Formula One Features

Ten years ago the DAMS team was the one to beat in Formula 3000. In 1990 Jean-Paul Driot's team won the title with Erik Comas and there was a second title in 1993 thanks to the efforts of a rising star called Olivier Panis and a third in 1994 with Jean-Christophe Boullion. But then things began to go wrong. There was only one win (for Tarso Marques) in 1995 and it was not until 1997 that the team won again - thanks to the efforts of Jamie Davies at Enna-Pergusa in Sicily.

For almost every great Grand Prix driver in recent decades the initial steps to the top have been the same, whether you are Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher or Kimi Raikkonen: karting followed by Formula Ford.

Take away the screaming headlines, and there's one person who has consistently spoken about our sport with common sense since first tipping up at Silverstone and giving the jitters to Hill, Schumacher, Coulthard et al. The hair color may be less dramatic, and he may not have stood on the middle step of the podium for some four years but Jacques Villeneuve remains as relevant a mouthpiece for motor racing as ever he was.

Word was that Mika Hakkinen was considering retirement from the sport that yielded him two World Championship crowns. But now it is that he won't be going after all, and that he has chosen to stay and fight. So what's going through the talented but troubled Finn's mind right now?

Bill Gates and his software gurus at Microsoft have proved that being able to write computer code gives one a good opportunity to earn $billions and gain enormous influence over a large number of people and corporations. This principle holds true on a smaller scale in motorsport, and in Formula 1 in particular. When the FIA scrapped all driver aids and active suspensions in 1993, the code writers, who were becoming pivotal members of teams, did not disappear from the sport but went underground for a while.

So Mika Hakkinen might be toying with retirement. Even if he doesn't decide to quit after this, the most disappointing season of his F1 career so far, he surely can't be too far away from calling it a day.

Super Nova Racing driver Mark Webber won the Magny Cours Formula 3000 race, his third victory of the year. He is now within one point of championship leader Justin Wilson and would have been ahead if Wilson had not overtaken his team mate Tomas Enge on the very last lap of the race after a long battle for second place.

Being a European is quite hard work for us Brits. For example as much as many of us wanted to, drumming up excitement over Bentley's return to Le Mans was a feat that was a little too hard to manage, by virtue of not being German.

The International Formula 3000 title race is between three men: the two Coca Cola Nordic Racing team mates Justin Wilson and Tomas Enge and Super Nova Racing's Mark Webber. At the Nurburgring, title leader Wilson went out early with a mechanical problem and so Enge and Webber made up ground. The top three are now covered by just five points with six races gone and six races still to come.

Before pit stops to refuel and change tires were reintroduced into Formula 1, there was only one race strategy, as Colin Chapman told me at my first race as a race engineer: "Go like hell at the start, and overtake as many people as possible." Nowadays the post-race talk is as much about strategies as actual car performance or on-track overtaking maneuvers.

Jackie Stewart deserves his knighthood because there are a lot of people alive today who wouldn't be if the Scot hadn't chosen to make a professional career out of motor racing. That is neither a joke nor an exaggeration.

He's still quick, as he proved while testing for Orange Arrows, and he keeps up with the intricacies of the F1 scene. So who better to give his opinion on who is doing a good job and who isn't than three-time F1 winner Johnny Herbert?

He's still quick, as he proved while testing for Orange Arrows, and he keeps up with the intricacies of the F1 scene. So who better to give his opinion on who is doing a good job and who isn't than three-time F1 winner Johnny Herbert?

The main priority for the McLaren-Mercedes team this week will most certainly NOT be a process of picking-over the events of Adrian Newey's will-he-won't-he psychological wobble last week in which it seemed as though he was going to Jaguar. And then, suddenly, he wasn't.

Jenson Button faced the glitz and glamour of the Monaco Grand Prix as the F1 driver who has everything. Apart from a competitive car.

"Goodwood's not for a while yet," said a colleague as I ambled into the Donington paddock for the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophy Meeting. Well, yes, there's no formal request to put on period togs and pretend to be Bertie Wooster at any of the other historic meetings of the year? it's just something that happens.

Mark Webber did it all right at Monaco - even if he did total a car in qualifying. The accident came after he had taken pole position for the big Formula 3000 event of the year. In the race Webber was in total control and so became the first Australian to win on the streets of Monte Carlo since Dave Walker won the Formula 3 Grand Prix in 1971.

Carbon Fibre Technologies (CFT) Ltd. is one of those companies that make up the backbone of the British motorsport industry.

They have identical engines, but the fortunes of Sauber and Prost in 2001 could scarcely be more different. One has been the talk of F1 after its best-ever performances, the other's pre-season hopes have been dashed by feeble efforts. So why is one doing so well and the other so badly?

This coming weekend sees what could be a seminal moment in the history of British domestic motorsport as the Rockingham Speedway opens its doors officially with Nigel Mansell demonstrating a Champcar - albeit at reduced speed - as part of the promotional razzmatazz surrounding the event.

When Renault announced they were returning to Formula 1, they declared that they were planning a radical approach to the design of their 3-liter V10 engine. That engine is now running in the Benetton, giving everyone involved a headache, and there has been much speculation about which radical technologies are incorporated. Renault admit that the V-angle is unusually wide at 110 degrees, in order to lower the center of mass of the engine, and there have been rumors that both direct fuel injection (GDI) and electromagnetic valve actuation (LVA) are used.

The rise to full competitiveness of BMW Williams has been one of the talking points of the 2001 season. But what does technical director Patrick Head feel about the team's new dawn?

The Formula 3000 series has been struggling a lot this year and the first signs of that came in Austria where Kid Jensen Racing (the entry having been taken over from the British team by Monaco Motorsport) failed to appear, reducing the entry to just 12 teams. The need for better performance had led to the disappearance of Indonesia's Ananda Mikola from Team Astromega and his replacement by Dino Morelli, an Ulsterman with an Italian name.

Today he can walk through an F1 paddock and very few will recognize him. Indeed, in San Marino recently it was son Derek who made the headlines after a spectacular accident in the F3000 race. But none of that bothers Philip Toth Hill as he enters his 75th year. The first American ever to wear the World Championship crown remains what he has always been, an immensely likeable, laconic man relaxed in his own company and devoid of any need to aggrandize himself.