In the third part of our series comparing team-mates’ head-to-head records at the end of 2012, we’ve taken a look at something slightly different in analysing how the very close battle for supremacy played out at Force India between Paul di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg. Unlike the respective pairings we’ve covered at McLaren and Mercedes, di Resta and Hulkenberg’s time as team-mates has ultimately lasted just one year with the latter having decided to switch to Sauber for 2013. Their head-to-head data is therefore limited to just 20 races – but it’s a comparison still very much worth making given More…

Sam Michael believes there are no hidden motives behind Lewis Hamilton leaving McLaren and that the driver’s desire to take on a new challenge simply outweighed everything else, even the chance to continue driving a proven race-winning car. The McLaren sporting director gave his assessment on Hamilton’s momentous decision to swap Woking for Mercedes from 2013 while looking back on some of the major talking points of the season alongside a panel of fellow experts in the December edition of the JA on F1 podcast (click here to download). When Hamilton’s three-year Mercedes deal was made public at the end More…

Christian Horner is convinced there is still scope for Red Bull to “grow and evolve” as a team into 2013 and beyond in its bid to maintain the momentum built up over the last three years. The Milton Keynes outfit became only the fourth outfit in history, after McLaren, Williams and Ferrari, to win three or more consecutive constructors’ championships this year but precedents of teams winning four in a row are even rarer, with only McLaren (1988-1991) and Ferrari (1999-2004) having achieved the feat. While getting to the top in F1 is notoriously tough, staying there over a prolonged More…

Formula 1 has signed a major new commercial deal with Rolex which will see the luxury watchmaker become the sport’s official timekeeper as part of a long-term partnership. The agreement, which is believed to be worth around £15 million per annum, will also see Rolex design F1’s official timepiece with the Swiss brand’s logos to also be positioned around grand prix circuits and at several corners next season. The joint statement announcing the new partnership also made clear that Rolex’s presence in F1 is “due to develop over the coming seasons”. Ecclestone and long-time Rolex ambassador Jackie Stewart were on More…

Lewis Hamilton’s final race for McLaren in Brazil represented a clear closing of an era for the Woking squad both in terms of its long-standing relationship with its one-time protégé and, after three season and 58 races in tandem, the team’s high-profile all-British world champion driver line-up. While Hamilton’s hopes of saying farewell with an Interlagos victory were scuppered when Nico Hulkenberg slid into him at turn one, Jenson Button was able to pick up the pieces and lay down a marker for 2013 when he will inevitably assume additional responsibility and expectation at the team given the relative inexperience More…

Lewis Hamilton’s father, Anthony, has given a revealing insight into how his relationship with his son has evolved over the last couple of years and why the move to Mercedes is another example of him flying the nest. Hamilton Snr’s presence in McLaren’s post-race celebrations of Hamilton’s brilliant victory in Austin pointed towards father and son having firmly been reconciled this year after a period in which their relationship, publicly at least, has appeared more distant. The pair had been famously more akin to a double act as Lewis came through the motorsport ranks and into his record-breaking early years More…

Formula 1 has experienced a first this year with six world champions on the grid and Red Bull’s Wings for Life charity has organised a very special auction to reflect this unique feat. The charity, which funds worldwide research into spinal injury, has managed to get each active title winner – Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Red Bull’s very own reigning champion Sebastian Vettel – to donate worn and signed race suits, along with other signed donations such as prints and race gloves, which will be put to auction to fans by Bonhams as More…

Pastor Maldonado may have endured a season of wildly fluctuating fortunes but one area in which the Williams driver has consistently impressed has been in qualifying. Whereas team-mate Bruno Senna has only made Q3 once in 18 attempts, Maldonado has reached the top 10 on 11 occasions, burnishing his reputation as a one-lap specialist by starting inside the front two rows four times. The most noticeable thing about his two most recent top-four starts, in Singapore and Abu Dhabi, was his lap-time improvement between Q2 and Q3:  the Venezuelan finding the best part of seven and eight tenths in the More…

Williams executive director Toto Wolff insists the team has not yet decided which two drivers it will pair together in 2013, with the option of retaining the current line-up “one of the possibilities”. Incumbents Pastor Maldonado and Bruno Senna have both experienced mixed seasons, part explaining why the team sits only eighth in the constructors’ championship despite a big step forward in car performance, although the former has delivered the more eye-catching results with a win in Barcelona and a number of impressive Q3 laps. Senna by comparison has consistently struggled to match Maldonado’s qualifying feats, yet has been the More…

Red Bull’s latest rising prospect Antonio Felix da Costa moved the world champion team ahead of McLaren on the second day of the young driver test in Abu Dhabi. The 21-year-old from Lisbon, who was signed to Red Bull’s young driver programme earlier this year and won four of this season’s final Formula Renault 3.5 races, improved his second-fastest time from day one by a mere 0.038s to 1m42.679s but that was still enough to set the pace as none of the other six runners could match Kevin Magnussen’s day one effort. Da Costa completed 62 laps during typically sweltering More…

Caterham will have a new team principal next season after owner Tony Fernandes confirmed he would imminently be stepping down after three years in the role. Fernandes’s announcement comes in the same week that he achieved a major landmark for the Caterham brand as a whole by entering into a partnership with Renault to revive the Alpine sportscar brand which will see two new models to be launched within the next four years. On creating the then Lotus Racing outfit, with the name under licence from Group Lotus, in late 2009, the Malaysian entrepreneur made clear that his stay as More…

McLaren has maintained its pre-eminent status among the Formula 1 grid for its environmental consciousness by retaining the Carbon Trust Standard it was first awarded two years ago. The Woking-based oufit has taken a lead in F1 in recent years in improving its carbon efficiency and originally earned the certificate in December 2010 after three years of assessment and management aimed at reducing its carbon footprint. This week the body recertified the McLaren Group following two further years of progress which has seen a relative reduction in its carbon footprint by 9% despite the expansion of its Woking base. This More…

The third and final leg of the fractured 2012 young guns test got underway for six teams in more traditional surroundings in Abu Dhabi today and it was a driver with a familiar surname to Formula 1 who set the opening day’s pace. Dane Kevin Magnussen followed in his father Jan’s footsteps by making his F1 test bow for McLaren and the 20-year-old Formula Renault 3.5 driver marked his debut by setting the pace around Yas Marina. His best time, set during the morning before he handed the car over to veteran McLaren tester Gary Paffett, of 1m42.651s was enough More…

If Lewis Hamilton felt that Sebastian Vettel’s had been “lucky” to rescue a third place finish in Abu Dhabi, it was certainly not a word you could apply to the McLaren driver’s own race on Sunday, or indeed his season as a whole. Although Hamilton has been effectively out of the title running for several races now, confirmation that his wait for a second drivers’ title would stretch into a fifth season, and beyond the end of his McLaren career, officially arrived under the lights at Yas Marina the moment his MP4-27 pulled off the road with a fuel pressure More…

McLaren sporting director Sam Michael believes it is possible for the team to take the fight to Red Bull over the remaining races and says nothing changes in the team’s approach to the end of the season despite its championship challenge being effectively over. Since Lewis Hamilton’s gearbox failed while leading in Singapore a month ago Red Bull has not been toppled from the top of the order in either qualifying or the race while in contrast McLaren have suffered a run of reliability problems with both of its cars. That run of results has laid the platform for Red More…

The paddock is awaiting Ferrari’s on-track response to being toppled from the head of the drivers’ championship for the first time since mid-June in India and the team today has promised this weekend will herald the start of an “aggressive” development push for the remainder of the season. While Red Bull’s steady, and consistently impressive, rate of development over the past few races has allowed Sebastian Vettel to win three grands prix on the spin and establish a six-point cushion over Fernando Alonso at the top of the drivers’ standings, Ferrari’s bid to improve the F2012 has been stymied by More…

During his first Formula 1 career Kimi Raikkonen’s dislike for sponsor and media engagements was almost as well-chronicled as his achievements on the track. But second time round, and with perhaps a greater freedom and desire to go in his own direction, the 2007 world champion has become involved in something very different with a clothing company from his homeland in Finland. Makia Clothing has signed the Lotus driver to be the ‘face’ of its new motorsport range and to launch the partnership has got the 33-year-old to star in a viral video campaign. The first teaser clip played on More…

Ferrari’s fuel partner Shell is offering fans the chance to win a print of the specially-commissioned painting that was recently presented to the Italian team to mark the two firm’s 500th grand prix in partnership. The two internationally renowned brands racked up the milestone at the Singapore GP last month and as part of the celebrations Ferrari chief Stefano Domenicali and race drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa were presented with a painting commissioned by Shell and created by renowned motorsport artist Michael Turner. Turner’s painting featured Fernando Alonso in the current F2012 alongside the first Shell-powered Ferrari F1 car More…

Marussia team president Graeme Lowden fears that the implementation of the costly 2014 engine regulations will put the futures of numerous Formula 1 teams on the line. Despite the in-development 1.6 litre, turbocharged V6 engines, and accompanying energy efficient systems, being less than 18 months away from their scheduled introduction, the new engine formula continues to prove a divisive issue with concerns over the cost of the technology for customer teams in particular. In recent days Bernie Ecclestone, a long-time critic of the 2014 rules, renewed his calls for the engines to be canned, suggesting that FIA president Jean Todt More…

The news that Michael Schumacher will not race for Mercedes next season unsurprisingly continues to dominate the sports news agenda in Germany, as the country’s media speculates on what the seven-time world champion may or may not do next. It’s from the angle of Schumacher’s departure from the race seat, rather than Lewis Hamilton’s arrival, that the newspaper articles have naturally generally been pitched from with the consensus being that there is no escaping from the blunt fact that Schumacher was dropped by Mercedes, with the 43-year-old’s own indecisiveness over his future having ensured he is no longer the master More…

Former McLaren driver turned driver manager Mark Blundell suspects that the “timing is right” for Lewis Hamilton to begin a new chapter in his career with Mercedes and predicts that the move will pave the way for the Briton’s management to take ‘Brand Hamilton’ to a whole new level. Blundell is ideally placed to analyse the switch from both a racing and commercial point of view having driven for McLaren in 1995 and then in more recent time conducted test driver Gary Paffett’s contract negotiations with the team, in addition to the driver’s long-standing relationship with Mercedes in DTM. Speaking More…

Considering the Singapore GP is regarded as one of the most commercially significant events on the calendar it was somewhat apt that Ferrari and its most long-standing partner, Shell, celebrated their 500th race in partnership over the weekend. To mark the occasion several events were held around the city from Thursday onwards, including Fernando Alonso performing a demonstration lap of Marina Bay in the Shell Performance Simulator (which you can watch here), while a specially-commissioned tribute video was also shown for the first time which looked back at the history of the two world-renowned brands in partnership. The four-minute film, More…

The Circuit of the Americas in Austin has been given the definitive green light to stage its inaugural grand prix in November after passing the FIA’s mandatory inspection to gain its Formula 1 licence. As is the compulsory practice for all new circuits joining the calendar, FIA technical delegate and race director Charlie Whiting visited the venue to inspect the facilities and track itself and was duly satisfied enough to give the circuit the ‘Grade 1’ status it requires to stage a grand prix. As part of his inspection Whiting walked the now fully-paved 3.4-mile circuit and then around the More…

Ferrari and fuel supplier Shell will reach a significant milestone in Singapore this weekend when the two companies rack up their 500th Grand Prix in partnership. The relationship between the two international brands is one of the most long-standing in world motorsport and to celebrate the landmark the front and rear wings on both F2012s will carry special ‘500 races’ liveries throughout the race weekend, with several other events planned from Thursday onwards. A special four-minute film will be shown to the media and feature interviews with key Ferrari figures including president Luca di Montezemolo, team boss Stefano Domenicali and More…

[Updated] Formula 1 sage and former McLaren team co-ordinator Jo Ramirez believes a failure to come to terms with the fact that he had been beaten by team-mate Jenson Button explained Lewis Hamilton’s tweeting of telemetry traces at Spa. Hamilton endured a miserable weekend in Belgium at the start of this month, becoming embroiled in controversy over several messages posted to the social media site – all of which were ultimately taken down. Ramirez, a mainstay at McLaren for 17 years before retiring in 2001, reckons that the telemetry incident highlighted a general reluctance for the current generation of drivers More…

The end of the European season is traditionally a time to take a look down the motorsport pyramid to see which drivers are beginning to knock on the door of F1 as the junior categories’ seasons come to a close. For the first time next week GP2 will travel to Singapore alongside F1 to stage its finale and the lead British driver in the category this year has been James Calado, who goes into the final two races in third place in the standings after a strong debut year at that level. The 23-year-old from Worcestershire is already guaranteed rookie More…

Jules Bianchi nothced up a hat-trick of fastest times at the Magny-Cours young drivers’ test as he returned to the Ferrari cockpit for Thursday’s final day. Having had a unique chance to directly compare the Ferrari F2012 and Force India VJM05 over the course of the first two days, Bianchi was back in the former’s title-chasing challenger on day three and wrapped up an encouraging week for both himself and Ferrari mileage-wise with 138 more laps to bring his personal test total to over 300. The 23-year-old was able to top the century again despite rain hitting the former French More…

Magny-Cours reverberated to the sound of Formula 1 cars for the first time in four years today as the second leg of the fragmented 2012 young driver test got underway for Ferrari, Mercedes and Force India. The circuit in the heart of France, which last hosted a grand prix in 2008 but continues to angle to stage a revived French GP in wake of improvements to infrastructure, was chosen by the three teams present as the venue for their permitted young guns running following concerns over the logistics of running the annual sessions in Abu Dhabi after the grand prix More…

The 2012 London Olympics have provided no end of inspirational stories over the past month and for the motorsport community the most poignant came on Wednesday afternoon at Brands Hatch as former F1 driver and double Champ Car champion Alex Zanardi claimed Paralympics gold in the handcycling time trial around the circuit he first competed on as a racing driver more than 20 years ago. The 45-year-old came close to losing his life when he was involved in a horrific crash during his second stint in the American-based Champ Car series at Germany’s Lausitzring in 2001, an accident which saw More…

One of the collateral effects of the one race ban on Romain Grosjean for causing the startline pile up at Spa, is to ask questions about how Pastor Maldonado has so far avoided a similar ban. Maldonado again firmly found himself under fire for his driving in Belgium with the Williams driver picking up penalties for three separate offences over the Spa weekend. It has raised questions about whether F1 should move towards a system of yellow cards, as in football, where an automatic ban is imposed once a certain number of yellow cards have been accrued. While Romain Grosjean’s More…

Jerome D’Ambrosio will race in place of the suspended Romain Grosjean’s for Lotus at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, the team has as expected confirmed, marking the former Virgin driver’s competitive return to a race environment for the first time since the end of last season. Although some of the bigger name drivers currently on the F1 sidelines were immediately linked to the one-off drive after Grosjean’s one-race ban for causing Sunday’s first-corner pile-up at Spa was announced, it was logical that Lotus would turn to their well-regarded Belgian test and reserve driver to fill the void at Monza. The More…

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh believes the performance the team showed in the two races immediately prior to the summer break has set it up to have a real crack at both world championship titles over the remainder of the season. The Woking squad had looked in danger of being cut adrift in the battle for the drivers’ championship in particular after disappointing race performances in Valencia and Silverstone but a big upgrade for the German Grand Prix provided a much-needed breakthrough with Jenson Button finishing second there and Lewis Hamilton then winning the following weekend in Hungary. Hamilton is in More…

Caterham’s race trucks began their journey to Belgium for this weekend’s grand prix from a new location after the team officially opened the doors at its Leafield factory over the summer break. While the importance of a move from one headquarters to another – albeit ones 150 miles apart – might be underestimated, Caterham believes the relocation from Norfolk to Oxfordshire marks a seminal moment in its relatively short history. As not only does it place the team firmly in the heart of the UK’s ‘Motorsport Valley’ but the site provides the platform for future expansion. The Leafield facility, previously More…

Bruno Senna’s performance at the Hungarian Grand Prix shows the Brazilian is beginning to finally come of age in F1, reckons his team boss Frank Williams. While the wildly contrasting fortunes of Pastor Maldonado have dominated Williams’ season, Senna’s quiet efficiency in delivering a steady stream of the minor points finishes has ensured the Grove team remain ahead of Force India in the constructors’ table. Senna’s main weakness up until the Hungaroring had been matching Maldonado’s qualifying performances but in Budapest the former HRT and Renault driver finally hauled his FW34 into Q3 for the first time and then raced More…

Sauber CEO Monisha Kaltenborn has credited the growing maturity of the team’s two young drivers as a key factor behind its transformation this season into a competitive Formula 1 force. Aside from its heavily-funded BMW era in 2006-2009, the Swiss outfit has been the epitome of a perennial midfield runner since entering the sport in 1993, with only six podium finishes achieved either side of its manufacturer-owned period heading into this season. However this year enjoying the benefits of what Peter Sauber has already described as the best car ever made at Hinwil, Sergio Perez has added a second and third place More…

Ferrari drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa have taken time out from their preparations for the Hungarian Grand Prix to experience first-hand the devastation the two deadly earthquakes in northern Italy earlier this year had on the lives of local people. In May two large earthquakes inside the space of 10 days hit the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, of which Ferrari’s Maranello base is situated, killing 23 people, leaving thousands homeless and destroying both historic buildings and businesses to the estimated cost of £3.83bn in damage. Two months on from the disasters, 13,000 people continue to live in tented More…

Caterham performance director John Iley is optimistic the traditional hot Hungaroring conditions will allow the team to enjoy a more competitive race weekend as it bids to get more performance out of the recent upgrade package introduced onto the CT01. The team, which is on the verge of a significant milestone in its short history when it begins the move into the former Arrows and Super Aguri factory in Leafield following this weekend’s Hungarian GP, introduced a big package of updates across the European and British GPs but near washouts during Friday practice in both the latter race and then More…

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh is promising the team’s underperforming MP4-27 will feature a number of “quite noticeable” upgrades at Hockenheim this weekend, as the Woking team bids to close back up in the championship battle before the summer break. The team’s general slip in competitiveness relative to traditional main challengers Red Bull and Ferrari, along with the consistently threatening Lotus team, in particular since the opening rounds of the season has been underlined by its failure to record a race finish higher than eighth in the last two races, with its wretched Silverstone result representing the team’s worst two-car finish More…

Bernie Ecclestone says he “would be interested” in staging a Formula 1 race in and around the Olympic Stadium site should a proposal to turn the venue into the centrepiece of a new Grand Prix track, which was confirmed as being among four bids for the future tenancy today, succeed. The London Legacy Development Corporation, which is charged with promoting and delivering physical, social, economic and environmental regeneration of the Olympic Park in East London following the end of the 2012 Games, which begin on July 27, confirmed in a statement that a bid from “Intelligent Transport Services in Association More…

Caterham is to embark on an “aggressive employment plan” to aid its push up the grid when they finally move from their Norfolk base of the last three years to the heart of F1’s ‘Motorsport Valley’ in Leafield following next week’s Hungarian GP. The team’s plans to move into the UK F1 equivalent of Silicon Valley in Oxfordshire were announced at the start of the year with the team taking over the larger former Arrows and Super Aguri factory in order to house the two key areas of the expanding Caterham Group under one roof – the F1 team and More…

The fight for on-track supremacy in Formula 1 is proving as tight and competitive as ever this year but an interesting off-track ‘battle’ to monitor from time to time is teams’ efforts to increase their reach in the world of social media. With F1′s outfits’ participation in such channels now far more established and widespread than was the case a couple of years ago, the numbers of Twitter and Facebook followers the teams enjoy has continued to increase at a fast rate of knots across the board. Our partner site F1i in France has compiled some research on the subject, More…

Formula 1 will move into a more environmentally-friendly era when the next generation engine formula is introduced in two years’ time and amid on-going attempts by teams to improve their own sustainability and efficiency Lotus has unveiled its new solar-powered simulator building. The construction of the new state-of-the-art race facility adjacent to the main building at its Enstone base, which has been fully operational for the past few months and was revealed to the media this week, has been used as a platform to further reduce the team’s dependency on traditional energy sources, which has been ongoing since the Genii More…

The Marussia team has confirmed that Maria de Villota has lost her right eye and remains in a “critical but stable condition” following her accident at Duxford Airfield on Tuesday. The Spanish test driver, carrying out her first day of straightline aerodynamic testing for the team, made contact with a support truck at the end of her first installation run in the MR-01 and following treatment by paramedics was taken to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. The 32-year-old regained consciousness at the hospital but was confirmed as having sustained serious head and facial injuries. On Wednesday afternoon Marussia provided an update More…

Vitaly Petrov, Russia’s first Formula 1 driver, will next week take a Caterham F1 car around his country’s newest race circuit on the outskirts of Moscow. The ‘Moscow Raceway’ is located 50 miles outside of the capital city in Volokolamsk and will stage its first international racing event on the weekend of July 14-15 when the World Series by Renault comes to town.  Petrov will also be making an appearance and will complete some demonstration laps in a Caterham around the new Hermann Tilke-designed circuit, with spectators to also get the chance to join the local star for fast laps More…

Sam Michael says McLaren will roll out upgrades expected to be worth more than a tenth of a second per lap at the British Grand Prix this weekend – although doesn’t believe the team has as big a performance gap to make up on Red Bull as the two rivals’ respective Valencia pace suggested. Although Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso ultimately triumphed against the odds last time out in Spain it was Red Bull’s apparent big step forward that proved the most ominous story of the weekend, with Sebastian Vettel qualifying on pole by three tenths of a second and then in More…

Luca di Montezemolo has used his traditional post-victory speech to Ferrari’s F1 employees to stress to the team the need to stay realistic over its competitiveness and respond to the impressive step forward made by Red Bull in Valencia. Fernando Alonso’s latest against-the-odds victory of the season last weekend, and retirements for his main two title rivals, meant the Spaniard opened up nearly the points equivalent of a race victory at the top of the drivers’ championship despite Ferrari still not having the fastest car. The Italian outfit’s president, however, is not losing sight of the bigger picture and admits More…

Ferrari will donate over £1.4 million to the families of the victims of the earthquakes that devastated northern Italy last month following a hugely successful online auction over recent weeks. Twenty three people died and several hundred were injured after the Emilia Romagna region was hit by two deadly earthquakes measuring 6.0 and 5.8 on the Richter Scale respectively inside 10 days at the end of May. Thousands of local residents were also made homeless and many of the region’s cultural buildings were destroyed. The shocks were felt at Ferrari’s Maranello headquarters, which are located less than 50km away, and More…

McLaren heads into the middle phase of the season hopeful it has finally turned a corner with its pit stops and strategy in wake of Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Canada, operations director Simon Roberts has said today. The team’s attempts to capitalise on the MP4-27’s generally strong pace since Jenson Button’s season-opening victory in Australia had been hampered by repeated errors in pit stops in particular but a change to its processes and personnel since Spain have steadily improved the situation, with analysis on this website showing that, while McLaren’s fastest pit stop remained behind those of chief rivals’ Ferrari, More…

Vijay Mallya has set his Force India team the target of emulating the feats of perennial midfield rivals Sauber and Williams in achieving podium finishes this year so not to be left behind in the constructors’ championship. Force India went into this season appearing to be the most upwardly mobile of Formula 1’s midfield teams after a strong points-scoring run in the second half of last year secured them their best finishing position under Mallya’s control, sixth, and also nearly overhaul the team now known as Lotus. But in addition to seeing Lotus regroup over the winter and remerge as More…

Up-and-coming racing drivers are to benefit from the experience and insight of Jenson Button and Alex Wurz after the pair became the first Formula 1 drivers to sign up to an online coaching website. The SAFEisFAST website, run by the American Road Racing Drivers Club, launched the ground-breaking online initiative earlier this year and signed up a host of American racing stars including Dario Franchitti to provide expert advice to aspiring drivers, who were given the opportunity to submit questions to the famous racing names. The scheme, which is funded via a grant from the FIA Institute, provides advice on More…

McLaren’s MP4-27 retains the underlying pace that it showed right at the start of the season, according to the team’s managing director Jonathan Neale, who believes both Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button will be contention to win this weekend if the team cracks the Pirelli tyre conundrum around the Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve. From suggestions that the Woking outfit could dominate the opening phase of the year following a one-three at the Australia season-opener, the team heads into this weekend’s Montreal race looking to bounce back from a series of races when a combination of operational mistakes and disappointing race More…

Formula 1 has a significant new umbrella body to represent the interests of a key group of stakeholders after the sport’s circuits came together to form the Formula One Promoters Association (FOPA). A report in today’s The Independent revealed details of the creation of FOPA, with the various race venues having joined forces last month to create a company registered in Geneva, Switzerland and chaired by Australian GP chief Ron Walker. Silverstone, the home of the British GP, is part of the new body and its chairman Neil England told the newspaper that such an organisation was not only overdue, More…

Organisers of the Canadian Grand Prix have cancelled the traditional open pit walk for fans on Thursday morning at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in the wake of threats of protests over the race weekend. The province of Quebec, in which the largest city is Montreal, has been gripped by student protests against a planned tuition fee hike since February and on Saturday street demonstrations in the region took place for the 40th consecutive day. More than 2,500 people have been arrested since the onset of protests with tensions having risen further recently following the government’s passing of a law aimed More…

McLaren’s latest young protégé, Dutchman Nyck de Vries, is to have his progress through the motorsport ranks supported by the team’s sponsor Lucozade. Towards the end of last year McLaren entered into a strategic partnership with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, whose products include the energy and sports drink Lucozade, with the logo of the brand subsequently appearing on the rear wing of this year’s MP4-27 and the firm developing a new drink specifically for the Woking squad’s race drivers and mechanics. It has now been announced that 17-year-old de Vries, the reigning back-to-back world karting champion and who this year has More…

Tony Fernandes believes the steps Caterham have taken since entering Formula 1 towards becoming a competitive operation are now starting to bear fruit after Heikki Kovalainen’s eye-catching drive in Monaco. The Norfolk-based outfit remains without a point in its 44 grands prix and Q2 appearances remain very much the exception rather than the rule, but the team’s Malaysian owner and team principal Fernandes is taking great heart from its performance on the streets of Monte Carlo. Although greatly helped by the circuit’s narrow confines in being able to keep the much faster McLaren of Jenson Button at bay, Kovalainen nonetheless More…

The famous faces of Bernie Ecclestone, Niki Lauda, Damon Hill and David Coulthard are among those from the Formula 1 paddock that will appear alongside thousandths of those of fans’ on Red Bull’s cars at next month’s British Grand Prix. The world champion team is running with special one-off liveries on its two RB8s over the course of the Silverstone weekend featuring collages of more than 25,000 pictures in aid of the team’s official charity, Wings for Life, which funds research into finding a cure for spinal cord injuries. The Faces for Charity appeal has received some high-profile backing with More…

Caterham’s sporting director Steve Nielsen expects the wider of package of upgrades that the team first trialled on the CT01 at the Mugello test to reappear on the car at some point in the forthcoming races, when he also thinks John Iley’s impact will begin to be felt. The Norfolk-based outfit tested a number of updates, principally a new exhaust layout, on the car at Mugello the week before the Spanish GP but only a new rear wing survived for the race weekend after the team didn’t find sufficient performance gains. Nielsen admits the team had to “short-circuit” some of More…

Peter Sauber has put the first stage of his succession plan in place by transferring one third of the shares in his Formula 1 team to CEO Monisha Kaltenborn, citing the desire to retain “continuity” for the Hinwil outfit into the long term. Indian-born Kaltenborn has been with the Hinwil-based outfit for over a decade having initially joined to head up its legal department but has was given a front-line chief role by Sauber when the veteran retook control of his eponymous team at the end of 2009 following BMW’s sudden pull-out, becoming Formula 1’s first female chief executive. Sauber More…

Ferrari will benefit from a more powerful fuel at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix after partner Shell developed a new blend of its V-Power mixture. Engine development may have been ‘frozen’ in Formula 1 for several years but fuel is one area where improvements can still be made by the technicians of the various fuel companies involved in the sport. Shell is confident it has managed to make a “significant step change” with the latest blend without compromising on the previous version’s consumption levels. “Despite the freeze on engine regulations in F1 and F1 fuel regulations being the most strictly More…

McLaren is set to run with the higher nose it ran on the MP4-27 right at the end of the Mugello test in Spain this weekend, its team principal Martin Whitmarsh today revealed in a conference call with journalists, with the team also making changes to its pit-stop procedures in wake of the problems of recent races. Having bucked the trend for stepped noses seen elsewhere on the grid in the design of its latest car owing to its predecessor’s higher chassis profile, pictures from the final day of last week’s Mugello test appeared to show the Woking team’s MP4-27 running More…

Jacques Villeneuve retraced his legendary father’s footsteps in a special event at Ferrari’s Fiorano test track today as he took to Gilles’s 312 T4 to mark the 30th anniversary of his death. As a team firmly in touch with its past, May 8 remains a date firmly ingrained at Maranello as the day Gilles Villeneuve, considered one of the most exciting and inspirational Formula 1 drivers of all time, was killed in a high-speed accident during qualifying for the Belgian GP at Zolder in 1982. Given Jacques never drove for Ferrari during his F1 career, and actually famously battled directly against More…

Caterham’s young American test driver Alexander Rossi has spoken of his pride in returning his country to the competitive Formula 1 field after the team confirmed he would make his debut at a grand prix weekend during next Friday’s opening practice session in Spain. While the sport’s lack of a United States Grand Prix since Indianapolis’s demise at the end of 2007, prior to the advent of scheduled new races in Austin later this year and New Jersey (2013), has been extensively documented, the lack of a top-line US F1 driver has been a perennial problem for several decades. The last American More…

Teams put the frustrations of poor weather on the opening day at Mugello firmly behind them today to get their test programmes underway in earnest, as Lotus’s Romain Grosjean and Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi ended up with identical times at the top of the timesheet. The second day of the sport’s first in-season group test since September 2008 at the picturesque circuit in Tuscany gave teams who have brought significant upgrade packages here a first serious chance to assess their performance in dry conditions. It was little surprise therefore to see numerous cars running with an assortment of aerodynamic-measuring sensors throughout the day. More…

Formula 1’s world champion team Red Bull is again giving fans the opportunity to have their picture feature on the livery of its RB8 at July’s British Grand Prix, in the latest initiative for its official Wings for Life charity. Both Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber’s cars will run with special one-off liveries throughout the Silverstone weekend featuring a collage of faces which have been uploaded to the Faces for Charity website created for the campaign. To get their face onto the cars, fans have to make a €15 (£12) donation to the charity alongside uploading their photo of choice, More…

Formula 1 teams will get their first chance to complete in-season testing in four years at Mugello next week, but HRT has opted to skip the three-day session in order to prioritise the relocation of the team’s headquarters to Madrid. Since making its debut in 2010 the Spanish-backed squad’s appearances in official group tests have been fleeting to say the least with the team, aside from the end-of-season Young Driver sessions and the first Pirelli tyre test, only appearing in pre-season sessions over the past two seasons with what were by then year-old cars. HRT went into this season with the F112 on the More…

Fernando Alonso is expecting the battle for the championship to distil into a much smaller group of protagonists than currently appears the case – and says that when that time comes Ferrari must ensure it is right in the fight. The pattern of the season’s first three races has mirrored that of 2010 when there were also three different winners from three different teams and a championship leader who had yet to win a race. Six different drivers have also stood on the podium so far in 2012, which is just one less than the total for the whole of last season. But Alonso, More…

Lewis Hamilton has spoken of his renewed happiness both on and off the race track after a start to the season which has taken him back to the top of the world championship standings for the first time in nearly two years. The tumultuous nature of Hamilton’s 2011 was well-documented with setbacks in both his racing and his private life contributing to his self-described worst year in Formula 1, but a productive winter allowed him the chance to re-focus and piece back together the ingredients he sees as being key to his personal equilibrium. Speaking to the British media in More…

Formula 1’s off-track focus in Shanghai may currently be trained solely on next week’s Bahrain Grand Prix and whether or not the Sakhir race will take place, but another race that appeared in serious jeopardy for very different reasons towards the end of last year – the revived US GP in Austin – marked an important milestone in the new venue’s construction on Thursday with a “topping off” ceremony for the pit building. Construction teams hold such symbolic ceremonies when they are ready to install support beams at the highest point of a building under construction and so, having reached that stage More…

Group Lotus has moved to deny suggestions that it has ended its formal involvement in Formula 1, the sportscar firm revealing details of a “reshaped” arrangement with the Lotus F1 Team that has seen its owner Proton give the Enstone outfit a £30m loan. In an astonishingly strongly-worded statement issued by the British-based manufacturer this evening hitting back at what it claims have been “mistruths” concerning both its F1 involvement going forward and the wider situation at the company, Group Lotus sought to clarify its relationship with Lotus F1 and Genii Capital following Gerard Lopez’s comments at the end of More…

Formula 1 now has two female development drivers after Williams announced that experienced DTM campaigner Susie Wolff – the wife of team shareholder Toto Wolff – has joined the team. Several weeks after Marussia signed Spaniard Maria de Villota to a similar position, Williams has taken on the Scottish-born driver who has spent the last six seasons competing in German touring cars, achieving a best finishing position of seventh on two occasions in that time. The 29-year-old had previously raced in British-based single-seater categories including F3 and Formula Renault 2.0 and team owner Frank Williams said that in addition to More…

The Lotus F1 Team has tonight issued a statement clarifying the intention of a report from which quotes attributed to representatives of the team appeared in an official Bahrain Grand Prix press release earlier today, the Enstone team saying it had been meant for confidential use only. On a further day of frenetic reporting over the situation in the Gulf kingdom ahead of F1’s scheduled return next week, Sakhir organisers took the opportunity to go on the offensive in wake of the increasing stream of negative reports with race chairman Zayed Al Zayani claiming “scaremongering tactics” had created “huge misconceptions” over the More…

Ferrari technical director Pat Fry has revealed that the team has managed to accelerate some of the ongoing development work on the F2012 in time to bring five new parts to the car for this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, the Englishman believing the team need to find eight tenths of a second to get on par with the fastest team on outright pace. Although Fernando Alonso’s brilliantly opportunistic victory in Malaysia took him into a hugely unexpected early lead in the drivers’ championship after two rounds, neither driver nor team have attempted to mask the F2012’s continued underperformance in dry More…

Ferrari has revealed plans to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of one of its most revered drivers, Gilles Villeneuve, next month with a special event at its Fiorano test track. The Canadian legend’s son Jacques, the 1997 world champion, will drive the 312T4 with which Gilles and team-mate Jody Scheckter contested the 1979 drivers’ title, the crown going to the latter by four points as Ferrari also won the constructors’ championship. The elder Villeneuve won three grands prix in that particular car – South Africa, Long Beach and Watkins Glen – and it was also the challenger he More…

The use of the Lotus name in Formula 1 proved one of the most bitter and protracted sagas of recent times but a story that appeared to reach its resolution late last year has today taken a dramatic new turn with the revelation that the recently-rebranded Lotus F1 Team has cut all sponsorship ties with Group Lotus, little more than one season into a seven-year deal. Genii Capital co-owner Gerard Lopez, whose Luxembourg-based investment company owns the Enstone-based former Renault team outright, has told Autosport that the title sponsorship agreement that he signed with Group Lotus in late 2010 has More…

Adrian Newey, Formula 1’s foremost designer of the past two decades, was recognised on a national scale this week when he collected his OBE from the Queen at Windsor Castle. Red Bull Racing’s chief technical officer was recognised for his services to motorsport during a career that has seen him design multiple championship-winning cars for Williams, McLaren and now his current team. Newey had been honoured in the same New Years Honours List as Nigel Mansell – who took the designer’s Williams FW14B to the 1992 drivers’ title – the 31-time grand prix winner having received a CBE for his role as More…

Lewis Hamilton got to see first hand the hardships faced by street children in Manila this week when he headed straight from the Malaysian Grand Prix to the capital of the Philippines to record a short film for UNICEF. The 2008 F1 world champion met some of the estimated 85,000 children who live and work on the streets in Manila, documenting his experiences in the Binondo area of the city in a film that will air during the celebrity football event Soccer Aid that raises money for children’s charity UNICEF and airs on ITV1 in the UK on May 27. During his two-day trip Hamilton More…

Just under a third of the Formula 1 calendar is now made up of races in Asia, yet Caterham’s Malaysian owner Tony Fernandes believes there is still scope for the sport to expand in that region of the world. Before Fernandes’s country staged its first grand prix at the then state-of-the-art Sepang circuit in 1999 Japan was the only established Asian round, yet 13 years on and China, Singapore, Korea and India all now also hold races in their own right. The rise of Formula 1’s presence in Asia has gone hand-in-hand with a gradual shift away from the sport’s traditional More…

As the paddock went about its usual work on the opening day of a grand prix weekend at Sepang on Thursday, there was also time for reflection as several drivers made poignant trips to the circuit’s turn 11 to pay tribute to Italian rider Marco Simoncelli, who was killed at the corner during the MotoGP race there last October. The Italian was considered one of the most exciting and charismatic riders on two wheels but his life was tragically cut short at the age of 24 when during the penultimate round of the MotoGP season in Malaysia he died following a horrific accident in More…

Ferrari is readying a new chassis for Felipe Massa to use in this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix in order to rule out the possibility of anything “unusual” happening with his F2012 in wake of his torrid start to the season in Melbourne. The Brazilian struggled throughout the three days at Albert Park for grip and balance, qualifying 16th and then suffering from severe tyre degradation in the race which eventually came to a miserable end following a collision with Bruno Senna. In the post-race media briefings Stefano Domenicali said the team would “need to stay close to Felipe because it’s clear More…

Caterham may have got the season in which it is aiming to score its first Formula 1 points underway with a disappointing double DNF, and a five-place grid penalty for its lead driver at the next race, but the team has taken comfort from evidence which it believes suggests it can take on Formula 1’s midfield this year. Although the Malaysian-owned squad found themselves in familiar positions below the Q1 cut line in qualifying at Albert Park, technical director Mark Smith took heart from the race pace both Heikki Kovalainen and Vitaly Petrov were able to display prior to dropping More…

Last season on JA on F1 we brought you several features on F1 fuels and engines, as Ferrari’s partner Shell gave us behind-the-scenes insight into areas ranging from the mixing of fuels for an F1 race car and the management of the engine health process. While shedding light on many aspects of these two key areas of car performance, it became clear by reading through the comments section on the site that many questions remained. So, with this in mind, we collated the best of your questions and went back to Shell and Ferrari who together took the time to answer below on topics More…

Ferrari’s difficulties in getting to grips with the F2012 was one of the threads that ran right through pre-season and Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa concede the team goes into this weekend’s Australian season-opener still in a position where they need more time to fully understand the car – but remain confident it will get there eventually. In wake of a disappointing 2011, Ferrari had hoped to be winning from the off this season but in normal conditions that appears a rather forlorn hope at Albert Park given the problematic nature of the team’s winter. The inconsistent handling of the More…

Three JA on F1 competition winners on Sunday joined some high-profile Formula 1 figures in running the 2012 Silverstone half marathon in aid of Red Bull’s official charity, Wings for Life. In December we ran a competition on the site offering the chance to join the team Wings for Life, which funds research into spinal cord injury, were entering in conjunction with Red Bull Racing in the Adidas Silverstone Half Marathon, as well as the opportunity to train with James De Montfort, Red Bull Racing’s head fitness trainer, and a tour of the world champion’s Milton Keynes factory. On Sunday, JA on F1 readers More…

Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali says the team hasn’t given up on the original exhaust configuration which featured on the F2012 in the early stages of pre-season testing – and will try again at the Mugello test in May. The placing of the exhaust outlets on the 2012 cars has been one of the big talking points of the winter in wake of the FIA’s clampdown on the blowing of exhaust gasses to deride aerodynamic benefits. Having deliberately taken a more radical approach with the F2012 in a bid to jump both Red Bull and McLaren, Ferrari launched the car with More…

Marussia has paved the way for a female driver to compete in an official Formula 1 test at the end of the year by signing Spaniard Maria De Villota to a test driver role. The 32-year-old is the daughter of former F1 driver Emilio de Villota, who made two grands prix starts in the late 1970s, and made her F1 test bow for Lotus Renault at Paul Ricard last year. She has also had race experience in Formula Palmer Audi and the football-themed Superleague. Marussia team principal John Booth said: “We are pleased to welcome Maria to our test driver More…

Pirelli has made clear its desire to continue playing an active role in improving the Formula 1 spectacle through its tyres and today secured a more up-to-date car, in the shape of the 2010 Renault, with which to continue private testing through the course of this season. The Italian manufacturer was credited with helping transform the quality of the racing last year through the advent of deliberately less durable tyres and in recent months has been pushing to get access to a more contemporary machine, having run a 2009 Toyota since being confirmed as the replacement supplier for Bridgestone mid-way More…

Mark Webber is in many people’s eyes facing a pivotal year in his career in 2012 but the man himself says he prepares to enter his 11th Formula 1 season “the best I’ve felt for a while” and with the aim of showing people he can rediscover the form that took him so close to the title two years ago. With Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel having very much not looked back since emerging on top against the odds in the three-way Abu Dhabi final race shootout of 2010, Webber, who led the now two-time champion German for much of More…

Key representatives from Formula 1 teams will again come face to face with the fans of the sport this evening (Wednesday) when the latest FOTA Fans’ Forum takes place in Barcelona. Following on from successful events over the past two seasons in the UK, Montreal and Milan, Spanish F1 fans are now getting their chance to put their questions and points of view direct to the men at the heart of the sport. And were are delighted to announce that you can follow what is again likely to be a wide-ranging and lively debate on all aspects of the sport More…

Lotus will return to the track at Barcelona on Thursday with its technical director James Allison confident that the chassis problems that forced it to pull out of last week’s test – which have now been confirmed as issues with the mounting of the upper front wishbone – have been fixed following an “intense” few days at its Enstone factory. After a promising start to pre-season when Romain Grosjean set the pace for 2012 cars at Jerez, the Frenchman reported the new second chassis as feeling strange on his first flying lap of the second test at the Circuit de More…

Yesterday we ran a competition giving the chance for JA on F1 readers to win two pairs of tickets to see the BAFTA award winning film “Senna” on the BFI IMAX screen in London’s Waterloo. To enter for a chance to win the tickets for the Thursday March 1 showing you had to predict the podium finishers, in order, for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, with the two winners chosen at random from the answers that matched James’s own prediction for Melbourne. As ever, thanks to everyone who entered and we can now reveal details of the winners. First things More…

Fernando Alonso believes it is important to Ferrari’s hopes of challenging for the world title that none of their rivals makes a dominant start to the season akin to Sebastian Vettel last year, should the Maranello team not be in a position to win from the first round in Australia. Team principal Stefano Domenicali confidently declared that “I am sure our car will be winning right from the beginning” at the launch of the F2012 but due to the innovative nature of the design compared to recent Ferraris the team’s pre-season programme has to date generally had to centre on More…

Marussia has become the latest team to run into problems with its 2012 car, the Russian-backed team tonight announcing that its new MR01 has failed the final FIA crash test and as a result forced it out of this week’s final pre-season test. The Banbury-based outfit had been hoping to roll out the first car to be built in-house in time for the start of Thursday’s four-day test, having run with last year’s machine during the first Barcelona test last week. However, those plans have now been scuppered following news that the MR01 has failed the 18th and final crash More…

Felipe Massa says Ferrari has been working hard at Maranello to ensure the new F2012 runs more reliably at this week’s test at Barcelona than was the case at the opening pre-season sessions in Jerez. The Italian team completed fewer laps with its new car than any team that was in action for three or more days in southern Spain two weeks ago, racking up just 270 laps in comparison to Lotus’s benchmark total of 404. The F2012 suffered from hydraulics trouble at various points of the week, while Fernando Alonso explained that the fact the new machine features so More…

Caterham has wasted little time in tapping into the opportunities the presence of Vitaly Petrov in its driver line-up offers up in the Russian sponsorship market by announcing the arrival of the country’s largest petrochemical firm, SIBUR. SIBUR was already a personal sponsor of Petrov when he drove for Renault last season and, in addition to its logos appearing on the Russian’s race suits, will also feature on Caterham’s CT01 this season. Following the decision to drop Jarno Trulli in favour of Petrov at the end of last week, Caterham team co-owner Tony Fernandes acknowledged the decision had been made More…

On Friday afternoon, fresh from the announcement that he had would be replacing Jarno Trulli in Caterham’s line-up for the new season, Vitaly Petrov took time out to speak to JA on F1 about his new deal and his aims for 2012. The Russian explains why he thinks he’s joined a team that’s going places and why it’s about time that people stopped labelling him as purely a pay driver.   First of all, congratulations on the Caterham drive. It must be a relief to finally have your future sorted and be definitely on the grid for 2012? “Thank you More…

Caterham has this morning announced that Lotus Renault exile Vitaly Petrov has replaced Italian veteran Jarno Trulli in its race line-up for 2012, appearing to effectively put an end to the latter’s 15-year Formula 1 career. Speculation had been doing the rounds for weeks suggesting that Trulli’s position was not as secure as the contract renewal the team announced it had signed with the 37-year-old former Renault and Toyota driver had initially appeared last September. With Petrov having been released by Renault/Lotus following two seasons at the end of last year in favour of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, the More…

Fernando Alonso says he has already seen positive signs from the new F2012 that it is able to generate heat into its tyres more quickly than was the case with its predecessor – a key aim for the team this year. Ferrari has struggled with tyre warm-up – particularly on the hardest compounds, where general performance issues have also been a perennial problem – over recent years and over the winter hired Bridgestone’s former F1 chief Hirohide Hamashima to focus on improving the interaction between car and Pirelli tyres. Alonso certainly thinks progress has been made judging by what he More…

Former Force India driver Adrian Sutil is set to appeal against his conviction for GBH handed down by courts in his native Germany last week. At the end of a two-day trial in Munich, the 29-year-old was found guilty of assaulting the co-owner of the Lotus F1 team, Eric Lux, in a Shanghai nightclub last April following the Chinese Grand Prix and given an 18-month suspended sentence and a fine of £166,139. But on Wednesday Sutil’s manager, Manfred Zimmermann, confirmed that his client was lodging an appeal against the decision. “We are convinced that this judgment is not appropriate,” Zimmermann More…

Ferrari’s most aggressively-designed car for a number of years made its track debut at Jerez on Tuesday, and afterwards its designer explained the approach the team is taking to the opening test of pre-season. The F2012 features a number of wholesale technical departures compared to last year’s disappointing challenger, notably pull-rod front and rear suspensions along with fundamental changes towards the rear of the car. Although the team’s recent cars have proved disappointing, Ferrari has nonetheless often been consistently at the sharp end of the winter testing timesheets with its cars invariably proving reliable out of the box. On Monday More…

Ferrari chief designer Nikolas Tombazis has admitted the team’s relative underachievement in recent years means the whole company is feeling the pressure to deliver consistent race-winning performances this year. At the launch of the team’s F2012 on Friday its management and drivers put emphasis on the deliberately more aggressive approach the squad has taken in the conception process for this year’s car, after being accused of lacking innovation in recent years. The car duly the most striking stepped nose of the 2012 challenger’s released to date, while the team has broken with recent design convention by reintroducing a pull-rod front More…