Sadly, Tambay passed away last December at the age of 73 having suffered from Parkinson’s Disease. While Patrick never reached the peak of his F1 ambition, he was hugely respected and an easy person to connect with, as his 1979 McLaren team-mate John Watson remembers: “We had a very good relationship. Patrick was a very affable, nice guy. He was from a perhaps more sophisticated background than me; he was brought…

PICTURES THE JURY Frédéric Vasseur Guenther Steiner Andrew Shovlin Ricardo Musconi Jody Egginton Jack Aitken Bernadette Collins Karun Chandhok Maurice Hamilton David Tremayne Will Buxton Jennie Gow Roberto Chinchero Jonathan Noble Ronald Vording Christian Nimmervoll James Allen Kevin Turner Matt Bishop Andrew Benson Tom Clarkson Anthony Peacock HOW WE DID IT Each member of our jury was asked to select their 20 quickest (note, not ‘greatest’…) drivers from any point in the history of the F1 world championship, from 1950-2022. Their number one pick was awarded 20 points, number two got 19 points, and so on until 20th on their list received one point. While their exact selections remain anonymous, the collective results form a top 50 ranking. The driver career statistics and fastest-lap ratio are based on actual number…

PICTURES AND SHUTTERSTOCK FEELINGS ARE RUNNING HIGH AMONG the post-race crowd gathering in the ‘Crown & Sprocket’. “That ref was well out of order,” fumes the man in the Red Bull beanie, sucking froth off the top of his pint. “It was bleedin’ obvious. Max only went across the white line ’cos your bloke put him there.” “Nuffink to do with Lewis,” snorts the Mercedes hoodie, a dribble of Hofbrau running down his chin. “He was running full width of the park and creating chances. If someone puts a sliding tackle up the outside, they gotta expect a couple of wheel studs in the sidepod. I mean, be reasonable.” “It’s all very well for you two,” sniffs the man in the immaculate red Gucci loafers, drawing in the bouquet from…