Features

Displaying stories 341 - 360 of 908 in total

Year in Review - Benetton-Renault

It was always going to be a difficult season for Benetton, in part because the team had been purchased by Renault prior to the first race and the whole year was of necessity a transitional period as the fullscale Renault F1 challenge built up momentum in preparation for 2002.Full Story

Year in Review - Jaguar

Major administrative changes were made following the end of previous season with Bobby Rahal now running team with help from former F1 champion Niki Lauda, now employed by Ford's Premier Automotive Group. The new car was powered by uprated Cosworth CR3, 72-degree V10 developing 790bhp powering R2 chassis originally penned by Gary Anderson before his departure, but now developed by technical team of Steve Nichols, John Russell and aerodynamicist Mark Handford. Eddie Irvine remained as team leader partnered by former F3 star Luciano Burti.Full Story

Historical - The Banville hillclimb

Back in the good old days of motor racing they used to have Grands Prix for all kinds of things. The opening of the Montlhery race track in 1924 was celebrated by with a Grand Prix de l'Ouverture and each year the Paris Automobile Salon boasted a Grand Prix du Salon. The tradition continued until after World War II when France's first autoroute opened at St. Cloud in 1946 and a race was held in celebration.Full Story

Year in Review - Arrows-Asiatech

Tom Walkinshaw believes that his TWR Arrows empire has the stuff on which to build the foundations of F1 success. Yet Arrows has been promising much and delivering precious little over the past few seasons and, in that respect, 2001 was no exception. The team's Asiatech-engined machines shone occasionally thanks largely to ambitious and imaginative low-tank race strategies and to lead driver Jos Verstappen's unquenchable enthusiasm. Yet they failed to make any sort of sustainable performance breakthrough.Full Story

Big Al - Can the car companies really do without F1?

We are supposed to learn from history. Therefore when we are told that the sort of cyclical changes we've experienced in the past are henceforward consigned to those very same history books from which we are supposed to learn, then we have grounds for being cautious. Suspicious, even.Full Story

The Youth of Today - It's Formula 1? but not as we know it

To my surprise and doubtless Mr. Ecclestone's dismay I went to a Formula 1 race on a Saturday night in November. No, the paddock wasn't a millimeter perfect array of motorhomes and gleaming pantechnicons, neither was it a dress rehearsal for a floodlit attempt to make the Malaysian Grand Prix interesting.Full Story

Year in Review - Prost-Acer

To receive a payout from F1's commercial rights pot, it's necessary to have finished the previous year's World Championship amongst the top ten of the eleven competing teams. Prost finished 2001 in ninth place with four Championship points scored, but whether the team can sustained itself through the off-season on its current lurid overdraft is anybody's guess.Full Story

Technical - Paddock myths

One of the problems of writing technical articles about Formula 1, in fact THE problem, is that there is a lack of source information. The level of paranoia among the teams is at such a level that they spend considerable sums on making hi-tech covers for the cars to wear when they are being worked on in the garages, usually interfering with the work of the mechanics in the process.Full Story

Year in Review - European Minardi

Life in the F1 pit lane can so often be about little triumphs behind the scenes rather than high profile glory out on the circuit. With that in mind, it was a miracle is that any Minardis are on the starting grid at all this season.Full Story

Year in Review - Introduction: Michael mops them up again; but is Ferrari domination good for business?

Over the next few week Grandprix.com will be reviewing the 2001 FIA Formula One World Championship team by team. Today we start with a general overview.Full Story

Big Al - Ford has enough on its plate to worry much about Jaguar's F1 future

Ford has been the most active company ever in global motorsport and in F1 for 34 years since the advent of the Ford-funded Cosworth DFV realigned the entire F1 technical landscape. Those unyielding facts should be born firmly in mind when one considers last week's departure of Jac Nasser from the role of Ford Chief Executive.Full Story

News Feature - If you happen to be in Paris...

Paris was the cradle of motor racing and there are still plenty of signs of that fact if one looks around the French capital.Full Story

Historical - Ferenc Szisz: The Hungarian railway engineer

It is a little known fact that the winner of the first major motor race to use the title "Grand Prix" was a Hungarian, although in 1873, when Ferenc Szisz was born, Hungary was part of the vast Hapsburg Empire although by then it was virtually autonomous from Vienna thanks to the efforts of politician Ferenc Deak after whom Szisz was probably named.Full Story

Big Al - Can Michael Schumacher set a record that will never be bettered?

When Alain Prost finally retired from racing at the end of 1993, F1 insiders rocked on their heels and took a deep breath. 51 Grand Prix victories. Surely nobody can match that?Full Story

News Feature - Who owns what in F1 these days?

The last couple of years have been rather confusing for F1 fans - at least when it comes to the politics of the sport. Once upon a time there was a team's organization called FOCA and the international automobile federation (FIA) but in recent years there have been all manner of other people involved.Full Story

Technical - The 32-bit throttle cable

Traction Control is permitted in Formula 1 now and it looks as if it is here to stay. Just about all the dire predictions about it ruining the sport have proved unfounded, but the prediction that it would stop all the carping about cheating and unfair advantages has turned out to be absolutely spot-on.Full Story

News Feature - The nearly man

So Jean Alesi is retiring after a career stretching back 12 years, 200 Grands Prix and only one victory. At 37 the Frenchman from Sicilian parentage has this year been the senior citizen of Grand Prix racing and he has lost none of his pace.Full Story

Big Al - Prepare for a three-way fight for the 2002 World Championship

No, I'm not joking this time. And yes, I'll admit that it doesn't happen very often. In fact, the last time I can recall a genuine three-way battle for the World Championship was in 1986 when Williams-Honda, Lotus-Renault and McLaren-TAG were all in with a genuine chance of glory almost to the end of the year.Full Story

News Feature - The ace of the Speedway

In these uncertain times it is sometimes good to look back in history at the lives of others who have lived through difficult times and emerged triumphant. One of the best examples of this is Eddie Rickenbacker, a racing driver who led an amazing life which included owning Indianapolis Motor Speedway, being the top scoring American fighter pilot of World War I, building his own automobiles, survived an air crash and on a different occasion spent days adrift in the Pacific Ocean after the plane he was flying on had to ditch.Full Story

Big Al - Don't think that Champcars are second division stuff

Grandstand seats for Saturday's CART race at Rockingham cost one hundred pounds apiece, but even with a race shortened from its planned 208 laps to just 140, most of Britain's bedrock motor racing fans will have joined the long queues from the car parks with broad grins on their faces.Full Story

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