RUSSIAN GRAND PRIX A CHAMPION’S DRIVE · 500th consecutive race in Abu Dhabi in 2016. Starting...

A CHAMPION’S DRIVE

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PASSION

RUSSIAN GRAND PRIX

Issue 26629 September 2019

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GrandPrix+ is brought to you byDavid Tremayne | Joe Saward | Peter Nygaard

With additional material from Mike DoodsonLise Nygaard | Alison Volney

RUSSIAN GRAND PRIX

Issue 266

29 September 2019

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Leader 3On The Grid by JOe Saward 4SnapShOTS 8Mick SchuMacher inTerview 16McLaren and MercedeS 21The 1990 uniTed STaTeS Grand prix 27characTer reference 36The hack LOOkS back 37ruSSia - QuaLifyinG 41ruSSia - race 58ruSSia - fOrMuLa 2 & fOrMuLa 3 77The LaST Lap by david TreMayne 84parTinG ShOT 88

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DAVID TREMAYNEA freelance motorsport writer and former executive editor of Motoring News and Motor Sport, he is a veteran of 32 years of Grands Prix reportage and the author of 50 motorsport books. He covered his 500th Grand Prix in Sepang in 2016, and his 500th consecutive race in Austin that year. His writing, on both current and historic issues, is notable for its soul and passion, together with a deep understanding of the sport and an encyclopaedic knowledge of its history. David is also acknowledged as the world expert on the history of land and water speed record breaking, has a passion for Unlimited hydroplanes, and is the British representative on the FIA Land Speed Records Commission. A former rocket car pilot, he averaged 275 mph and peaked at 297 in the STAY GOLD jetcar before walking away from a 250 mph inversion while attacking the 301 mph UK land speed record in August 2017. He will challenge it again in 2020.

JOE SAWARDA professional motorsport writer for 36 years, the last 31 of them in Formula 1, he celebrated his 500th consecutive race in Abu Dhabi in 2016. Starting out travelling with a tent and a typewriter, he joined Autosport, for which he later became Grand Prix Editor. His wide-ranging travelling led to a commission to write the best-selling “The World Atlas of Motor Racing”, which sold 40,000 copies. A freelance for the last 23 years, he was a pioneer in electronic media in F1, launching the award-winning JSBM e-newsletter as early as 1994. This was followed by www.grandprix.com before he moved on to GP+, his blog Joe Blogs F1 and the Missed Apex Podcast. Joe also hosts regular Audience with Joe events for F1 fans, believing that the sport shoud engage with its followers. Trained as an historian, Joe is also an acknowledged expert on the Special Operations Executive (SOE), his book “The Grand Prix Saboteurs” won the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Renault Author of the Year Award. He has also written “The Man who Caught Crippen”, a non motor racing book, plus several volumes of "Fascinating F1 Facts". He is a Visiting Fellow of Cranfield University. He has lived in France since 1991.

PETER NYGAARDA law student at Copenhagen University, when he began taking photographs at Formula 1 races, he established the Grand Prix Photo company after he graduated in 1982 and has since attended 600 Grands Prix. Today he not only takes photographs but also writes and commentates. The company covers every Grand Prix and, with contacts all over the world, can supply photos from almost any motor race. In addition to current photography the Grand Prix Photo archive is one of the biggest in the world, Nygaard having acquired the work of a number of F1 photographers, notably Italian photo-journalist Giancarlo Cevenini and France’s Dominique Leroy, plus a portion of Nigel Snowdon’s collection. Grand Prix Photo has 25,000 photographs on its website and millions more in its offices, which are decorated with a Tyrrell 021, which Peter acquired from Ken Tyrrell.

MIKE DOODSONAttended his first Grand Prix at Rheims in 1959. He studied accountancy in Manchester and joined a motor club at Oulton Park and was soon writing for its magazine. He freelanced for Motoring News before joining the staff as a professional journalist in 1968 covering Formula 2. Two years later was promoted to Formula 1 and remained a Grand Prix reporter until 1972 when he became the John Player Special press officer and later the Sports Editor of Motor magazine. In 1983 he returned to freelance journalism. He has ghost-written columns for no fewer than six F1 World Champions.

Who we are What we thinkThis Friday in Paris, a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council is expected to confirm the draft calendar for the 2020 FIA Formula One World Championship.

In F1’s 70th season there will be a record 22 races if all goes to plan, 10 in Europe, seven in Asia, four in the Americas and one in Australia. It will begin in Australia on March 15th and end in Abu Dhabi on November 29th.

The Dutch GP will return on May 3rd after a break of 35 years - thanks, Max! – and on April 5th Vietnam will become the 34th host country to join the circus.

As it seeks to reduce the cost of staging Grands Prix, Liberty Media is trying to pack more races into the calendar. We hear negative suggestions that ecological bodies are militating against the Dutch race, but assuming that such things are resolved, and 22 races indeed go ahead, that may be just the tip of the iceberg and that 25 is Liberty’s ultimate target.

Already, we’ve seen a record four Grands Prix held in one calendar month – last July with Austria, Britain, Germany and Hungary – and this year with Belgium, Italy, Singapore and Russia.

Next year, to facilitate compressing so many races into the same timescale, there will be no fewer than seven back-to-backs. That makes sense, and thankfully there will be no repeat of the triple header of 2018. It will nevertheless be a punishing schedule for everyone, and that will only get worse if more races are added. If that happens, Australia must accept an earlier date if it still wishes to host the season opener, and the August break must in no way be truncated. F1 should never get to NASCAR’s state, where teams have to double up crews to alleviate human fatigue.

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WACKY RACES

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ON THE GRIDby Joe Saward

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It is six years since the Formula 1 circus first turned up in Sochi for the first Russian Grand Prix. It was not a happy time, as the racing folk arrived directly from Japan, where the previous weekend Jules Bianchi had had an accident from which he would never recover. A whole generation in F1 people had grown up since the awful Imola weekend of 1994 - and a lot of people had never had to deal with the dark side of the sport.

At the same time, it was a time of international tension between Russia and the Western countries. Sport is supposed to be above politics, but it was rather difficult to ignore the fact that earlier that year the Russian Federation has annexed the Crimean Peninsular and had also sent soldiers into eastern Ukraine. It was a few weeks after a Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down in the region, in an incident that is still being investigated today by an international tribunal.

The sense of edginess that weekend was heightened by the fact that most of the F1 folk stayed in the old Olympic Games compound, which never really felt like it was a part of Russia. It never felt real.

The population of the city has grown by 50 percent in the last five years and it is now close to becoming one of the top 20 cities in Russia, based on population, but it is still tiny compared to Moscow (10.5 million) and Saint Petersburg (5 million). The authorities say that 6.5 million people visited Sochi last year, but 85 percent of them were Russians and overall international tourist visitors to Russia still

number only 4.2 million a year.The Daily Mail suggested this year that

President Vladimir Putin now wants to move the race to a new track near St Petersburg in 2021, despite Sochi having a deal for the next five years.

Putin generally seems to get what he wants and F1 would no doubt agree to go wherever he demands - if the money is right. And if it suits the F1 philosophy and strategy.

Sochi’s recent growth is based on the fact that it is a warm, sunny place on the Black Sea, which is why the Russian royal family used to go there in imperial days and dictator Joseph Stalin had a summer residence there in the Soviet era. Putin himself has a vast ‘palace’ near the town of Gelendzhik, about 50 miles up the coast from Sochi.

I had a look into the idea of a race in Saint Petersburg, given F1’s philosophy of taking races to destination cities, but the story in the Mail made no sense at all. Building a brand new F1-standard racing circuit 15 miles from Saint Petersburg is daft idea because there is already a brand new track nearing completion at the Igora resort, 50 miles north of the city, which is funded by a Putin ally, in a region where both men had holiday homes in the old days. This is an FIA Grade 2 circuit and meant to be used for GTs but could, in theory be upgraded. But building another one in a region which is snow-bound for four months a year?

A track within 15 miles of the city would, I suppose, be a little like the Hungaroring, outside Budapest, which serves as the focus

for the F1 ‘festival’ that happens when F1 visits each July. But does it really make sense to fund yet another circuit and pay even higher fees to get the F1 folk to agree to switch away from Sochi? And building it all in less than two years? No way...

I have no idea why such a story would be written along these lines - there is usually an explanation if one looks hard enough - but the whole thing doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Mind you, while I was investigating the whole thing, I noted that there would be potential for a really wacky race because of the phenomenon known as ‘the white nights’, which occur in late June when the sun doesn’t really set because of the city’s high latitude and night and day become indistinguishable.

Now there’s a daft idea, isn’t it? A night race that takes place in daylight...

Caption

Art photography

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MICK SCHUMACHER by Joe Saward

A SCHUMACHER’S TALEWhen Mick Schumacher’s engine started to trail oil in the Formula 2 feature race in Sochi, the young German’s hopes of getting a Superlicence for 2020 were also going up in smoke...

Schumacher started the season with 50 Superlicence points, which is 10 more than the required 40 points over three seasons which the FIA demands. But 20 of these points - gained for finishing second in German Formula 4 and Italian F4 in 2016 – will no longer be valid in 2020 and as Mick scored no points in his first season in European Formula 3 in 2017 his total at the end of this year will drop below the required limit. He will have the 30 points that he picked up in 2018 for winning the European Formula 3 title, and whatever he can salvage this year. His goal was to finish sixth or above in the Formula 2 Championship and thus collect 10 Superlicence points to keep him at 40.

It was a tough target for a rookie but he was with the Prema team, which took Nyck de Vries to fourth in the series in 2018 and won the title in 2017 with rookie Charles Leclerc. So it was possible... and things began well with some solid points-scoring in Bahrain and Baku

was being mentioned as a possible driver with Alfa Romeo in Formula 1, because of his membership of the Ferrari Driver Academy. The cancellation of the two races at

but then a series of races when he failed to score before an upturn in the summer and a victory in the Sprint race in Budapest, which created a lot of publicity. His name

Spa, following the accident that killed Anthoine Hubert and then technical troubles in Monza meant that Mick arrived in Sochi with a steep hill to climb to get the points he needed. It was looking good for a while but then his engine blow-up meant he was left with 51 championship points, but needing at least 74 to catch the sixth-placed Nobuharu Matsushita and a maximum possible score in the remaining races of only 63.

It means that Mick will have to stay in Formula 2 for another season and will have the same target next year, a finish in the top six to get him the Superlicence points he needs for 2021.

He has been a little bit unlucky and has shown good pace on a number of occasions but the best rookie this year is China’s Guanyu Zhou, who has collected 116 points, more than twice the number of points that Mick managed.

Nonetheless, you have to feel a little bit sorry for Schumacher.When you are the son a famous

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Formula 1 champion, people have all kinds of expectations: not all of them positive.

But when you look at the modern history of Formula 1 there are three very good examples of sons of famous fathers who were able to fight their way through and win the World Championship themselves: Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve and, more recently, Nico Rosberg. Many others did not. It is not just about driving ability, it’s about the passion and ambition, about the mental strength, about being in the right place at the right time and there is always a bit of luck involved as well.

There are pros and cons in such a situation, of course. The path to the top is made easier by contacts, by access to money and to the best teams; but the expectations are often far too high and so results can seem to be disappointing when in reality they are not bad at all. When all is said and done, any driver - every driver - has to deliver the best possible results if they want to be in F1. Rich daddies can pay for only so much...

Mick says that it is not something he worries about.

“It’s always been there,” he says. “You just grow with it. The first time there were F1 expectations for me was in karting days, but this was always my dream since I was three

years old and I was already sitting in go karts and doing laps in the garden in front of our house.”

In an effort to avoid the glare of publicity Mick began racing competitively using the name ‘Mick Betsch’, his mother Corinna’s family name. Later he used the name ‘Mick Junior’, but eventually

he gave up the idea and took the family name and lived with the wild expectations.

He knows that he has to build his own career based on ability and results and his Formula 3 season in 2018 was pretty impressive.

People in Formula 1 were taking notice.

“I think Mick is showing a real good performance,” says Franz Tost, team boss of Scuderia Toro Rosso, who is always on the lookout for young talent. “Last year he won the Formula 3 European Championship. This year is the first year in Formula 2. He showed some very good races, in some other

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races he was involved in incidents, but it is a learning year. I expect that he will do another Formula 2 year but I’m convinced that he will make his way into Formula 1.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff agrees.“He is a great young man with a

fantastic character and personality,” he says. “A big name that sometimes can have a negative impact in Formula 1 because you are being put under pressure and he copes extremely well with that pressure and now we need to give him time to properly develop as a young man and as a racing driver and I have no doubt that we will see him in Formula 1.”

Mick admits that he is thinking about Formula 1 already.

“Sure, I think about it,” he says. “That’s my dream. It’s where I want to go and that’s where I want to basically live my life. To be this close is obviously something special. You think about it but I’m pretty good at managing that. If I am driving my Formula 2 car that is all I am thinking about. At other times you have the opportunity to think about other things and what you want to do and how to improve your situation so as to be in a better position in the future. Ideally, it will be in F1.”

Does he feel he is prepared for Formula 1?

“I feel ready,” he says. “If you

because there are a lot of different things in F1 that affect your position.”

So is a second year in Formula 2 a better option?

“We are so close to F1 now that all that really matters is whether

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arrive into Formula 2 most of the people here would say that they are ready. Obviously a year in F2 where you learn a lot about tyres and stuff helps you for F1, but that doesn’t mean that you will automatically do a good job

you get the chance or not,” he says. “I guess that if you get the chance you take it. Maybe it makes more sense to stay another year in Formula 2 and do a good job it might help, but that doesn’t mean that there will be any seats in F1

open and you could be sitting there with nothing to drive. It is a bit like the sport choosing you, rather you choosing the sport. If the chance comes I will take it. That would be the right choice, but right now I’m thinking about F2.

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We’re here and that is what I focus on. But I dream about F1…”

In the days before the Italian Grand Prix, he was given a taste of life as an F1 driver when a huge crowd gathered in the Piazza Duomo in Milan to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Scuderia Ferrari.

One of the biggest cheers of the day came when Mick was introduced. They were cheering for his name; for the memories of Michael; and his glory years with Ferrari. They want the team to be great again. And wouldn’t it be great if there was another Schumacher to cheer.

Mick did his first F1 tests in Bahrain back in April, in a Ferrari one day and then an Alfa Romeo the next. Then at the German Grand Prix he drove his father’s Ferrari F2004, the car in which Michael won his seventh Formula 1 World Championship.

And then came Milan. “It was a strange feeling,” Mick

said. “I had never experienced something like that before. That was just a little bit of what my dad experienced. It was hard for me to imagine how it must have been for him, but it was very nice. You really feel the vibe and the support of the people.

“It is something that I am lucky enough to have experienced.” v

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McLAREN AND MERCEDES by Joe Saward

PUTTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHERThe McLaren-Mercedes partnership produced some memorable moments in Formula 1, back in the 1990s and 2000s, both on and off the track - notably the famous launch of West McLaren Mercedes, which featured The Spice Girls... Now the partners are back together again and aiming to take the tracks in 2021...

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to use Mercedes engines than Renaults, on the basis that these have long been more competitive and might allow McLaren to achieve results that could one day help to attract a manufacturer to put the team back into the top echelon of F1.

There was also a new management at McLaren with Andreas Seidl coming in as team principal and technical director James Key.

It was all sensible and pragmatic and one could even speculate that Renault would be happy because it

would then be able to concentrate all of its resources on to its own factory operation, without having to split is efforts in support of customers and face the ignominy of being beaten by a customer.

McLaren and Mercedes were partners in Formula 1 from 1995

Back in July there were the first rumours of McLaren switching from Renault power to Mercedes. It was a story that total sense. It was a concept that would give Mercedes a stronger secondary team, making it tougher for the opposition and more political clout as the supplier of four of the 10 F1 teams. There was a financial element as well as another partner meant more revenues to help to off-set the investment made by the German car manufacturer in F1.

From the McLaren perspective, a return to Mercedes was the logical choice as there was no manufacturer on the market for a factory deal and so the next best thing was to be the leading customer of the most competitive engine manufacturer.

The McLaren-Renault relationship, which was agreed when the Woking team needed an alternative to Honda, was a step forward for the team but it was clear from the start that if Renault F1 continued on its upward development path, McLaren would inevitably be behind the factory team, because of the advantages that come from the integration of the chassis and engine design. Customers are always at a disadvantage, even if their power units and software are the same. Thus it was better for McLaren

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help Brawn Grand Prix, which needed an engine after Honda withdrew and the team was taken over by its management, led by Ross Brawn. It was an act of generosity which would backfire mightily as Brawn waltzed to the World Championship in 2009 and Mercedes decided to acquire the team and wind down the alliance with McLaren.

McLaren remained a Mercedes partner until the chance came to go into partnership with Honda at the end of 2014 but this relationship soon turned into a nightmare as expectations (on both sides) were not met. It reached a point when both sides agreed that it was better to go their separate ways - and Honda moved into its alliance with Red Bull, and McLaren jumped into bed with Renault for 2018. That three-year deal will not be extended and McLaren will join up with Mercedes in 2021.

“Renault has been instrumental to our Formula 1 recovery plan and a fantastic partner to McLaren Racing,” said McLaren’s Zak Brown. “Despite its understandable focus on its factory team, Renault has always been fair, consistent and transparent in our relationship and we thank the whole team at Viry for the excellent service provided to McLaren in F1 over the past two

a decade-long struggle against Ferrari and then Renault before Lewis Hamilton finally broke through and won the title in 2008.

At the end of that year McLaren’s then CEO Martin Whitmarsh made the decision to step in to

until 2014, with the Greman company owning 40 percent of the shares in the team and being a partner in various road car projects. It looked for a long time as though the team would ultimately become a Mercedes subsidiary.

The alliance was slow-starting but scored its first victory in 1997 and then progress accelerated when the team took on Adrian Newey, leading to World Championship successes with Mika Hakkinen in 1998 and 1999 but then there was

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the change was Seidl.“I asked him when he joined,

‘What to do we need to do to get back to the front?’, and he quickly came back with recommendations like the new wind tunnel,” Brown said. “He led the decision here on the power unit. It was of course a

years. Of course, we enter the final year of our relationship in 2020 and are focused on continuing our challenge together of closing the performance gap to the front of the field”.

The initial deal will be for three years, which will mean that McLaren would be free to look for a different deal if the F1 engine rules are changed for 2025, which is under discussion as the sport must allow itself space to follow market trends in order to remain relevant to the industry. In all likelihood this will still mean hybrid power units, but there could be considerable modifications to the rules that might attract new players as the automobile industry works out where the future lies.

“This agreement is an important step in our long-term plan to return to success in Formula 1,” Brown said. “Mercedes is the benchmark, both as a team and a power unit, so it is natural we would seek to secure a relationship with the company for the next phase of our journey. This announcement reflects the confidence of our shareholders and is an important message to our investors, employees, partners and fans that we are committed to returning McLaren to the front of the field.”

Brown said that the force behind

term deals.“Since the introduction of the

hybrid regulations in 2014, it has been a cornerstone of our strategic approach to lead PU development with our works team and to deliver a benchmark product to our customers across the field,”

group decision, but one that was driven by Andreas.”

There is little doubt also that Mercedes felt that it could do better with McLaren than it as been doing with its current customers Williams and Racing Point, although both have long-

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unit side there is more learning for us in this exercise with having more competitive customers adding to the two that we have.

“We rate McLaren strongly. The steps that Zak and Andreas have initiated certainly already look very promising. So the advantages

says Andy Cowell, the MD of Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains. “We are therefore delighted to expand our roster of partner teams and especially with an historic brand like McLaren. There is a shared history between the two organisations; and we look forward to achieving success together again in the future.”

The delay in switching engines might not be perfect but McLaren has a lot to do, with its new wind tunnel project underway but unlikely to be finished until 2021, which means that the first car which will benefit will be in 2022.

“The two brands share a prestigious history,” says Mercedes Benz’s Toto Wolff. “This new agreement is all about looking to the future and beginning a new era of power unit supply for the years ahead. McLaren have been putting in place the building blocks of their revival over recent seasons, including impressive performances this season with Renault power. We hope that this new long-term agreement marks another milestone for McLaren as they aim to take the fight to the sport’s top teams, including our Mercedes works team.

“I think that a new era is going to start in 2021 with a compressed grid, with more competition, and we believe that from the power

outweigh the potential deficits of fighting a hard competitor like McLaren in the future. Then of course there is a financial upside. It’s a cash-flow question which is helpful on the power unit side. So overall many pros.

“There is one risk in this, and that

is that if McLaren does a good job they will push us hard and maybe benchmark us in a way to say ‘OK that’s the same power unit, you guys are not doing a good enough job’. But where we are now after seven years in the hybrid era we feel that we are we are ready for

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that step.“It is important to make it clear

that there is a works team today, and this is a customer power unit relationship, and not the start of a works deal, and us not being there any more. As it stands we are keen in understanding how F1 goes forward, how it develops, and continuing - preferably as a works team. So to avoid any misunderstanding this is not a point where we can spread our bets and say we may stay as an engine supplier, and not as a works team. This is not what I’m saying. We enjoy being a works team.”

Over at Renault, the decision seems to also be welcome.

“While looking beyond the terms of the current contract, which concludes at the end of 2020, it was apparent that Renault and McLaren have different ambitions for the future,” said Cyril Abiteboul, the team principal of Renault F1. “Each of the different elements of this decision have been carefully evaluated over the past few weeks. 2021 will be a crucial season for all teams and it is important for us to have a precise and clear view of the strengths and ambitions of our competitors going forward. This decision is in line with Renault’s vision to become a works team, with a goal to return to the front.” v

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OSTRICHES, EMPTY SEATS – AND JEAN D’AVIGNONWhat if they held a Grand Prix in a desert town and nobody bothered to go and watch?

1990 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX by David Tremayne

Well, they did. It was America’s round of the World Championship and it was held on a dreadful street circuit in downtown Phoenix between 1989 and 1991 before the contract was cancelled in October of that final year. The locals detested everything about it.

At the first race, in June 1989, we all sweltered in 38 degrees C heat. So the 1990 race was moved to March and became the season opener, and instead we shivered in 18 degrees C beneath overcast skies.

The 2.360-mile (3.798-km) track

was unimaginative, its design largely dictated by the grid-style layout of downtown Phoenix. Drivers went down Jefferson Street to a 90 degree right, then left on to Madison Street through a 90 degree corner, left again – yes you’re getting the picture,

through another 90 degree turn – then came back on themselves through a 120 degree right which led to a curve down to… pretty much another 90 degree left on to 5th Street which presaged… Forget it. Virtually all the turns thereafter were 90 degrees, okay?

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So from 5th they went left on to Monroe, left on to 3rd, right on to Washington, right towards Adams, left on to Adams, left again, then right into a 180 degree curve – yes! - which took them back to the start/finish line. The Circuit of the Americas it wasn’t.

But thanks to Jean Alesi and Uncle Ken Tyrrell, that 1990 race was exciting – well, for its first half – as the FIA Formula 1 World Championship couldn’t have got off to a better start.

When Ken announced that he was switching to Pirelli tyres for two years, eyebrows went high enough to act as toupees. He had, after all, been with Goodyear for 18 years. But the moment untimed practice began on the Friday, Jean proved it to be a canny decision as he headed the Goodyear-shod McLaren-Hondas of Ayrton Senna and new team-mate Gerhard Berger. Shock horror!

Later that day, as Gerhard (right) celebrated his new berth chez McLaren by annexing pole position with a lap of 1m 28.664s, Jean lined up fourth with on 1m 29.408s with fellow Pirelli runners Pierluigi Martini in a Minardi-Cosworth – yes! – and Andrea de Cesaris in a Dallara-Judd separating him from the Austrian with 1m 28.731s and 1m 29.019s respectively.

how well they would last in the race. The Italian wets looked good, too.

Even his biggest fan would not have predicted that Jean would catapult straight into the lead at the start, but the Frenchman was mighty teed off not to have done better than fourth on the grid, so was well stoked when the lights

Que passa? Three Pirelli runners in the top four, and Ayrton Senna only fifth with 1m 29.431s ahead of Nelson Piquet’s Benetton-Ford (1m 29.862s), Alain Prost’s Ferrari (1m 29.910s), Olivier Grouillard’s Osella (1m 29.947s and, you guessed right, Pirellis), Thierry Boutsen’s Williams-Renault (1m 30.059s) and Stefano Modena’s sexy Brabham

BT58-Judd (1m 30.127s, Pirellis) completing the top 10?

Well, to be fair, it had rained all day Saturday so nobody who might have been expected to improve had the remotest chance to do so. But it was clear that the Pirellis had something over their Goodyear rivals when it came to single-lap pace. The question was

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went out. He won the drag race with a slightly tardy Gerhard down to the first corner, reminding us how good he’d looked in F3000 in Birmingham’s Super Prix the previous season, and to general

It seemed so, especially as there were shenanigans at McLaren. Ayrton had been disinclined to do the winter testing, which Gerhard had gladly taken over in order to get used to the team after

surprise he was 2.4s ahead at the end of the lap and continued to pull away.

Was this going to be one of those massive surprise season openers?

switching places with Prost. He’d done quite well and was happy with the way he was settling in, and was really chuffed when he had taken pole in his first race as Ayrton’s team-mate. But he went

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to pieces under pressure from the Brazilian after only nine laps, and clumsily attacked a tyre wall in his MP4/5B. That prompted a pit stop for a new rear wing and he rejoined to set fastest lap - in 1m 31.050s on lap 34 which, given how much faster than was than Ayrton and Jean’s best laps, was probably done in extreme anger - before his clutch broke after 44 laps.

But Ayrton had taken just one important psychological step in the battle of wits he would always play with his team-mates, and now Gerhard was in no doubt what a mountain he had to climb going up against him.

Despite its lack of familiarity with the Pirellis, which it had only tried for the first time on Friday morning, Tyrrell got things absolutely right and set its 018s up with just enough downforce to generate sufficient heat in them.

With an empty road to the Tyrrell, everyone expected Ayrton to slice up to the lead in no time, but for a while Jean actually opened the gap beyond the 8.2s it had been when Berger spun. Then, bit by bit, the McLaren driver began to make his power advantage felt and by lap 32 they were nose to tail and the writing had become graffiti on the downtown walls. Ayrton was

suddenly sizing up his speedy rival, and going into Turn One on lap 34 he saw his chance and pounced down the inside of the right-hander, in typical Senna fashion. But what happened next was… unexpected…

Jean didn’t concede the corner. Instead he just kept on going on

the outside of the McLaren, to take the inside line for the following left-hander. Spurting back alongside Ayrton, he forced him almost to a halt and then grabbed back his lead. It was as astonishing at the time as the sight of Buster Douglas flooring Mike Tyson.

Ayrton had a think about it

next time around and did the job properly, but Jean still ran him side by side for the two corners before finally accepting the obvious. It was magnificent stuff from a pure racer. Something that, when he has kids, Giuliano Alesi will proudly tell them about their grandfather’s spirit…

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Ayrton’s fastest lap, the third overall, was 1m 32.178s; Jean’s was 1m 32.221s…

“He drove very well and I certainly didn’t expect him to go round the outside!” Ayrton admitted with a smile as he said nice things about Jean’s driving and predicted a World Championship that sadly would never come the Frenchman’s way. “It was very clean and precise; the sort of motor racing I enjoy.”

“He is my hero and has been for many years,” Jean beamed at the time.

This weekend in Russia we spoke again of that day, one of my favourite memories of Jean D’Avigon. What did he remember?

“Everything! I remember from the moment I released the clutch. I knew I was going to lead that race! I understood that my car was a bit faster because it had better reaction time. So I knew that I was going to lead a Grand Prix for the first time, and I just hoped that my friends back in Avignon would be watching!

“I pushed like an animal, hoping to stay there for at least one lap. But slowly I disappeared. I was just enjoying the moment, thinking of nothing else but making those friends happy. And then I began to smell the win…

“Back then you had V8s, V10s

and V12s. With my Ford V8 I had 25 kilos less fuel than anyone else with the 10s or the 12s, so I had a better car to begin with. When we started to get to the middle of the race the V10 started to have the advantage. At that time our car had better aerodynamics than either McLaren or Ferrari, we were just down on power. When the power started to match the weight of the car as the fuel load went down, it was McLaren’s advantage.

“Ayrton slowly began to catch me, and then I thought, ‘Okay, let’s give those friends in Avignon something to enjoy. I gave my very best and braked really late for Turn One on lap 34. Ayrton overbraked going down the inside, so I ran round the outside of him and kept the lead into Turn Two. That was fun!

“After that, of course, there was nothing I could do. But to be on the podium with Ayrton Senna…

It was a very big day for me, and he was very kind to me afterwards even though I was a friend of Nelson Piquet’s!”

To this day, that Tyrrell 018 resides at Jean’s home in Avignon…

Sadly, that 34th lap provided the last major excitement as Ayrton then eased away as he pleased for his 21st Grand Prix success, the most interesting aspect of which was his new air of

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calmness and calculation. Earlier he had waited patiently to pass Andrea’s Dallara, then pressured Gerhard into his mistake. A year earlier he might have been more impetuous.

Jean (above), meanwhile, never gave up. At one stage he had to

lap. Both made a lot of minor mistakes of line and positioning, but nothing serious, yet despite their experience neither could hold a candle to Jean who made everyone bar Ayrton look geriatric.

Thierry eventually relieved Nelson of third when the Brazilian

ease back to ensure that his tyres went the distance, and Ayrton got 28.5s ahead, but at the finish as the Brazilian backed off, the gap came down to less than 10s. I can still see the sheer elation on his face, and the joyful wave he gave as he ran by us to the podium, the first of his

career. He was never going to be

challenged by the like of Thierry Boutsen or Nelson Piquet, who were embroiled in a battle for third in the early stages until Piquet made a pit call after flat-spotting his tyres on the 28th

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pitted on lap 28, and thereafter ran a lonely race which garnered him a useful four points which bought his personal overall total to 100, while Nelson cemented his new relationship with Benetton by holding off a determined Stefano Modena for fourth.

If the resurgence of Tyrrell was the major surprise, the poor performance of the Ferraris wasn’t far behind. After their quick test times much was expected of them, yet neither delivered. In qualifying Prost and Nigel Mansell were bugged by gremlins in their semi-automatic transmissions, each losing confidence in it by the day. Alain might have been miffed to be only ninth on the grid, but Nigel was only 17th.

In the race both cars were smoking within the first 10 laps. Alain’s was worse, and after working up to fourth despite further selection difficulties, the World Champion departed the fray on lap 21 with a blown V12.

Nigel, also in gearshift trouble, lasted until lap 50, when his clutch suddenly exploded on the back stretch and pitched him into a fiery spin. The Prancing Horse limped off to Brazil with a lot of thinking to be done.

Pirelli had clearly made some serious progress over the winter, not only in qualifying and wet

tyres, but also with its race rubber. In the past the latter had all too often let it down, but not this time. Jean had been second-fastest to Ayrton on the softer-compound 73s in the morning warm-up, presaging what was to come, and for the race all of the Pirelli runners followed factory advice and ran

the more durable 88s. The two Tyrells and Modena’s well-driven Brabham went non-stop, equalling the feat of all of the Goodyear runners bar Piquet, who opted to try a fresh set in a vain effort to reduce his Benetton’s understeer.

Stefano couldn’t quite challenge Nelson, but his

fifth place was a great boost to Brabham after a winter of discontent.

Tyrrell’s renaissance was completed when Satoru Nakajima brought his 018 home a decent sixth, and the former Lotus driver was so pleased with a sensible run that he kissed Ken Tyrrell’s hand as

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soon as he climbed out of his car! The rest of the Pirelli qualifying

stars fared less well. His third place on the grid had brought tears to the volatile Andrea de Cesaris’s eyes, but after he had run third in the early going there were some of a different kind when he suffered engine failure while holding sixth place after 25 laps.

His team-mate Gianni Morbidelli, standing in for Emanuele Pirro, looked good in practice until a shunt, and ultimately joined the Monteverdi Onyx duo of Stefan Johansson and JJ Lehto in failing to qualify.

Minardi admitted that it got its aero set-up wrong, as Pierluigi Martini faded quickly from his front-row start and later struggled vainly to keep Modena behind him. He finally had to settle for seventh and zero points after a pit stop on a day which had seemed to promise so much more. But he did set the second fastest lap of the race after that, in 1m 31.568s.

Olivier Grouillard was unlucky to drop away quite early on after a whack up the gearbox from Riccardo Patrese’s Williams-Renault (right), and then became involved with Brabham’s Gregor Foitek who collided with him on the back straight on lap 40. The Swiss driver’s BT58 came to rest in the middle of the track in a sorry

state, while the Osella made it to its pit where it retired with front suspension damage.

Eric Bernard was at that time rated as highly as Alesi in France, and was again impressive in the

Goodyear-shod Larrousse Lola-Lamborghini LC90, putting his smooth, flowing style to good use on the street track to bring the car home eighth ahead of Patrese despite a quick spin due

to fading brakes. His team-mate Aguri Suzuki was also a victim of that problem; the Japanese driver had also impressed by passing Eric and running seventh for a while before his retardational problems

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sent him down an escape road, from which he could not find reverse gear and was thus unable to escape.

Michele Alboreto helmed his uncompetitive and oversteery Arrows-Ford into 10th place, with team-mate for the race Bernd Schneider (standing in for an injured Alex Caffi), taking 12th as they sandwiched Alessandro Nannini’s Benetton. The Italian had messed up the opening lap fighting with the German, ruining both their races. Sandro ran wide in Turn One then hit a wall and Schneider, forcing both into remedial pit stops.

The race was a disaster for Leyton House, Lotus and Ligier.

Leyton House was the only one which managed to get a car home as Mauricio Gugelmin brought his CG891 in 14th behind Roberto Moreno’s Eurobrun. The Miami Blue cars were brutal to drive with their stiff set-up and resultant serious vibrations, and team—mate Ivan Capelli retired with a faulty oil pressure sensor and broken suspension. Derek Warwick’s horrible weekend in the Lotus-Lamborghini culminated in gear selection problems and then a recurrence of suspension problems that had ruined his qualifying, while team-mate Martin Donnelly (right) fared even worse.

He qualified well on Friday in 19th, was a very impressive fastest in Saturday’s rain, but didn’t even get to start after his gearbox jammed on the grid formation lap.

For the second year in a row the people of Phoenix voted with their feet and avoided their home race. They liked the NASCAR event at nearby Phoenix International Raceway, and they liked the CART race there, too, but racing in the streets was just too much aggravation for them. They liked

the local ostrich race that was held in 1990, too; it was said to have attracted more spectators than the GP. Our cab driver suggested perhaps there should be a taxi race, and maybe he had a point. At least cabs looked more like NASCAR stockers.

As it turned out, thanks to Jean Alesi, it wasn’t quite as bad a race as it could have been. But as an advertisement for F1 in a country where market resistance was already high, the Grand Prix in

Arizona yet again failed to cut the mustard.

Whenever I think back on F1’s attempts there, I am inevitably reminded of one of the best lines of sports journalism I’ve ever read (no, sadly, I cannot claim authorship). One local hack, whose name I so wish I remembered, said in his column: “They claim that 35000 people attended Sunday’s race. Well, all I can say is that if that was the case, a lot of them came disguised as empty seats.” v

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The main road north from Northampton to Market Harborough passes through the village of Brixworth, the home of Ilmor Engineering, which ended up becoming Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains Ltd, while a new Ilmor Engineering was set up across the road. The village was also the birth place of Andy Stevenson, one of Formula 1’s most durable individuals, who has been involved non-stop since Jordan Grand Prix entered F1 in 1991.Stevenson grew up in the nearby village of Pitsford and like many of his generation got interested in Formula 1 as a result of the first proper TV coverage in the UK in 1976, when James Hunt and Niki Lauda fought for the World Championship. Stevenson was nine and would be another nine years before he attended his first F1 race, the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch in 1985, where he managed to get into the circuit without a ticket by claiming to be delivering bread rolls to the F1 teams. He spent the next couple of days and watched the mechanics working on the cars. He started helping out with John Robinson’s Magnum Racing Cars in Northampton, which was building Formula 3 cars at the time. His first proper role was working with the American driver Fulton Haight in 1986. He then moved on to join Eddie Jordan Racing, working with the likes of Paul Warwick, Jason Elliott, Jean Alesi, Martin Donnelly , Eddie Irvine and Heinz-Harald Frentzen.Jordan then decided to jump into F1 and Gary Anderson built the Jordan 191, one of the most striking cars of the era and was remarkably competitive given the team’s less-than-stellar budget. Campaigned by Andrea de Cesaris and Bertrand Gachot, the 191 was quick and was soon scoring points on a regular basis. It was the car in which Michael Schumacher made his F1 debut that summer. Jordan was forced to use Yamaha engines in 1992 but a switch to helped the team climb the F1 ladder and then came a factory Peugeot deal. Later there would be Mugen Hondas and Benson & Hedges sponsorship and Damon Hill won team’s first victory at Spa in 1998. Heinz-Harald Frentzen won twice in 1999 and finished third in the World Championship but then the team then began to drift backwards. By the start of 2005 it had been sold to the Midland Group and became MF1 Racing before another change of ownership with Spyker before it was bought by Vijay Mallya in early 2008 and transformed into Force India and in 2018 was acquired by Lawrence Stroll and renamed as Racing Point. In the course of this adventure, Stevenson moved gradually up the ladder from being a mechanic to becoming team manager and then sporting director. v

brought to you by

ANDY STEVENSON

CHARACTER REFERENCE by Joe Saward

THE PERSONALITIES OF F1

THE HACKLOOKS BACK

by Mike Doodson

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About four years ago, an Antipodean friend of mine started to figure out a way of reintroducing a category of

big-engined single-seater racing cars of the type which had enthralled fans like him in Australia and New Zealand in the heyday, 40 years ago or so, of what was known as Formula 5000. My pal was, of course, utterly mad and the whole scheme would inevitably crash and burn... It very nearly did, too, yet one week ago, at Melbourne’s Sandown Park circuit, Chris Lambden’s dream was realised. A field of 13 cars, built to F1 safety standards and powered by identical Ford V8 engines producing 460 horsepower apiece, contested two heats and a final, producing a spectacle which had the capacity-full main grandstand cheering with delight.

Although a few of the tribulations which have beset the Lambden project have already been written up in this column, I should declare a personal (but not financial) interest. Chris is a racing gypsy, having been raised in New Zealand and raced karts in Europe before recording international success in single-seaters. Eventually he saw out his cockpit career with a McRae in F5000 revival events. Somewhere along the line he also got himself into the editing and publishing of racing magazines, where he had already demonstrated his willingness to take insane risks by employing me to write for him at various times.

Chris is an awkward bloke who loves racing, the less complicated the better. He reveres

Formula 1 and its history, but he is disheartened by what F1 has become more recently. His conception of the ideal open-wheeled racing car puts the emphasis on limited aerodynamics (to encourage overtaking), massively wide rear tyres, restricted electronic aids and, above all, an old-fashioned fruity V8 with none of that turbocharging nonsense.

Curiously, the racing establishment in Australia seemed determined to sabotage Chris’s idea. I have recounted some of those wicked boondoggles here, not least an attempt by (apparently frightened) Supercars Australia to kill off his already well-advanced plans with a half-baked rival car which would provide an aftermarket for the vastly more expensive V8 engines used in Australia’s high-profile touring car championship.

Fortunately, commonsense would eventually reign. The Australian governing body, CAMS, came on board and the woeful rival scheme was ditched. There were still hiccoughs to be sorted in the choice of chassis builder and tyre supply. Nevertheless, Mr Lambden failed to win every single battle. To his disgust, his original name for the category, “Formula Thunder 5000,” somehow got lost. Instead, it has become the unromantic “S5000.”

Don’t imagine for a moment that Australia can expect to find a new World Champion in S5000. The cost of the equipment (estimated by one entrant at AU$380,000, which is more than £200,000) is not unreasonable, at least when compared with Supercars, but it will fall on the wealthy individuals who loved F5000

LUCKY AUSSIES — BIG BANGERS ARE BACK!

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as youngsters. The pool of driving talent, at least to begin with, will be drawn from those who have not made it to Supercars, or who are getting started there.

Nevertheless, with a TV deal in the offing, and with a round scheduled to support next year’s AGP at Albert Park, the revived big bangers are expected to have an appeal to sponsors. The first signs, as already mentioned, are that the public will also be hooked.

Lambden admits that getting 14 cars to the grid for the first of the two qualifying heats at Sandown was a typical motorsport rush.

“Other than the tub/nose/front wing/sidepods, the car is virtually all Australian,” he reminds me, “and that’s probably the thing I’m most proud

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of – the all-Australian engineering expertise and flair that has gone into the car. Having said that, the effort by Garry Rogers Motorsport in getting them together at all has been huge.

“S5000 ticks all the boxes I wanted it to, with the big noisy V8 and modest downforce,” he concludes. And with mechanical grip as the key driving factor, cockpit skill will surely decide the outcome of the championship which kicked off last weekend.

It would perhaps have been asking too much for the Sandown début to run like clockwork, and there were a couple of on-track incidents, most notably a big shunt in Sunday’s final when Matt Brabham snagged Alex Davison in a tussle for fifth place. Davison’s car smashed into the wall on the inside of the track and bounced heavily across the road to the other side, with following drivers performing avoidance miracles.

Back in the day when F5000 cars were constructed largely from fuse wire, silver paper and glassfibre, the heavy collision would have likely sent Davison to hospital with serious leg injuries. But the US-built Onroak-Ligier carbon tub resisted the impact, allowing him to walk away. Brabham (son of Geoff, grandson of Sir Jack) didn’t hesitate to shoulder the blame, which Davison — scion of yet another fabled Aussie racing family — was prepared to accept.

“I haven’t been out of my comfort zone like that for a long time,” the bruised Davison told Speedcafé. “It’s back when you’re 18 and you start driving faster cars that scare you a bit. I haven’t hopped in a racing car that keeps you on your toes [like this one does], and you think ‘if I’m not careful I could actually crash this thing’, for a long time.”

The most serious casualty was the Armco barrier, which was so badly damaged that the event had to be called off with just nine laps completed of the scheduled 25. The winner was declared to be James Golding, a 23 year-old with a national karting title and successes in Formula Ford to his credit. He has contested the Dunlop Supercars 2 category with Garry Rogers and sees his future in the touring car series.

You can easily find video material on the internet which will give you an idea of what

the cars look like and how they perform. I can recommend them to all readers.

Lambden will surely blush when he sees these words, because S5000 is no longer his exclusive baby, and there is now a

gang of highly motivated people working hard in the category, not least among them some generous sponsors and car owners who share his vision. But my former editor’s title is ‘Manager’ of the series, requiring him

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to come up with some ideas to help promote it. The most inspired of these was to hire an internationally-known driver to contest the first round and to give it the prestige it deserved.

The choice, a doozy if ever I heard one, fell on Rubens Barrichello, the ever-cheerful Brazilian who holds the record (322) for F1 starts over 19 seasons at the top, winning 11 GPs and handling his team-mate Michael Schumacher at Ferrari with a grace that was seldom seen from the German multi-champion. Rubens retired from F1 after the 2011 season, but is still competing at the age of 47, currently in Brazilian Stock Cars.

The contact was arranged by veteran Aussie manager Greg ‘PeeWee’ Siddle, and no sooner had Lambden got Barrichello on the end of a phone than the Brazilian had decided to accept the gig. “Rubens had raced the previous Sunday in the Brazilian Stock Car Championship round at Curitiba, in southern Brazil — and won!” Lambden recounts. “He more or less jumped straight into his car and raced to São Paulo airport, to catch an 8pm, arriving in Melbourne Tuesday morning, via Santiago and Auckland. Straight into an F1 GP press conference which announced that the opening round of the 2020 Australian S5000 Championship would be at the GP, in March.

“We picked up his Merc loan car, then to the workshop for a seat fit, then off to Phillip Island for Wednesday’s pre-race shakedown/test, at which all current 13 cars were present.

“Wednesday was pretty cold early on and the cars struggled to get tyre temp – one relatively experienced local driver actually went off and badly damaged his car. Once it warmed up, the grip and the Barrichello grin reappeared

and he started to get it together. “The rest of the 13-car first-up entry was

of pretty good background, thanks to CAMS’ insistence that International C licences be mandatory, even though this is a national category and series. Among the entries were Matt Brabham, direct from Indianapolis, S5000 test driver Tim Macrow (ex F3 champion), John Martin (experienced former Superleague/Formula Renault driver), Alex Davison, and one of GRM’s young Supercar drivers, James Golding.

“Sandown had, apparently, been resurfaced but it appears they simply resurfaced the

existing bumps. Though not ideal, it became clear by the end of Friday practice the outright lap record would be under threat (it was shattered on race day).”

It was very apparent that Barrichello, who always loved being in Australia for the GP, was instantly at home. As Lambden reports, “Rubens was the star of the show, both for his on-track as much as for his off-track presence. He is just a great guy. As he kept saying when he got here, once he had been told the details (car etc) it took him two minutes to make up his mind to come. He hasn’t raced an open-wheeler for seven years, so was genuinely

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excited, especially when he got here and saw his car’s ‘Ferrari-style’ livery.

“Off-track, he was everywhere. His Brazilian Stock-car team owner, Mauricio Miniz Ferreira, had accompanied him here – his first trip to Australia - so Rubens wanted to show him a kangaroo. A trip to the zoo allowed them both to get to know all sorts of unique Australian fauna…

“He also expressed an interest in a huge Aussie Rules Semi-Final Football match Friday night at the famous, packed, Melbourne Cricket Ground (capacity 95,000). I arranged for him, Mauricio and Peewee to be the guests of the Richmond FC, who fortunately won, so they ended up in the room’s post-game with Rubens being interviewed by AFL’s equivalent of Martin Brundle. That experience was a shock even to his system: during the evening he had texted his engineer to say ‘Amazing atmosphere… but I have no idea what’s going on!’”.

But then that’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re in Australia, and it’s exactly that which attracts racing tragics back every year, regardless of the hours spent cramped in an aeroplane.

Let’s overlook the fact that Rubens got tapped off the road in his heat and had to accept third place in the shortened main feature. He’s raring to be back, and the Aussies are equally anxious to see him rise to the challenge.

So... what does the future hold for S5000? It certainly needs more cars, an ambition which will be lifted by a TV contract and

the prospect of exposure at the AGP next

March. I suspect that the crass attempt by

Supercars executives to stymy the project two years ago was misplaced. The tin-top category’s high profile comes from having monopolised most of Australia’s (and New Zealand’s) greatest racing talent and from being on nationwide TV. But the high profile also attracts the attention of Greens and other do-gooders who deride the allegedly wanton waste of earthly resources.

With most Australians choosing SUVs or hatchbacks for their daily drive, the days of V8-powered private cars are numbered. Supercars is aware of this and there have been tests done with turbo V6s, though that plan was

abandoned last year. The logical solution would be to follow the example of our own fabulously frantic BTCC, with increasingly standardised parts (including engines) and a move towards more eco-friendly hybrid power.

Diehard Australian fans still revere the thump and roar of a V8, and they will be glad to have S5000 to satisfy their addiction. I like to think that the two disciplines can live peacefully alongside each other. I am equally sure that some of the tin-top talent will find it impossible to resist the temptation to show their skills in a pure single-seater. This, surely, will be a win-win solution to some of the challenges which Australian racing will face now and in the near future. v

QUALIFYING by Joe Saward

THE UNTOUCHABLE CHARLES LECLERCIn qualifying in Sochi, Charles Leclerc continued his recent domination... No-one could get close.

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A lot of folk in Formula 1 racing grew up in the Cold War years, which ended when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, and so they view Russia (and Russia views them) with a certain amount of suspicion. The excesses of the post-Soviet capitalists and the rise of Vladimir Putin have often raised Western eyebrows and there remains a mixture of mistrust and curiousity about the old Cold War ‘enemy’.

Formula 1 has been visiting the Russian seaside resort of Sochi since 2014, when it took over some of the facilities that were built, at vast cost, for the Winter Olympics and a racetrack was laid out on the roads around it, zipping amidst sports stadia and theme parks. The Caucasus Moutains run parallel to the Black Sea coast in this area, creating the same kind of feeling as France’s Cote d’Azur, albeit a much poorer version, with a distinctly Russian flavour. Go east a couple of miles and you get to the Psou River, which is the border between Russia and Abkhazia, a Russian-dominated territory which Georgia claims, where a war was fought as recently as 2008. It’s peaceful now but go west and it is not long before reach the Crimea and Ukraine, where the action has been more recent.

Over time the relationship

between the sport and Russia has had some of the sharp edges smoothed over. It is still rather a clumsy fit and F1 remains rather uncomfortable in the land of Putin, but those who do make the

journey each year have learned how to make the most of it and the Russians have undoubtedly tried hard to make F1 feel welcome. Even so, for many in F1 the Russian race is a weekend to get through.

A lot of F1 folk never go there and the paddock is quieter than others, although there are, of course, the local oligarchs, their strumpets and bodyguards who provide a little colour…

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It is a good facility and there is plenty to praise, if one looks closely enough. Perhaps it’s a language thing, because Russian is fairly impenetrable to those who have not learned it. Perhaps it is a cultural thing. Russians are not by nature filled with joie de vivre and have been used to doing things by the book for centuries. Smiling is not something that comes naturally to them…

The race track itself is a pretty good one, which has matured well and generally produces good races. The F1 races this summer have been terrific and closely-fought and as everyone arrived from Singapore, the big question was whether Ferrari would still be ahead, or whether Mercedes and Red Bull would be able to fight for victory. The FP1 session saw Charles Leclerc just ahead of Max Verstappen, with the gap of just 0.082s between them. FP2 saw Max ahead by 0.335s but come Saturday morning Ferrari had pulled ahead with Charles and Sebastian Vettel 1-2 for Ferrari, with the two Mercs giving chase and Verstappen more than a second behind. The Q sessions saw Hamilton right with the Ferraris and so it built up to an exciting Q3. In the final shootout Leclerc emerged ahead by nearly four-tenths but Hamilton just pipped

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Vettel to second, while Verstappen grabbed fourth, ahead of a rather lacklustre Valtteri Bottas.

“The car was amazing to drive and the team did a great job anticipating the track evolution and setting up the car in the best way,” Leclerc enthused. “We are just focusing on ourselves and

the work we are doing seems to be slowly paying off. On my side, I continue focusing on the negative and working to improve and learn as much as I can. The lap in Q3 was great, apart from when I lost the rear a bit in Turns 16 and 17. I’m still happy to end the day with a result like this, but I am already

fully focused on the race now. Our race pace was good in FP2, which is a positive sign. We will start the race on different tyres to our competitors, but I don’t think that there is a huge difference between the soft and medium compounds in terms of their degradation. It will be difficult and crucial to

keep everyone behind at the start, because it’s a long way to Turn two. I will give it all I’ve got.”

Sebastian Vettel was third and said that he was “reasonably happy” with that result.

“Q1 was a bit complex as I made a mistake on my first attempt and then I was slowed by two

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yellow flags. I found it difficult to get into a clean rhythm, especially towards the end of quali, when it was vital to extract the absolute maximum out of the car.”

Hamilton seemed happy.“It feels like a really positive

weekend so far and I’m very happy with the job that we’ve done

collectively,” he explained. “We’ve worked so hard until late last night and again today and it all came together in the end. The ultimate goal is always to get as close to 100 percent as possible and I don’t think there was much left in the car today. Sochi has always been a track that I struggled at, but

today every lap was just getting better and better, there were no real mistakes and particularly the last lap felt good. The Ferraris have some crazy speeds on the straights, so to split them is a very good scenario for us. Now we have to try and convert that split into something even better. It’s

a long run into Turn 1, so it’s not always the best for a start on the harder tyre, but we’ve got to try something and it’s good that we’re able to go for a different strategy...

Bottas in fifth place said that his had been a “tricky” qualifying session.

“I was struggling in the last

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sector, particularly in Turn 13 where I had rear snaps mid-corner in pretty much every qualifying lap. Those snaps made the rear tyres overheat which made the rest of Sector 3 really tricky and I didn’t really find a way to drive around

the issue. In my second run in Q3, the snap was pretty big and I lost multiple tenths there, so I aborted the final lap.

“The Ferraris are quite a bit faster than us on the straights, our race pace looked decent yesterday

and we’re starting on a different tyre to everyone around us, so we can hopefully create some opportunities. It’s still all to play for.”

Verstappen was fourth and happy with that achievement.

“I always knew qualifying would be tricky on such a power sensitive circuit,” he said, “but the lap was good and there wasn’t much more in it. The wind picked up and it seemed to hurt us in the last sector which is normally our strongest

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point so I couldn’t really use the full potential of the car. Yesterday looked positive but Ferrari didn’t have their engines turned up and they always open it up in qualifying as we could see today. The corners around here are mostly

ninety degrees and very short, so you can’t gain a lot of lap time out of them but to be P4 and splitting the Mercedes is pretty good.”

The problem was that Max had to take a five-place grid penalty for having changed an ICE.

“Starting ninth we need to make a clean start, stay alert and hope the people around us do the same,” he said. “I think the realistic target is probably fifth but we will of course try to do better and it will be interesting to see what happens

with Mercedes on a different strategy.”

Things were less easy for Alexander Albon. he too had a five-place grid penalty but then spun out in Q1

“There’s nothing really to say

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other than I went in a bit hot like Max did in FP3 and I lost the rear.,” he said. “There’s a tailwind in that corner and it just caught me out. When these cars go, they go quick. It was a silly mistake – that’s pretty much it and it’s just frustrating. I haven’t really had the

confidence during the weekend and I’ve struggled since FP1 but it was starting to come together and I was feeling more comfortable and getting into a rhythm coming into qualifying. I think this is one of those tracks where if you’re not confident in one corner, you’re not

confident in any corner and that’s kind of how I felt up to qualifying. We’re starting out of place but I’m optimistic as the car feels good in the long runs and you can also overtake here.”

With Verstappen being bumped back Carlos Sainz had his McLaren

in fifth place with Lando Norris seventh in the other car.

“This feels great after our initial struggles from yesterday,” Sainz explained. “We managed to adapt, progress and find a way to recover from that, which shows we’re also doing a great job this

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year in understanding the car. I’m confident we’re capable of putting together a strong result.”

Norris was also a happy man.“A good qualifying and a good

starting position for tomorrow,”

he said. “I had a positive feeling throughout qualifying – the track was improving, as was my car. It was pretty good but I didn’t nail the lap as well as I did in Singapore because I wasn’t able to put it

all together. But I’m still happy, despite making a small mistake on my final push lap in Q3 – starting P7 due to Max’s penalty is a good position.”

Nico Hulkenberg was sixth on

the grid in his Renault and pleased with the result.

“My laps were clean and tidy, we progressed through the sessions well and deservedly qualified well inside the top 10,” he said. “I’ve felt

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comfortable in the car since the beginning of the weekend and I’ve been driving well. It would have been nice to be ahead of Carlos [Sainz], but it was tight in the

midfield again.”Daniel Ricciardo was 10th.“I’ve not been that fast all

weekend, so to get into Q3 was pretty good. That was our target

and we got there. I had to use an extra set in Q1 and that meant I only had one new tyre run at the end of Q3 and it wasn’t quick enough to be higher than 10th. “

Eighth on the grid was Romain Grosjean in his Haas.

“It was a good qualifying session today,” he said. “It was very difficult as the wind picked up a lot from

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FP3, that really put the balance off initially in the session. I was happy that we managed to finally get back into Q3. The balance was very different between some corners.

We know the car we’re running doesn’t really like the wind, it was always going to be a bit of a challenge. We’re just happy that we were competitive today.”

Kevin Magnussen ended up 13th.

“It was a strong Q1, but then just messed it up in Q2 on my side, I lost it in seven and eight. I had very

good pace in the car, so it’s a real bummer.”

Next in the pecking order was Sergio Perez who lined up 11th in his Racing Point.

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“We all expected a bit more today, especially with how tight the margins are here,” he said. “We should have been in Q3, but when going into Turn 7 I hit the kerb harder than I should and lost

some time there. It was very, very close and it’s a shame, but I’m very optimistic for tomorrow.”

Lance Stroll was 14th“It started off well,” he explained.

“I had the balance I was looking

for in the first sector, through the medium-speed corners, and it was looking quite promising. Then, when I got to the high-speed Turn 7, I just turned in and lost the rear, I ran wide and it was really just

downhill from there. You have a bad corner and that leads to two or three bad corners. That’s where the lap time was lost.”

With all the Red Bull cars taking some kind of a penalty, Antonio

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quite a bit. I was improving my time, but unfortunately I made a small mistake, went wide in Turn 10 and lost all the speed on the back straight.”

Pierre Gasly set the 11th fastest

disappointing 15th“It’s been a difficult weekend

so far but I felt a lot better in qualifying,” he said. “We made some big changes for this afternoon and improved the car

to choose the tyres can be a small advantage. It’s hard to tell where we stand when it comes to race pace, but I hope we can be competitive tomorrow.

Kimi Raikkonen was a

Giovinazzi ended up 12th in his Alfa Romeo.

“I tried my best today but in the end we fell just a bit short of the top 10,” he said. “Starting from P12 tomorrow with the possibility

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Rosso on my first run in Q2. I knew that on the second run I really needed to risk it if I wanted to improve, but I couldn’t manage to

did, we knew it would be difficult to make it into the top 10 and we tried everything we could. I think it was one of my best laps for Toro

time but with his five-place penalty he ended up 16th on the grid.

“It was so close today,” he said. “I’m really happy with the lap I

do it. Every weekend we’re making a step and I think it was a positive qualifying.”

Daniil Kvyat ended up at the

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penalty.On Saturday night, as the F1

circus went off to their hotels in Sochi, the big question was whether or not Ferrari could be beaten. They looked incredibly strong.

What could Mercedes do to beat the red cars? v

out of the pit lane it was a little bit too late for us, but it didn’t end up compromising us. It was just a bit frustrating, fighting guys ahead of us, fighting guys trying to overtake behind me. It was just a bit scrappy.”

Robert Kubica would end up with a new engine and subsequent

do our best tomorrow.”Seventeenth and 19th was

business as normal for Williams.“I think that was a good session,”

said George Russell. “In Singapore we had a load of traffic on the out-lap. We planned to get out there ahead of the pack this time, but as soon as everyone else comes

back of the grid.“It hasn’t been a very smooth

weekend so far, but the most important day is tomorrow,” he said. “We knew we were going to start from the back but it’s still a shame to miss qualifying in my home race. These things happen, we just need to accept it and try to

1 C Leclerc Ferrari 1:34.4622 M Verstappen Red Bull 1:34.5443 S Vettel Ferrari 1:35.0054 V Bottas Mercedes 1:35.198 5 L Hamilton Mercedes 1:35.411 6 A Albon Red Bull 1:35.4847 N Hulkenberg Renault 1:35.7408 D Ricciardo Renault 1:36.2879 S Perez Racing Point 1:36.32110 R Grosjean Haas 1:36.516 11 C Sainz McLaren 1:36.52312 P Gasly Toro Rosso 1:36.53813 K Magnussen Haas 1:36.59614 L Stroll Racing Point 1:36.71415 K Raikkonen Alfa Romeo 1:36.77016 L Norris McLaren 1:36.84417 A Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 1:37.32818 G Russell Williams 1:38.52019 R Kubica Williams 1:38.55020 D Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:38.670

FRIDAY - FREE PRACTICE 1 FRIDAY - FREE PRACTICE 2 SATURDAY - FREE PRACTICE 31 M Verstappen Red Bull 1:33.1622 C Leclerc Ferrari 1:33.4973 V Bottas Mercedes 1:33.8084 L Hamilton Mercedes 1:33.960 5 S Vettel Ferrari 1:34.2016 P Gasly Toro Rosso 1:34.9717 S Perez Racing Point 1:34.9988 N Hulkenberg Renault 1:35.0269 L Stroll Racing Point 1:35.17610 A Albon Red Bull 1:35.21611 L Norris McLaren 1:35.22312 D Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:35.33713 K Magnussen Haas 1:35.35114 D Ricciardo Renault 1:35.37015 K Raikkonen Alfa Romeo 1:35.37416 R Grosjean Haas 1:35.593 17 C Sainz McLaren 1:35.63518 A Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 1:36.00419 G Russell Williams 1:36.78520 R Kubica Williams 1:37.838

1 C Leclerc Ferrari 1:32.7332 S Vettel Ferrari 1:33.0493 L Hamilton Mercedes 1:33.1294 V Bottas Mercedes 1:33.3545 M Verstappen Red Bull 1:34.2276 R Grosjean Haas 1:34.308 7 A Albon Red Bull 1:34.3718 N Hulkenberg Renault 1:34.4219 L Norris McLaren 1:34.52710 K Magnussen Haas 1:34.54611 P Gasly Toro Rosso 1:34.56412 D Ricciardo Renault 1:34.58613 C Sainz McLaren 1:34.60714 A Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 1:34.76615 S Perez Racing Point 1:34.86016 L Stroll Racing Point 1:34.89817 K Raikkonen Alfa Romeo 1:35.71418 G Russell Williams 1:36.01119 D Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:36.08120 R Kubica Williams 1:36.942

1 S Vettel Ferrari 1:33.0322 L Hamilton Mercedes 1:33.2303 M Verstappen Red Bull 1:33.3684 V Bottas Mercedes 1:33.4135 C Leclerc Ferrari 1:33.6136 K Magnussen Haas 1:34.1857 D Ricciardo Renault 1:34.5658 C Sainz McLaren 1:34.4349 L Norris McLaren 1:34.54510 N Hulkenberg Renault 1:34.23611 R Grosjean Haas 1:34.65112 L Stroll Racing Point 1:34.84313 S Perez Racing Point 1:34.67714 P Gasly Toro Rosso 1:35.34215 A Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 1:35.29715 K Raikkonen Alfa Romeo 1:34.84017 G Russell Williams 1:36.20118 R Kubica ** Williams 1:36.474PL A Albon */*** Red Bull 1:39.19719 D Kvyat ** Toro Rosso No time

QUALIFYING 1 QUALIFYING 2 QUALIFYING 3

1 C Leclerc Ferrari 1:32.4342 S Vettel Ferrari 1:32.5363 M Verstappen Red Bull 1:32.6344 L Hamilton Mercedes 1:33.1345 V Bottas Mercedes 1:33.2816 R Grosjean Haas 1:33.6437 L Norris McLaren 1:33.7258 C Sainz McLaren 1:33.8079 D Ricciardo Renault 1:33.86210 N Hulkenberg Renault 1:33.89816 P Gasly * Toro Rosso 1:33.95011 S Perez Racing Point 1:33.95812 A Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 1:34.03713 K Magnussen Haas 1:34.08214 L Stroll Racing Point 1:34.233

1 C Leclerc Ferrari 1:31.6282 L Hamilton Mercedes 1:32.0303 S Vettel Ferrari 1:32.0539 M Verstappen * Red Bull 1:32.3104 V Bottas Mercedes 1:32.6325 C Sainz McLaren 1:33.2226 N Hulkenberg Renault 1:33.2897 L Norris McLaren 1:33.3018 R Grosjean Haas 1:33.51710 D Ricciardo Renault 1:33.661

Grid positions are indicated in white

* Verstappen, Gasly and Albon were given five-place grid penalties for additional power unit elements** Kvyat and Kubica were require to start from the back for additional power unit elements*** Albon was required to start from the pit lane because the car was modified under parc fermé rules

RACE by David Tremayne

RECORD PLAYERA champion’s drive and ill fortune for Ferrari brings Lewis Hamiltonwin number 82, and keeps Mercedes’ Sochi record intact

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No other manufacturer has won the Russian Grand Prix since its inception in 2014. And though it seemed for the first 26 laps that Ferrari was about to upset that flow, Fate decided otherwise.

Lewis Hamilton had hounded the Ferraris up until that point,

start, not just because of their grunt – which Lewis calls ‘jet mode’ - but because they were starting ahead of the Mercedes on the soft Pirellis whereas the Silver Arrows had been obliged to gamble on the mediums as their only real chance of turning the red tide.

and just when he had taken the lead after both Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel had made their pit stops, a failure for Seb triggered a Virtual Safety Car and set events in motion that denied the red cars a fourth victory on the trot.

Of course the Ferraris won the

Even before they got to Turn 1 Seb had passed Lewis for second, and then he slipstreamed Charles for the lead by Turn 2. It looked for all the world like a righteous pass, and it was, but there was structure behind it. Ferrari’s plan all along was the get its cars into

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“Sebastian will let you by next lap,” but Seb retorted that his team-mate needed to close up before that happened. Charles was at that point 1.3s behind, and Seb’s pace - and Lewis’s - persuaded Ferrari to delay doing that. Charles, who had vowed before the race not to be too negative over the radio,

fastest lap and kept doing so, as he and Charles led Lewis, fast-starting Carlos Sainz (who was actually ahead of Lewis right down until the entry to Turn 2), Valtteri Bottas, Lando Norris, Sergio Perez, grid-dropped Max Verstappen, Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen.

Charles was told on lap five:

boil. Antonio Giovinazzi had got pincered between an innocent (yes!) Romain Grosjean and Daniel Ricciardo, pitching the Frenchman and the Australian into spins and the Haas into the tyre wall. It was lap three before the Safety Car came back in, and as racing resumed on lap four Seb blasted in

another 1-2 format, but Seb’s fast start actually meant that Charles didn’t really need to give his team-mate the tow. By the time anyone realised that, it had already happened.

That plan had then called for a switch, but first of all a Safety Car intervention kept things off the

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nevertheless didn’t sound too impressed.

“I respected everything, we will speak later. But now it is difficult to close the gap obviously”.

Soon, Laurent Mekies was on the horn to Chuck, explaining that they’d do the switch later, but that it would happen.

Slightly mollified Charles replied: “I completely understand, the only thing is that I respected everything, I gave him the slipstream, no problems.” By then he was 2.6s behind his team-mate, a much harder gap to close especially as Lewis was still running like a bandit behind him, ramping up the pressure for all he was worth.

Indeed, it was the pressure that the Mercedes driver was piling on, doing qualifying laps all the time trying to hang on to the red cars, that kept them on their back foot.

So the status quo remained, with Seb still setting fastest laps until Charles set one with 1m 38.525s on lap 15. But Lewis beat that immediately, with 1m 38.319s, a worrying sign for the reds. Sebastian then did 1m 38.265s the following lap, opening his gap over Charles to 3.9s, with Lewis only 2.3 adrift of the Monegasque despite the tyre difference. This was interesting!

Mercedes clearly liked what it

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lap. Without that the team had expected to finish third and fourth behind the Ferraris, but now there was the chance of servicing both cars in half the time and it proved crucial.

The VSC was then switched off,

engine will be okay for the coming races. It has definitely been not our day today.”

Mercedes smelled blood in the water and immediately brought Lewis in for a set of soft Pirellis on lap 28, and then Valtteri that same

allowed me to open up quite a gap. After the pit stop, I rejoined in second place but shortly afterwards the team asked me to stop the car because there was a problem with a hybrid component on my power unit. I hope the

saw in terms of degradation, and just as Charles swept in for a set of mediums on the 22nd lap, it messaged Lewis that the decision was to go longer. “Keep your head down, we are going to be extending,” he was told, to which he replied: “My head is down, man!”

Meanwhile, Sebastian reported that his rears were beginning to fall off, just as Charles set another new fastest lap - 1m 37.321s - on his new mediums on lap 25. Seb kept going until the 26th lap, by which time the order behind him was Lewis, Valtteri (who had overtaken Carlos on lap 17) and Charles, with Max a little further back after fighting his way up to fifth in a series of neat and decisive passing moves.

This was where Ferrari made the switch; as Seb came out of the pits Charles swept back into the lead. But Seb never completed his 27th lap. As he got to Turn 15 he was told to stop the car and pulled off at the side of the track, triggering the Virtual Safety Car.

“I’ve got no MGU-K,” he wailed, adding “Bring back ***ing V12s!”

Later he said: “Today, we are very disheartened. We wanted to finish first and second, but all we got was a third place. It’s not the result we were hoping for.

“I got a good start and the first stint was pretty quick which

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but almost immediately the Safety Car was deployed when George Russell’s Williams augered into the wall in Turn 8 on lap 29, setting in train mass stops when many also opted for softs.

“The car was feeling good, and then all of sudden after the pit stop there was an issue and the next thing I knew, I was in the barrier,” George said. “It was a shame for the race to end like that as we were showing some strong pace.”

These two incidents transformed the race.

The VSC helped Mercedes; the Safety Car helped Ferrari, by letting it put Charles on the same tyre as Lewis, though some feel he might have had a better chance if he had stayed on the mediums and held on to second place. Instead, Ferrari brought Charles in from second place to switch from mediums back to softs on lap 30, setting up the fight to the finish when the track went green again on lap 33.

The big question, however, was why Ferrari told Sebastian to stop on the track, when he was only three corners from home. By doing that, the VSC was inevitably triggered, hurting the team’s own chances. The official line was that the car was still live and therefore a potential danger, though others spoke of wanting to avoid possible engine damage. But race failures

aren’t penalised. It was all very odd. Lewis immediately nailed the

restart, opening a lead over Valtteri of 1.5s as Charles was right on the Finn’s tail. As Lewis kept it lit and set a series of fastest laps – 1m 37.150s on lap 35, 1m 37.118s on lap 36 and 1m 36.639s on lap 37, it seemed only a matter of time before Charles passed car number 77. The Ferrari driver was

spuriously shown as setting fastest lap in 1m 37.197s on lap 39, but in any case by that time Lewis was 3.4s in the lead and in no danger of being caught. Meanwhile, Valtteri held firm, resisting the huge pressure in a crucial race for his team as he kept the red car in check and Lewis continued to build his advantage. Track position was everything.

Lewis set a new mark of 1m 36.467s on lap 42, and dipped that to 1m 36.312s four laps later. By then there was a worry that Red Bull might pull Max in for a free stop and a fresh set of softs to replace the mediums on which he was clearly struggling. Charles, meanwhile, was asking what mark he had to beat, and was told 1m 36.3s. He sounded as if he might

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just about manage to beat that, at the very moment when Lewis banged in the 1m 35.761s, which proved the ultimate benchmark to add the extra point to the 25 he earned as he led Valtteri home by 3.8s after a superb performance, with Charles another 1.3s adrift.

The Finn had looked ordinary in his first stint, but did a powerful job to contain Charles’s challenge in the second one.

“It’s been a while since we last had a 1-2 and it feels really good to stand up there on the podium together again. It’s really encouraging and motivating for the entire team.

“We knew a 1-2 would be tricky to achieve, but possible, so we spoke about all the different strategies that would give us a chance this morning. And I think we did a really good job as a team today. It’s a really good result if you think about how much we were struggling yesterday. Ferrari had a quick car all weekend long, I think they were quicker as well today, so to walk away with a 1-2 means that we did a great job as a team in all other areas.

“I lost quite a bit of time when I was stuck behind Sainz in the beginning and I was also struggling to match the times on the medium tyres, but it was a lot better in the second stint on the

softs. I was under a bit of pressure after the Safety Car restart, but it was all under control. Ferrari has made some good improvements in the past few weeks, so we know that we need to keep pushing for Japan, but I’m looking forward to

the challenge.” Charles, like Seb, was

downhearted. “It was a tricky race,” he said. “I

think that we had a good strategy to give us the best result as a team. At the start, I gave Sebastian a tow

so that we could race at the front and get ahead of our competitors together. Then, after the Safety Car (sic), things became a bit more complicated and we aimed to find the right timing to swap positions, which we did when Seb pitted.

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Unfortunately, there was an issue on Seb’s car and he had to end the race early. From that point on it just didn’t go our way anymore and it was not possible for me to overtake the two cars in front.

“After we had such a strong weekend, ending the race with one car in P3 and the other retired is not the best feeling. But we are

confident of our potential and will head into the next races with determination and give our all to bring home the best possible results.”

And did he still trust his team and his team-mate, after the early misunderstanding?

“Yeah, I think the trust doesn’t change and I think we need to

trust each other, Seb and myself. I think it’s hugely important for the benefit of the team in some situations, to know that you can count on the other car and vice versa. So, yeah, I think it’s very important, but yes, the trust is still here. “

Max ultimately finished a lonely fourth, 8.9s behind the Ferrari.

“I think P4 was the best possible result today and we had a little bit of luck with Seb retiring,” he said, “but I’m satisfied with the points we scored considering the penalties, and the pace of Ferrari and Mercedes. There wasn’t too much going on for me once I cleared the mid-field traffic and from there I had a bit of a lonely

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race until the Safety Car closed us all up. We were clearly a bit slower than the top three today but at the end of the race it was also more difficult being on the medium compound tyre when the others were on the soft.”

Bringing his RB15 from a pitlane start after a change to a different specification floor was added to a raft of engine component renewals, Alex Albon could have been very happy with his performance for the team. He had fought up to fifth despite a brake problem when he pitted under the second Safety Car. With a set of softs he was flying, and scythed back from fifth to eighth by the flag in a series of lovely overtakes, finishing 24.1s behind his team leader. Again, it was a bitty race for the London-based Thai, through circumstances not completely within his control, but again he proved that he deserves the seat.

“It was a good race and I think P5 is the best we could have done,” Alex thought. “I wanted to bounce back and get a good result after yesterday’s crash so I’m really happy with how the race went, although we probably got a bit lucky with the Safety Car.

“Morale was obviously a little bit low on Saturday night and it was a lot of work for the team, so this result is for them. Starting from

downforce loss is immense when you’re following in a train of cars, which I think is because the track is designed a bit like a street circuit. Up to the race it had been a tough weekend, but I’m getting more comfortable. I just need to get up

the pitlane was never going to be easy but the pace was quite strong on the softs and it was a good haul of points.

“I started out of position and had some fun coming back through the field, but I don’t want

all of my races to be like that. I like boring races too, so I’m hoping for a cleaner and smoother weekend in Japan.

“In the first stint I was struggling to get past Daniil and Pierre and it took me a long time. The

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to speed and in a rhythm earlier on in the weekend, but that will come with more laps and time in the car.”

Carlos Sainz and McLaren deserved that place, but on his medium tyres the Spaniard could not resist Albon. His was nevertheless another excellent drive.

“A great start and a very solid execution from everyone today,” he beamed. “It was great to fight the Mercedes into Turn 2, which was one of my targets today. From then on I could control the race and I had good pace all the way through, even though it was impossible to hold both Red Bulls.

“This was not an easy weekend for us, but we managed to put it together and take another best-of-the-rest finish. Great performance from the whole team and double points again. Congratulations.”

Team-mate Lando Norris also drove superbly. The Briton ought to have finished behind his team-mate, but also lost a place to Sergio Perez when the Red Bull driver overtook him on the 35th lap. That left him ninth, as Kevin Magnussen had gained a place at his expense after pitting his Haas under the VSC. But a penalty dropped the Dane back, leaving Lando eighth after resisting huge pressure from Nico Hulkenberg. The four hard-won points he thus added

to Carlos’s eight safeguarded McLaren’s fourth overall after another horrible day for Renault.

“Today has been a positive day for the team with good points. Carlos and I both made good starts and gained positions. My first stint was reasonably good with decent pace, but then the VSC after my pit-stop shook things up.

“Cars came out of the pits from the VSC who were slower, preventing me from pushing as much as I wanted to, and then I was vulnerable to cars behind on fresher tyres. It was tough to keep the Renault and Racing Point behind. But overall a good weekend with more points for the team, a good reward for their hard

work.” “It was a very good race for

us today,” Checo said. “I’m very pleased with how we maximised the result. I think it’s been one of my greatest races that I can remember. We had a good start and great management throughout the stints, knowing when to fight and when to hold

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back, and that made a huge difference.

“We were unlucky with the timing of the Safety Car, but we recovered and we took every single opportunity. Since the summer break we’ve been on it and we’ve been scoring some important points. We worked hard for it today and we couldn’t have done any better.”

Daniel Ricciardo’s latest first-lap drama again ruined his race and he would later retire as a result of the damage his R.S.19 sustained. The Hulk, meanwhile, was in such feisty mood that at one time he was shown the black and white ‘naughty boy’ flag. But he kept his nose clean thereafter to claim the final point. That meagre reward left the Regie now 33 points adrift

of McLaren in their Constructors’ battle.

“Unfortunately, our race was pretty much over from the start,” Dan said. “It was a bit chaotic through Turn 2 and I had the inside line for Turn 4 where I thought I was safe. I got hit and had a puncture and damage to the floor. I’ll look at it with the perspective that if I qualify higher up the grid

then I’m less likely to be in the bad stuff. I’ll take responsibility for that, but in terms of the accident, I was just a passenger.”

The Hulk was also frustrated. “The car deserved to be better

than 10th. Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong today: a poor start, a slow pit stop and an unfortunate VSC timing. It’s disappointing as the potential

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was there for a better result. I felt comfortable in the car all weekend, and it had been fairly solid, so to leave with one point is a little frustrating. The midfield is

bunched up and it’s going to be like that for the rest of the season. It’ll be nip and tuck throughout and we need to ensure we’re getting the maximum from races.”

For much of the race KMag covered himself in glory, pushing hard and running strongly in contention for points as the VF19 finally seemed able to maintain

its tyre performance. He was in the top 10 from the start, pushing after Hulkenberg and Perez and got as high as fifth during the pit stops before making his own on

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lap 27 under the VSC. He resumed in seventh and held that until lap 42 when Perez passed him. Unfortunately, Kevin went off in Turn 2 at that moment, making life easy for Sergio, and received a five-second time penalty for gaining an advantage. That seemed harsh in the circumstances, but it transpired that he hadn’t negotiated the bollards on the exit.

“I think it’s been a positive weekend in terms of our pace, the Dane said. “In qualifying yesterday, it looked very good. I made a mistake unfortunately in Q2 and didn’t go through to Q3, and the car had been perfect. Today we had good pace again. I made a good start, gained a few positions, had a good first stint followed by a decent second stint, then I lost a few spots at the end and got a stupid penalty. That’s how it is, I guess.

“I had lost the position to Perez, lost a load of time, I had dirt on my tyres, I’d already lost enough time. Then I get the penalty.

“I think, though, I can speak for the whole team to say it’s been a great relief this weekend to be in contention from the beginning. It’s been a great job from the whole team to keep their heads up.”

Lance Stroll had his Racing Point in the points ahead of a train comprising the Toro Rossos and

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Albon from lap 17, climbing as high as sixth before pitting under the VSC. But later he fell back on his softs, dropping out of the points when Hulkenberg overtook him on the 37th lap.

Nevertheless, he was only 1.9s off 10th by the flag.

“It was a tough race today and to finish just outside the points is really frustrating. I spent a lot of time in traffic and I wasn’t really happy with the balance of the car. I struggled to keep the tyres under control throughout and we were sliding the rears a lot – and that cost me at the restart when I got overtaken by Hulkenberg. The car was more competitive this weekend so there are plenty of positives to take away, but we just have to keep it going until the end of the season.”

Toro Rosso had a pretty horrible race, with a battle between team-mates Daniil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly getting a little torrid at times on their way to disappointing 12th and 14th places.

“I had a good start and some enjoyable battles,” Dany said. “I was really fighting until the very last lap, so I’m happy with my race. It was a good Sunday in the end, especially considering the problems we had in the previous days.”

“It was a pretty challenging day

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for us,” Pierre admitted. “We didn’t have the pace to fight for points today, I tried to do everything I could inside the cockpit but there wasn’t much we could do. I had a good fight with Dany as you always have to try to fight for positions. At the time, I was pushing for P12, a position that allows you to think that something can always happen in front of you and you can finish in P10. I tried to do what I could, but we didn’t have enough speed, so it was a tricky day.”

It was also pretty horrible for Alfa Romeo and Williams. Besides Giovinazzi’s first-lap drama which damaged his front wing, there was one for Kimi who made a false start and had to do a drive through on lap nine. The Finn split the Toro Rossos by the flag but that was nothing to write home about, and the Italian was 15th and last.

Besides George’s misfortune, Williams retired Robert Kubica on the 28th lap in order to conserve his power unit.

Lewis has been banging on for ages about how he looked forward to close competition, and lately he’s been getting it in spades from Ferrari and, to a lesser extent, Red Bull. This was a day when he had a slower car, yet he still took the fight to the opposition, and a champion’s drive earned him his 82nd Grand Prix triumph. Not

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surprisingly, he was stoked. “I don’t think we were

particularly confident. We put ourselves on a slightly different strategy and I was hoping that was going to give us an opportunity to dice and fight with them at some stage through the race. But before the race we sat down and we were like, our estimations of whether the soft tyres will last or not, either we’ll be correct or they’ll be correct. And ultimately, I think they were right, because the soft tyre was much stronger than we anticipated.”

Mercedes had thought they would wilt after 12 laps, and they did so after about 20.

“Obviously there was that difference between the compounds, so keeping up with the softs, with their consistency and their speed, was… Oh God, it was so hard! So I wasn’t expecting that. There was obviously that slight tail-off towards the end where I was able to start closing the gap but it wasn’t massive chunks that I was taking out of them. But then were obviously able to extend, we were planning to extend for like 15-plus laps or something like that and hoping that when we came back out on the soft we would have the chance to fight with one of them who would be on a different tyre. Obviously the VSC and the

Safety Car and all those things came into it.

“Valtteri did an exceptional job, because it’s not easy keeping the Ferraris behind and Charles has been driving so well, so ultimately

just an incredible day for the team considering the challenges that we have had. I think this weekend we knew that we had to pull more out of this car and there was more potential there, but we didn’t know

where it was. I think we pulled ourselves a little bit closer to the Ferraris, and it was just enough to get ahead of them.”

Which in itself was a surprise, as he had felt a lack of grip during the

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but not impossible as we’ve shown today.”

We should savour races such as the last six or seven (France and Singapore apart). For all its faults, in years to come, we’ll look back on this as one of F1’s golden eras. v

in terms of just class performances, so it means that everyone is having to raise their bar, including myself. I’m enjoying that challenge and as I said, just one race at a time. The next one is going to be super-hard, trying to beat these guys again,

to see how naturally we’re fighting against the Ferraris, who have got great pace, but Charles, Valtteri, Seb, Max, Carlos, some of the other drivers, are really performing so well. I think it’s one of the best years I’ve seen the drivers perform

grid formation laps. “I don’t know about Valtteri,

but I was a bit worried. And then obviously we definitely lost a little bit from the initial phase and then I wasn’t able to get to the tow because Charles stayed on the left and gave Seb it instead. I tried to sneak in behind Seb but there was a McLaren there so I had no tow down to Turn 2 and I nearly lost another place.

“After that it was just trying to keep up with them, but it was like trying to do qualifying laps every lap because they were so fast. Massive challenge but one I’m really proud of everyone and I hope that everyone back at the factory is able to relax for a second but then come back and work hard tomorrow, because we still have plenty of races to go and a lot of challenges ahead of us.”

Inevitably, he was asked one of those daft ‘are you confident about winning the Championship’ questions.

“I just don’t try to think about it. It’s not that it’s difficult, it’s pretty easy just to focus on the task in hand. But that is not easy at the moment so honestly I’m just focusing on trying to be the best I can be each weekend, one race at a time, and making sure I’m just delivering at a high rate.

“What’s really impressive is just

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FASTEST RACE LAPS

1 L Hamilton Mercedes 1:35.761 2 C Leclerc Ferrari 1:36.1933 V Bottas Mercedes 1:36.316 4 A Albon Red Bull 1:36.7625 M Verstappen Red Bull 1:36.9376 C Sainz McLaren 1:38.0207 S Perez Racing Point 1:38.0438 K Magnussen Haas 1:38.1309 D Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:38.22810 S Vettel Ferrari 1:38.24511 L Norris McLaren 1:38.30112 N Hulkenberg Renault 1:38.51913 K Raikkonen Alfa Romeo 1:38.58914 P Gasly Toro Rosso 1:38.60615 L Stroll Racing Point 1:38.61116 A Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 1:38.69617 D Ricciardo Renault 1:41.28418 G Russell Williams 1:41.70519 R Kubica Williams 1:42.327

Russian GP, Sochi, 29 September 2019 DRIVERS CONSTRUCTORS

1 L Hamilton Mercedes 1:33.38.992 - 198.448 km/h2 V Bottas Mercedes 1:33.42.821 - 3.8293 C Leclerc Ferrari 1:33.44.204 - 5.2124 M Verstappen Red Bull 1:33.53.202 - 14.2105 A Albon Red Bull 1:34.17.340 - 38.3486 C Sainz McLaren 1:34.24.881 - 45.8897 S Perez Racing Point 1:34.27.720 - 48.7288 L Norris McLaren 1:34.36.741 - 57.7499 K Magnussen * Haas 1:34.37.771 - 58.779 10 N Hulkenberg Renault 1:34.38.833 - 59.84111 L Stroll Racing Point 1:34.39.813 - 60.821 12 D Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:34.41.488 - 62.49613 K Raikkonen Alfa Romeo 1:34..47.902 - 68.91014 P Gasly Toro Rosso 1:34.49.068 - 70.07615 A Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 1:24.52.338 - 73.346R R Kubica Williams Saving the car - 28 lapsR G Russell Williams Accident - 27 lapsR S Vettel Ferrari MGUK - 26 lapsR D Ricciardo Renault Accident damage - 24 laps R R Grosjean Haas Accident - 0 laps

RACE DISTANCE: 53 laps - 309.745 km

1 L Hamilton Mercedes 3222 V Bottas Mercedes 2493 C Leclerc Ferrari 2154 M Verstappen Red Bull 2125 S Vettel Ferrari 1946 P Gasly Toro Rosso 697 C Sainz McLaren 668 A Albon Red Bull 529 L Norris McLaren 3510 D Ricciardo Renault 3411 N Hulkenberg Renault 3412 D Kvyat Toro Rosso 3313 S Perez Racing Point 3314 K Raikkonen Alfa Romeo 3115 K Magnussen Haas 2016 L Stroll Racing Point 1917 R Grosjean Haas 818 A Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 419 R Kubica Williams 1

1 Mercedes AMG Petronas 5712 Scuderia Ferrari 4093 Red Bull Racing 3114 McLaren F1 Team 1015 Renault F1 686 Scuderia Toro Rosso 557 Racing Point F1 528 Alfa Romeo Racing 359 Haas F1 Team 2810 Williams Racing 1

DE VRIES AND SHWARTZMAN CLINCH THEIR TITLESAs Ghiotto and Vips take Sunday’s F2 and F3 races

SOCHI FORMULA 2 & FORMULA 3 by Terry Thomas

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FORMULA 2 - FEATURE RACE

THE DUTCHMANHAS FLOWNFour wins, 11 podiums, 254 points, one Championship title and a season of utter domination. Nyck de Vries sealed the 2019 FIA Formula 2 title in style, with victory in the Sochi Feature Race, ahead of his main challenger, Nicholas Latifi. The Canadian had to settle for second on the day, and now faces a fight for the same spot in the Drivers’ standings.

Louis Delétraz completed the top three with his first Feature Race podium in F2, but he left it late, bombing past Luca Ghiotto at the final turn. The Italian had risked the alternate strategy of starting on mediums and switching to supersofts as he went for victory, but in the end couldn’t build a big enough gap between himself and De Vries, before eventually losing out on a podium place.

The morning’s rain had dried up

by the time De Vries lined up on pole at 16.45 local time and he got off the line smoothly, surging into the lead ahead of Latifi and Callum Ilott. They both got smartly off the line, but couldn’t match the sheer pace, and determination, of the Champion-to-be. Further back, the top 10 remained largely unaltered, apart from Mick Schumacher, who had risen to seventh thanks to a storming start. The German’s overtaking spree was momentarily halted as Artem Markelov pulled off the track and into retirement in the second BWT Arden car, triggering a Virtual Safety Car.

When racing resumed, Ilott went into freefall, from third to 12th. This handed Schumacher sixth, which he then turned into fifth with a move on Guanyu Zhou, who was later slapped with a five-second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage. Up front, Latifi needed to pass De Vries to prevent the Dutchman from claiming the title, but his hopes were dashed when

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and cost himself valuable time. This allowed De Vries to cross the line unopposed and fittingly seal his Championship title with a fourth victory of the year, while Latifi held on for second. Behind them, Delétraz managed to sneak back past Ghiotto on the final turn, as the Italian appeared to hesitate passing a backmarker. Sérgio Sette Câmara completed the top five, ahead of Matsushita, Jack Aitken, Mazepin, Ilott and Zhou.

De Vries thus secured the F2

Ghiotto lunged down his left-hand side for second. The Italian didn’t stop there and daringly went down the side of De Vries at the first corner, to complete his charge from fourth to first.

Unlike Ghiotto, De Vries and Latifi had both started on the supersofts and would pit later that lap, returning in 10th and 11th. This sparked into motion the Italian’s alternate strategy, as he set about maintaining the 27s gap that would be required when he eventually pitted. Behind the Italian, Schumacher, Nikita Mazepin and Nobuharu Matsushita had opted for the same strategy.

Schumacher’s attempts at

FEATURE RACE

1 Nyck de Vries ART 54.12.0872 Nicholas Latifi DAMS 54.17.0053 Louis Deletraz Carlin 54.18.0824 Luca Ghiotto UNI-Virtuosi Racing 54.19.6945 Sergio Sette Camara DAMS 54.23.4656 Nobuharu Matsushita Carlin 54.32.4517 Jack Aitken Campos 54.39.4908 Nikita Mazepin ART 54.40.6599 Callum Ilott Sauber Junior 54.44.48110 Guanyu Zhou UNI-Virtuosi Racing 54.45.84311 Sean Gelael Prema 54.55.45212 Jordan King MP Motorsport 54.59.58013 Giuliano Alesi Trident 55.00.70714 Ralf Boschung Trident 55.11.108 15 Tatiana Calderon BWT Arden 55.21.97116 Marino Sato Campos 55.58.30517 Mahaveer Raghunathan MP Motorsport 27 laps18 Matevos Isaakyan Sauber Junior 27 lapsR Mick Schumacher Prema 19 lapsR Artem Markelov BWT Arden 0 laps

Fastest lap : Ghiotto 1:51.104s, 189.487 km/h

making this work were dealt a blow as the Russian passed him, prompting a momentous roar from his home crowd. Then Matsushita also overtook the German when Mick locked up in Turn 13. De Vries and Latifi had already set about closing what was initially a 32s gap to Ghiotto, as they dashed by Marino Sato, and shortly after, the returned Ralph Boschung. At this point, Schumacher was forced out of the race when his PREMA went up in smoke in the pits, but not before he’d circulated for a couple of unchecked laps spewing oil smoke.

Five laps remained and the gap between De Vries and Ghiotto was

now just 26s, but still, the Italian refused to pit. He would stay out for two further laps, as he looked to make the switch when his rivals’ rubber would be at its weakest.

When the UNI-Virtuosi racer eventually swapped his mediums for supersofts, he had fallen both of the Championship’s top drivers and Delétraz. With his fresher, softer tyres he made light work of the Carlin car and began to chase down Latifi. He got within touching distance, but slipped slightly wide

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Matsushita, who was leading. His car was pushed nose-first into a 20g impact with the outer tyre wall. The race was quickly red flagged, giving rise to concerns about the Japanese driver, but though he was hospitalised overnight, he emerged without injury. When it finally resumed, the race was subsequently shortened to 15 laps due to time constraints. Now Ghiotto led from Ilott and De Vries. The Italian raced away unopposed,

Mazepin had started on reverse grid pole and got off the line smoothly, much to the delight of his home crowd in Sochi. But the excitement was too much for the Russian. He braked too late for Turn 2 and as he ran wide Jack Aitken, on his outside, had to go into the run-off area to avoid collision. As he rejoined safely, going round the bollards, Mazepin cut him too tightly, hit his car and was literally thrown to the right, across the track, and into the innocent

Sprint Race, fending off an unrelenting attack from champion Nyck de Vries, who secured a 12th podium of an incredible campaign. The ART Grand Prix ace finished second ahead of Sauber Junior Team by Charouz’s Callum Ilott, who finally made the podium after a great drive. The race was interrupted immediately by a heavy collision between Nikita Mazepin and Nobuharu Matsushita, both of whom thankfully were unhurt.

Championship with an advantage of 70 points over Latifi, but though first place was settled, there was still everything to play for in his wake.

FORMULA 2 - SPRINT RACE

GHIOTTO’S GLORY

Luca Ghiotto claimed a third victory of 2019, with a defiant defensive display in Sunday’s

SPRINT RACE

1 Luca Ghiotto UNI-Virtuosi Racing 1:18.21.3292 Nyck de Vries ART 1:18.22.0413 Callum Ilott Sauber Junior 1:18.23.0014 Nicholas Latifi DAMS 1:18.24.7125 Guanyu Zhou UNI-Virtuosi Racing 1:18.25.1496 Sergio Sette Camara DAMS 1:18.28.6657 Sean Gelael Prema 1:18.31.6728 Giuliano Alesi Trident 1:18.31.6729 Jordan King MP Motorsport 1:18.34.43710 Artem Markelov BWT Arden 1:18.36.18011 Jack Aitken Campos 1:18.38.09812 Ralf Boschung Trident 1:18.45.227 13 Matevos Isaakyan Sauber Junior 1:18.47.88714 Louis Deletraz Carlin 1:18.48.74315 Marino Sato Campos 1:18.53.26216 Tatiana Calderon BWT Arden 1:18.57.80117 Mahaveer Raghunathan MP Motorsport 1:19.04.386

R Mick Schumacher Prema 7 lapsR Nikita Mazepin ART 0 lapsR Nobuharu Matsushita Carlin 0 laps

Fastest lap : Latifi 1:52.272s, 187.516 km/h

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this and got back to within DRS range, forcing the Italian on to the defensive. Ilott, meanwhile, in his best F2 race, kept up with them and was always a contender if either made an error. Little changed in the order behind them. As Nicholas Latifi held fourth, Guanyu Zhou managed to nab fifth from Sérgio Sette Câmara and Sean Gelael, while Giuliano Alesi squeezed himself into the points, at the expense of Artem

but the Briton wasn’t as lucky, as he was unable to defend from the power of De Vries’ ART machine as it darted to his left on the pit straight. Ilott attempted to put up a fight, keeping pace with the champion until the end of the third corner, when De Vries finally made the move stick. Taking advantage of their battle, Ghiotto stretched his lead to 2.6s, before easing off to conserve his rubber. De Vries quickly cut into

Markelov, and was resolute in defending from an aggressive Mick Schumacher who banged wheels with him before retiring yet again. De Vries ended his weekend with 266 points and the title, ahead of Latifi and Ghiotto on 194 and 184 respectively. Sette Câmara is fourth on 165 from Aitken on 159. The fight for the Teams’ Championship continues, as DAMS remains top on 359 points, ahead of UNI-Virtuosi and ART Grand Prix.

The finale will support the Abu Dhabi GP in November.

FORMULA 3 - RACE 1

ARMSTRONG WINS,SHWARTZMAN CHAMP

Robert Shwartzman clinched the maiden FIA Formula 3 Championship title in one of the most intense races of the season, but it was his team-mate Marcus Armstrong who won, as the Russian settled for second, refusing to risk his crown.

When Armstrong told reporters that it would be one of the battles of the season, he wasn’t wrong, as three different drivers exchanged the lead in a race-long battle which was only settled on the final lap.

Niko Kari was deeply immersed into that fight, but would ultimately finish the season as he started it, in third place, with his first podium since Round 1 in Barcelona. For all of the plaudits that Shwartzman will deservedly receive in the aftermath, Armstrong sealed his third victory of the campaign and matched the champion’s tally.

However, Shwartzman has led the title charge for the majority of the year and knew that finishing ahead of rival Jehan Daruvala

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the pits, Juri Vips caught the back of Christian Lundgaard. The Dane was able to recover and continue after spinning while the field was still running slowly, but Vips was

Shortly after the track went green again, Leong Hon Chio spun off at the same corner and hit the barriers, this time bringing out the Safety Car. When that returned to

end of the first turn. This allowed Armstrong a shot at his fellow Ferrari F1 junior and he made light work of the Russian, nipping by after the first corner.

Armstrong was the first to discover drops of rain in the latter parts of the track and warned his PREMA team. Further back, Bent Viscaal spun off at Turn 4, which brought out a Virtual Safety Car. With this, Devlin DeFrancesco and Trident took the risk of switching to the wets, but the rain dried up and they were forced to revert to slicks.

would be enough, and the Indian slumped to fifth, after a sluggish start. With his PREMA team-mate struggling, this left the Russian needing to drive a conservative race, and he did that like a champion, with minimal risk and maximum gain.

Dark clouds lingered above the Sochi Autodrom, as rain threatened to spice up a contest that ultimately wouldn’t need it. While Shwartzman got off the line cleanly, Daruvala struggled, slipping as far as sixth by the

RACE 1

1 Marcus Armstrong Prema 42.35.3192 Robert Shwartzman Prema 42.36.3963 Nico Kari Trident 42.40.2304 Leonardo Pulcini Hitech Grand Prix 42.41.3265 Jehan Daruvala Prema 42.43.6686 Pedro Piquet Trident 42.44.7987 Jake Hughes HWA Racelab 42.46.7418 Jori Vips Hitech Grand Prix 42.49.3399 Raoul Hyman Sauber Junior Team 42.50.82010 Richard Verschoor MP Motorsport 42.56.89511 Max Fewtrell ART 42.57.78012 Yuki Tsunoda Jenzer 43.01.12613 Ye Yifei Hitech Grand Prix 43.01.37014 Christian Lundgaard ART 43.03.26915 Logan Sargeant Carlin Buzz 43.05.47716 Sebastian Fernandez Campos 43.06.40217 Simo Laaksonen MP Motorsport 43.10.17018 Liam Lawson MP Motorsport 43.11.30019 Kayvan Andres HWA Racelab 43.12.86420 Teppei Natori Carlin Buzz 43.18.18021 Alessio Deledda Campos 43.19.23122 David Schumacher Campos 43.35.21623 Devlin Defrancesco Trident 43.39.13424 Andreas Estner Jenzer 43.47.31825 Felipe Drugovich Carlin Buzz 43.48.127R Fabio Scherer Sauber Junior Team 9 lapsR Leong Hon Chio Jenzer 3 lapsR Bent Viscaal HWA Racelab 1 lapR Lirim Zendeli Sauber Junior Team 0 laps

Fastest lap : Hughes, 1:55.513, 182.254 km/h

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fourth victory, but his Armstrong had other ideas and showed no mercy. With nothing to lose, he made a daring lunge in Turn 2 and hauled himself back into the

The two PREMAs headed into the final lap on course for their third one-two of the season. Shwartzman looked set to cap off an incredible campaign with a

He went down the Kari but ran wide, which allowed Shwartzman and Leonardo Pulcini to take advantage and steal second and third from him.

Having dropped to third early on, Shwartzman was now suddenly in contention for the win as he forced himself ahead of Kari. With five laps to go, Kari was once again at the mercy of Armstrong, who had quickly regained third from Pulcini. The Kiwi made no mistake, making a move stick in Turn 2.

slapped with a 10 second penalty for causing the collision.

Armstrong held on to the lead at the restart, but Kari attacked Shwartzman and eventually dived ahead of the Russian. Having passed one PREMA, the Finn knew his Trident had the pace and began to harry Armstrong. The Trident racer dived down the inside of him at Turn 2 and took the inside line on the third corner. The Kiwi was pushed back and opted to attack the Finn in Turn 1 next time round.

RACE 2

1 Jori Vips Hitech Grand Prix 36.05.7302 Marcus Armstrong Prema 36.13.0513 Robert Shwartzman Prema 36.07.6214 Jake Hughes HWA Racelab 36.02.7405 Nico Kari Trident 36.22.2706 Ye Yifei Hitech Grand Prix 36.23.8257 Richard Verschoor MP Motorsport 21 laps8 Liam Lawson MP Motorsport 36.23.3939 Christian Lundgaard ART 35.48.28210 Logan Sargeant Carlin Buzz 36.16.82511 Max Fewtrell ART 35.52.54012 Devlin Defrancesco Trident 36.19.17213 Raoul Hyman Sauber Junior Team 36.31.76714 Jehan Daruvala Prema 36.19.06915 Felipe Drugovich Carlin Buzz 36.09.66316 Leonardo Pulcini Hitech Grand Prix 36.10.74517 Bent Viscaal HWA Racelab 36.24.17518 Andreas Estner Jenzer 36.29.27619 Teppei Natori Carlin Buzz 36.27.01020 David Schumacher Campos 36.21.14121 Leong Hon Chio Jenzer 36.42.10822 Alessio Deledda Campos 36.40.29223 Kayvan Andres HWA Racelab 36.24.17524 Sebastian Fernandez Campos 36.21.92525 Yuki Tsunoda Jenzer 36.13.455R Pedro Piquet Trident 4 lapsR Fabio Scherer Sauber Junior Team 36.10.791R Simo Laaksonen MP Motorsport 36.23.542R Lirim Zendeli Sauber Junior Team 14 laps

Fastest lap : Armstrong, 1:55.860, 181.708 km/h

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race lead, giving Shwartzman no chance of a reply. Both were euphoric when they crossed the line, as Shwartzman hailed his team, thanking them for an incredible, but tough, season.

Kari completed the podium, with Pulcini and Daruvala rouding out the top five, ahead of Pedro Piquet, Jake Hughes and Vips. Raoul Hyman secured his first points of the season with ninth place, ahead of Richard Verschoor.

FORMULA 3 - RACE 2

VIPS, VIPS, HOORAY!Jüri Vips closed the FIA Formula 3 season with his third victory of 2019, dominating Sunday’s race start-to-finish. Drama played out behind him, however, as Marcus Armstrong ran rampant, rising from seventh to second to secure second place in the Drivers’ standings. Champion Robert Shwartzman ended the campaign on the podium, with third place.

Vips got away cleanly to fight off an attack from Jake Hughes, and the Briton was then thrust into the path of Leonardo Pulcini, who began to harry him aggressively. Meanwhile, Armstrong had started his rise from seventh, getting ahead of Niko Kari and latching on to the rear of Pedro Piquet.

Pulcini made his move on Hughes after a lot of feinting, and lunged down to his left before conract was made and he sun into the run-off area. That dropped Pulcini to the back of the field and Hughes to fourth, and put Armstrong and Piquet into the fight. The Kiwi now had the opportunity to claim second in the Championship, especially as team-mate Jehan Daruvala had stalled on the formation lap. The Indian had to start from the pitlane and was hamstring down in 22nd place.

Armstrong soon sliced by Piquet, but he needed either

to win or to set fastest lap. Vips had checked out, so he focused on the latter and sped round Sochi Autodrom as ifhe was in a qualifying session, to snatch the pints he needed.

Vips continued to flex his muscles out in front, as Shwartzman seized fourth from Hughes to set his sights on ending 2019 with a podium place. He achieved this when Piquet was forced to retire with mechanical problems. Second would prove a place to far for the Russian though, as Armstrong and Vips were simply too far ahead of him by that stage.

Behind this trio, Hughes was followed home by Kari and Ye Yifei, who scored his best finish of the year after a terrific scrap in which he vanquished Richard Verschoor, an impressive Liam Lawson, Tsunado, Fewtrell and Lungaard.

Shwartzman thus won the Championship with 212 points, from Armstrong on 158 and Daruvala on 157, with Vips fourth on 141 and Piquet fifth with 98. PREMA Racing ended the season with 527 points, ahead of Hitech Grand Prix on 223, ART Grand Prix on 174, Trident on 134 and HWA RACELAB on 100. v

REVERSED ENGINEERING?

THE LAST LAPby David Tremayne

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THE LAST LAPby David Tremayne

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This has been a bit of a week for musings, what with September being only the second time that either Joe or I could recall when there were four Grands Prix in a calendar month (July last year being the first). That didn’t leave a lot of time for writing, outside the races - let alone doing anything else - but there’s been plenty of travel time for reflection.

And I have to say that as a purist I’m really not sure about the increasingly likely idea that Liberty Media will give reverse grid races a try at times in 2020.

I’m always wary about being the stick-in-the-mud who sees the old ways as the best, however, and even I have to admit that we barely see the haloes today. And in some ways I applaud Liberty for considering new ideas and deciding to give them a try.

At one stage there was a proposal to revert to refuelling, and I‘m glad that the teams gave that the bums’ rush. It would add another element of danger while doing little to spice things up.

The thinking behind reverse grid races is what worries me. Lots of people seem concerned that the current qualifying system places the fastest cars at the front, thus ensuring that the minnows don’t get a chance. Well, that’s called meritocracy, and if there is one thing that F1 stands for, it’s that.

The idea is to build the best car and to race it against everyone else’s best car, preferably with the best driver at the helm, so why should the minnows get false chances?

Every time we have had periods of

dominance – in my time in F1 we’ve seen McLaren, Williams, McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes on top – all you hear from the whiners is how bad it is for the sport that one team beats all the rest. As if that’s a crime. It’s not. It’s the object of the whole exercise and the people who are really ‘ruining the sport’ are the ones who aren’t as clever. It’s their inadequacy that’s the problem.

So I’m wary of anything that penalises the achievers. And, for sure, the idea of reverse grids hasn’t gone down well with three of the men who have been achieving a lot this year.

“I would not be happy,” Singaporean polesitter Charles Leclerc said last week. “I’m a lot happier to start first tomorrow but yeah, I don’t think it’s the solution for Formula 1. I think the best shall win and start in the best place, and not reversing that order. I don’t think it’s the solution.”

“I don’t really know what to say to it,” second fastest Lewis Hamilton said. “People that propose that don’t really know what they’re talking about.”

“I think it’s complete bullshit to be honest,” said a trenchant Sebastian Vettel after putting his Ferrari third in the line-up. “If you want to improve things, I think it’s very clear we need to string the field more together, we need to have better racing. So, it’s just a plaster. I don’t know which genius came up with this but it’s not the solution. It’s completely the wrong approach.”

Mixing up grids lower down the sport is common. When Tom and Sam were karting, they’d have a start near the front, one in the

middle and one at the back, and as far as I’m aware that still pertains. That’s good, when you’re still climbing the ladder. You get used to the pressure of trying to stay up front, or of trying to fight your way through.

Likewise, it seems to work having the top eight reversed in the second F3 races and in Sunday’s F2 Sprint Races. So long as you factor the reversal into your overall assessment of drivers, I think it works.

But because F1 is the peak, and a meritocracy, for me anything that falsely skews things against the people doing the best job goes against the sport’s DNA.

The good news behind all of this is, in my opinion, the work that has been going into creating cars that can run close together from 2021 onwards, with the aim being to facilitate

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overtaking or at least create situations in which it is more possible.

The current idea is not to change everything and up-end established rules but to try something different at selected races in 2020 – perhaps four – at tracks on which overtaking is deemed to be easier. So rest assured, Monaco won’t be one of them, but maybe Baku, Paul Ricard, Silverstone or Abu Dhabi could be.

Several suggestions have been raised: a race on Saturday afternoon with a starting line-up based on championship order but with the top 10 reversed; a race with the whole grid reversed, or some sort of reversed-grid ‘last-man-standing’ knockout (whatever that means), with a points system that rewards the most overtakes. Or a bit of all three ideas mixed together. The result would then determine the grid for Sunday’s pukka race.

As long as Liberty Media can avoid being Barnum and Bailey, I’d say let’s give it a limited try if we absolutely have to, and then take a considered view of the outcome. Hopefully a lot of the reasoning behind reverse grid races will become redundant because of the 2021 technical changes.

More worrying in all this is that, while FOM and the teams seem hellbent on asking fans about everything, and occasionally include the drivers, nobody asks the media anything even though either their organisations or the journalists and photographers travelling on their own coin, spend a lot more money on their involvement than the fans do and earn a lot less than the drivers. I guess FOM takes the view that the media would give their opinions in public anyway, but a bit of respect and acknowledgement of all the free publicity that

“That’s why we’ve been trying to put in more of a team effort, the last few years, to make sure we are involved a lot more. Because over the years some things have been decided without addressing us drivers - and, you know, whether we’re paying the bills or not, we are the core of the whole show. Especially if it’s something that we feel strongly on, then I think our opinion is more valuable than really anyone else’s. I think we’re making progress, but they don’t always like to involve us - in the past they haven’t.

“I don’t think it’s the right time. I think if 2021 delivers what it should, then there’s no reason to change anything of the format. And I think as well it would then dilute a lot of the weekend. It’s like some other sports I follow, the product becomes diluted if you then have reverse-grid races, this and that.

“2021, I think that’s enough changing. I think this suggestion is a bit desperate, and I don’t think we’re in a desperate time at all.

“I love the UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship], mixed martial arts and all that, and it got to a point where they were having fights on every weekend, and it’s great for fans, you get to see a fight all the time, but you become less excited, less interested, because it’s always in front of you.

“So I think like that with the races, if there’s always a race on, and if they’re reversed-grid and then kind of manipulating the result a little bit, it loses some of its value and some of its core. I’d prefer to keep that part for tradition.”

Lewis and Sebastian have been involved in several discussions, and so have other drivers via their representatives, Alex Wurz notably representing GPDA members.

There was the feeling here over the

the sport gets from tv, radio and written media might not go amiss.

On the subject of drivers being involved in the rules discussion, there seems to be a difference of opinion.

Daniel Ricciardo claimed here on Friday that the drivers are “sometimes pretty frustrated” about learning what’s being proposed via the media, as if he hasn’t had the chance to be involved.

“Things will get put in front of us: ‘they are talking about this, they’re actually fairly deep into this discussion’ - and we’re like, well, why haven’t we been told about this?

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weekend that the drivers believe that the current rules should remain and that better tyres would solve many of the problems of overtaking and closer racing, but that they have been told that they have to make do with whatever tyres Pirelli will supply.

Lewis is known to be unimpressed with the 2021 rules process after sitting in on meetings earlier this year, and this weekend he said: “It was a concern before, and it’s still the same concern. The fact they are trying to reverse grids and all that seems to me like an excuse for not doing a good enough job in the decision process.

“Why are they making the cars heavier? There’s no reason, it’s not safer, it’s not better for racing.

“My points are still the same. I’m still concerned. And I don’t think that’s going to change from what I’ve witnessed in the meeting. The changes they’ve made in previous years have not been particularly effective, so they are probably not confident with any decision-making process! It’s not an easy job. There’s a lot of people involved. Us drivers are trying to have more of an impact and more of a role in helping them make a better decision, but it doesn’t seem to have made much difference.”

A lot of people say that DRS is a sticking plaster, and to an extent it is. But to me it has always just given back something lost in the aerodynamic revolution – ie the slipstream. Back in the Sixties, at tracks such as Rheims, Hockenheim and Monza in particular, slipstreamer races were exciting and showcased different driving talents.

For me, reverse-grid races would be a band-aid if they were applied instead of all the other effort that is going into trying to make the racing more exciting by letting cars run closer together and via the budget cap, trying to close up the field. So I’m more hopeful that something good will come of all the research that has been going into the 2021 cars.

I saw some really stupid idea that the FIA or whomever should help the can’t dos by giving them the 2021 regulations a couple of months ahead of the top teams, giving them a head start. Give me a break! How utterly stupid is that? Give the can’t dos a kick up the ass to do better!

Worryingly, the V-word was raised here on Saturday. It’s well known that the F1 teams aren’t particularly enamoured of the new rule proposals for 2021. If we had a strong FIA that wouldn’t matter, because they would just be told that was how it was going to be and to get on with it. That’s what the FIA is supposed to do. Then somebody mentioned the right Ferrari has to veto any change it deems ‘not to be in the best interest of the World Championship’. To be fair, team boss Mattia Binotto said that his team preferred to reach a better compromise, rather than use the veto.

“First, we have got the veto right and it would be a shame to use it,” he said. “I don’t

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think that’s the intention, I don’t think that’s what we are looking for. More important is to be very constructive. We’ve still got a month’s time to address the fundamentals by the end of October.”

On Saturday Joe and I had an interesting conversation with a friend at Mercedes. While Joe was against the well-established teams earning more from the pie because of their historic status, I was wholly supportive of that, as respect for and acknowledgement of, the role they have played in creating the sport’s rich heritage during their periods of involvement.

But I am utterly opposed to the idea of Ferrari having a veto. It’s anachronistic and grossly unfair, especially as it was originally granted to the team to protect it because of its small status. That clearly isn’t the case these days, besides which, no single team should ever be granted such a stupid right regardless of who they are. It goes against every sense of sport.

Elsewhere, there was an update, albeit unofficial, re Jessi Combs’ fatal accident on the Alvord Desert on August 27 (GrandPrix+ Issue 263, Belgium), where she was attempting to set a new land speed record for women.

It came on Waldo Stakes’ Facebook page, via his Blue Flame pal Pete Farnsworth, who can be taken as a reliable source.

The suggestion is that Jessi kept the afterburner lit for two miles longer than the run plan called for, and was running over 600 mph. One of her dreams was to beat the one-way run of 618 mph that Kitty O’Neil recorded on the Alvord Desert on December 6th 1976

(GrandPrix+ Issue 250, Preview), the day after she’d averaged 512.706 mph to become the unofficial fastest woman in the world, before she was pulled from the SMI Motivator programme due to sexist commercial politics. When Jessi released the parachutes the main stroplines are said to have snapped, and she was killed in the ensuing accident as North American Eagle ran off the lake.

And here in Sochi all of Renault’s Academy drivers in F2 and F3, and their Formula Renault

counterparts in Barcelona, raced with replica Anthoine Hubert helmets. I thought that was a beautiful tribute to a very popular young racer.

There was also good news regarding Juan Manuel Correa, who was injured in that accident at Spa. As these words were written the condition of his lungs had improved so dramatically that surgeons in London were preparing to begin the 10+ hour operation to repair the serious damage his legs sustained. We join his family praying for a successful outcome. v

PARTING SHOT

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THE NEXT GP+ WILL BE PUBLISHEDFROM SUZUKA ON OCTOBER 13

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