Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2017 i AUTOSPORT

What’s your take on Fernando Alonso and his crack at the Indianapolis 500, at the expense of missing – of all races – F1’s signature grand prix? Do you admire him for not only showing the intelligence to see the bigger racing picture beyond the blinkered F1 world and taking on one of the world’s great sporting spectacles, but also possessing the gumption to put himself on the line at an event that is both difficult to master from a cold start and still genuinely dangerous? Or have you decided that missing Monaco is a sure sign he’s lost his mojo, particularly since this year’s race most likely offers McLaren-Honda their best chance of springing a half-decent result? Perhaps you’d go even further and brand Alonso a traitor to the…

At the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix, I took a shot from the inside of Turn 1 to try to catch some of the spectacular sparking from beneath the cars on the run down to the first corner. Then, as the race developed, I became aware of some commotion behind me. I turned around to face the apex of T1 and saw yellow fags and Lance Stroll’s Williams in the middle of the corner. I sprinted down there and captured this shot of him climbing from his wrecked Williams. What’s unusual about this is that there are no marshals surrounding the car at this stage, so it’s a pure shot. Plus the body language really sums up how he’s feeling. Photographer LAT : Steven Tee Where Sakhir, Bahrain When…

Q1 In the 1967 Indy 500 there were three drivers on the grid who also completed a full F1 season: Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart – and which other driver? Q2 How many starts will Jenson Button have made when he makes his one-off F1 return in Monaco? Q3 Five current full-time F1 drivers have one part of the ‘triple crown’ to their name. Who are they? Q4 Lance Stroll was born how far from Indianapolis as the crow flies: 652, 702 or 752 miles? Q5 Five former F1 drivers are joining Fernando Alonso in the Indy 500. Alexander Rossi, Takuma Sato, Max Chilton and Sébastian Bourdais are four – who is the fifth and only F1 race winner? Q6 What was notable about the date of the first ever Bahrain…

On Sunday 9 April, sports psychologists must have thought the world had tilted on its axis. The essence of sport is competition, and the essence of competition is a desire to humiliate your opponent. By definition, therefore, sport is intensely competitive and any participant’s self-esteem is of paramount importance. This fact alone leads to a burning desire to win that should preclude the possibility of friendship with a fellow competitor lest it dull the killer instinct that is so vital to success. Yet in Augusta we saw Justin Rose genuinely pleased to see his great friend Sergio Garcia win the Masters, and, on the opposite side of the world, we saw an unusual kinship between Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton as their finishing positions from Australia were reversed in China.…

“FRANK AND PATRICK SET A VERY DISTINCT CULTURE THAT HAS REALLY SET THE TONE FOR ME, FOR MY WHOLE CAREER IN THE SPORT. THEY’RE REAL RACERS” Atwinkle in the eye. That subtle signifier of mischief within. It gives Paddy Lowe away as one of the good guys, even as he carries – lightly – the mantle of technical greatness. The warmth of his greeting at Williams’ Grove HQ, a readiness to chat. It’s disarming in one so accomplished. This, after all, is the man whose technical leadership helped Mercedes to a period of consummate domination from 2014-16 (in tandem, it must be noted, with engine boss Andy Cowell). And one whose CV encompasses years at Williams during their ’90s glory days, then McLaren when they were last frontrunners. Lowe has…

Wins 155 Poles 131 1st victory Jim Clark, Lotus, 1967 Dutch GP 50th victory Jackie Stewart, Tyrrell, 1972 Canadian GP 100th victory Jody Scheckter, Wolf, 1977 Monaco GP 150th victory Elio de Angelis, Lotus, 1982 Austrian GP Final victory Michele Alboreto, Tyrrell, 1983 Detroit GP Number produced 500+ Horsepower 405bhp in 1975, rising to 500+bhp RPM 900rpm in 1967, rising to 11,000rpm F1 drivers’ championships 12 F1 constructors’ championships 10 Zandvoort, Holland: 4 June 1967. Formula 1 was about to undergo a momentous change. But, as is so often the nature of these things, only distance and perspective would make it obvious. Courtesy of Ford’s beautifully shot, minimal-propaganda Nine Days in Summer documentary, anyone with YouTube access can be transported back to Zandvoort 1967. You’ll see a huge crowd gathered…

ANDREW BENSON Little escapes the close attention of the BBC’s F1 correspondent. This month, we ask him to turn his gimlet eye on Sebastian Vettel (p34) THOMAS BUTLER One of our portrait photographers du choix, Thomas has trained his lens on Paddy Lowe. Look out for the twinkle in the eye… (p56) MATT YOUSON So much more than an engine, the Cosworth DFV was the bedrock of modern F1. Matt talks us through its nuts and bolts on p74 STUART CODLING ‘Codders’ is a man of many talents: part-comedian, part-onesiewearing London Irish fan, and the author of our Ricard piece on p82…

THE ONLY SHOW IN TOWN With a single keystroke, McLaren, Honda and Fernando Alonso have changed the nose-diving trajectory of their 2017 narrative. That keystroke was the pushing of an email icon marked ‘send’ to circulate news of Alonso’s forthcoming assault on the Indy 500 to a dumbstruck media horde. It’s hard to keep a secret in Formula 1; harder still to keep a lid on such a juicy tale, but McLaren managed to do just that. No one saw this coming, although they’re going to owe one particular bright young F1 journalist a favour for a very long time… The dropping of this media bomb had an effect not seen in our cosy little world since the News of the World went nuclear on Max Mosley back in 2008…

Formula 1’s current engine formula took six years to not finalise. Conceived by the Max Mosley administration in 2008 and slated for introduction in 2013, it was delayed until 2014 because the goalposts moved after Mosley’s departure. In the process, the architecture switched from inline-4 to V6 and certain ‘performance-differentiating’ technologies were dropped in the interests of cost saving. Yet this has proved to be the most expensive power unit change in F1 history, while post-2014 changes to the concept have opened the door to it becoming more costly still. The ‘hard hybrid’ (as opposed to the ‘soft’ KERS-supplemented V8s) 1,600cc turbo formula was intended to appeal to and appease the fears of the six car manufacturers (plus Cosworth) then in F1. There were high expectations, too, that a more…

F1 Racing : What’s your philosophy for technical development? Andy Green: We try to focus on the key areas. We use the feedback from the drivers extensively and that’s really what we base our development around – where they see the important areas of improvement, from a car-handling perspective. Because it’s not just about adding downforce to the car; you’ve got to add downforce to the car in the right way, and in a way that allows the driver to use it. So it’s important that we always listen to the driver on the areas where he feels the car could be improved. F1R : And how do you use the simulator? AG: We back up what the drivers are telling us with work on the simulator to…

CV Ruth Buscombe Age: 27 2016 Senior strategy engineer at Sauber, and Dare to be Different ambassador 2015 Strategy engineer, Haas 2013 Factory-based race strategist, Ferrari 2012 Simulation development engineer, Ferrari 2008 BA with MEng in Aerospace and Aerothermal Engineering (distinction) at Cambridge University Academically, Ruth Buscombe has a perfect score. It starts with 11 A* GCSEs and five As at A level, including Maths and Further Mathematics; it ends with a degree from the University of Cambridge in engineering, including a master’s thesis on the study of the Drag Reduction System. She wanted to work in F1 from an early age, and studied hard to achieve her aim. She’s now got her dream job, working on the pitwall and determining race strategy for Sauber. “There are actually two dreams…

BRUCE McLAREN FROM THE COCKPIT Author Bruce McLaren Price £19.99 www.evropublishing.com Bruce McLaren was just 27 when he penned his autobiography in 1964 – a tender age for such an undertaking. Then again, he’d already squeezed an awful lot into his short life, enduring a debilitating childhood illness, moving to Europe as a racing driver of promise and making history as the (then) youngest ever grand prix winner. Ahead of him and beyond this book lay the foundation of his own team, Can-Am glory – and his tragic death in a testing crash at Goodwood in 1970. His book has long been considered a prime period source, with his optimism shining through his easy narration. So what a great idea to republish it now, just as it was, with an…

I have to admit that I’ve been in two minds about the blue flag situation, ever since they came up with that rule requiring a blue-flagged driver to move over within three corners. Or, to be more specific, due to the savage penalties incurred by the slower driver for not doing so. Those of us who were at Zolder in 1982, when Gilles Villeneuve lost his life because a slower driver didn’t move over for him in qualifying, have, I think, always been very pro-blue. On the other hand, as you will read on page 106 of this issue, ‘using the traffic’ is to some extent a part of the racing driver’s lost art, which is right up there along with heel-and-toeing, judging gaps and distances, noticing photographers near the…

WHAT MAKES A GREAT F1 DRIVER? For some, it’s numbers. Michael Schumacher, with 91 wins and seven titles, is the greatest of all time, and that’s the end of it. Except it’s not, is it? According to the numbers, Schumacher was more than twice as good as Ayrton Senna, who was not as good as Alain Prost, and Damon Hill was better than Gilles Villeneuve and Stirling Moss. How many people would agree with that? The relative greatness of F1 drivers is a fascination of a sport where the infuence of the machinery queries the statistical simplicity of, say, cricket or baseball. The numbers matter up to a point, but only as a frame on which to hang the rest of the evidence. Which brings us neatly on to Sebastian…

Esteban Ocon extends the top half of his lanky frame over the balcony at the rear of Force India’s hospitality unit and peers into the murky water below. Here at the Shanghai International Circuit is a piece of architecturally intriguing but not always user-friendly Hermann Tilke whimsy: the paddock buildings rest on stilts atop the vestigial remains of the swampland that used to dominate this area. It is upon this Stygian soup that one of our readers’ question cards now foats, already well beyond even Esteban’s long-armed grasp as the ripples on the surface carry it away from our view. He emits a furtive but good-natured chuckle; fortunately he’d already finished answering all of your questions. Ocon has quickly settled in to his new home at Force India and it’s…

“What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.” Confucian wisdom is mostly expressed in aphorisms. Many sayings attributed to the man himself were committed to paper only after his death. Thus one of the civilised world’s great humanists hovers somewhere out of reach – there and yet not there. So we could be heading for a culture clash today as we escort a driver well known for speaking his mind, plainly and without an f-bomb filter, to a temple devoted to the presence of this great thinker and moralist. The Confucian temple in Jiading is in itself an unusual sight, a small oasis of tranquility and traditional architecture juxtaposed with chaotic human traffic and new-build concrete in what, up until a few years ago, was the…