Formula One Features

Everbody would like the immensely popular Mika Hakkinen still to be in with a chance of winning his third World Championship title this season, but I fear his chances went up in smoke - literally - when his McLaren-Mercedes suffered clutch failure on the last lap of the Spanish Grand Prix.

Juan Pablo Montoya has said he wouldn't do it, and Ralf Schumacher says that it would be less fun. Nobody, it seems, wants to be Michael Schumacher's team mate as Ferrari puts feelers out for a new man to step into Rubens Barrichello's shoes. Although the team has publicly stood by its second driver, insiders have pointed to disharmony as Barrichello chafes at the non-appearance of the ?equal number one' status he feels contractually entitled to, and that contract ends at this season.

When you close your eyes, Michele Alboreto told himself when he carved out a career as a sportscar driver, you can almost believe that you are still driving in Formula One. Though his friends Gerhard Berger and Riccardo Patrese pleaded with him to stop driving, Michele enjoyed it just too much. These are some of the memories left by one of the great characters taken by the sport following an accident his Audi sustained during a test session at the Lausitzring.

They say that those who do not know history are condemned to make the same mistakes as those who went before them and one wonders if there is anyone in Dearborn, Michigan, the world headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, who remembers the story of Fordlandia.

A win, two second places and a third - all things considered it's not been a bad start for David Coulthard in 2001. Joint leadership of the World Championship after the fourth of the 17 rounds, and 22 points more than his team-mate Mika Hakkinen, left him feeling a warm glow after Imola as he faced his best-ever chance of succeeding Jackie Stewart as Scotland's first World Champion since 1973. But does DC really have what it takes to put it all together over a long, long season?

Motor racing has, from its very inception, been intended to sell cars. You and I are supposed to thrill to the sights and sounds of our chosen sport, then toddle off down to the local dealership to order a little bit of that sporting pedigree to put on the drive. Presumably therefore BMW's sales have rocketed since San Marino and a batch of Ralf Schumacher stickers and gear knobs are being prepared to shift the some base model 3-series as this year's dark horse makes his title bid. The car market has preoccupied me of late, as the swanky motors of my salad days are put up for sale as parenthood rolls over the horizon and sensible shoes are required.

When Ralf Schumacher accelerated across the line to win the San Marino Grand Prix, the Williams F1 team sent out a firm message which should offer a degree of hope to at least a handful of rival Grand Prix outfits which have yet to win their first race.

He's led his first GP, made his first passing move on Michael Schumacher, and shown that he is fulfilling all of the expectation heaped upon him when he joined BMW Williams. Small wonder that everybody is still talking about Juan Pablo Montoya long after his ill fortune in the Brazilian GP has been consigned to history.

The scene is Silverstone, just four days after David Coulthard won the Brazilian Grand Prix. Rain is teeming down to the point where the Scot has abandoned traction control testing on the near-flooded track. Instead, he is sitting clutching a cup of coffee, pondering on his success at Interlagos which stopped Michael Schumacher's winning streak which extended back to last year's Italian Grand Prix. Coulthard looks back on Interlagos on a particularly satisfying win, reflecting on the fact that he ran from the start on compromise chassis settings which only paid off when the rain started to fall. "Compromise chassis settings meant that the car was not quite a sharp, a little softer, than usual," he said. "But I managed to keep in touch and it all paid off. But the speed of Montoya's Williams-BMW was certainly impressive. They will be a factor for the rest of the season, no question about it." David has always been a realist. Six years into his career with the McLaren-Mercedes team, the Scot understands be

A front-end aero problem is hurting the turn-in of McLaren's new MP4/16 and preventing it from offering the expected challenge to Ferrari's all-conquering F1-2001. But how soon can the former champion team incorporate the changes to make the car fully competitive?

I'm told that meeting your heroes is, more often than not, to be avoided unless you're prepared to have illusions shattered. For me though such disappointment has seldom been a problem because, for the most part, my heroes have departed for the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

Anyone who watched the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix will have noticed how much more controllable the 2001 F1 cars look now that they are running on softer compound tires. Opposite lock slides no longer mean sudden breakaway and a spin that takes forever to stop. Once more they are glorious expressions of the drivers' art. But just as F1 is looking good again, traction control is about to kill the spectacle.

At the end of 1993, the FIA banned driver aids and along with them, active suspension. Driver aids included: traction control, ABS braking, rear-steer and other forms of stability control. To police the bans, they also introduced software inspections and approvals. Over the seven years since then, thousands of hours have been spent by the FIA's software inspectors, led by Alan Prudom, and the teams' and engine manufacturers' software engineers, going through engine, transmission and chassis control code, line by line.

The tragic accident on the fifth lap of the Australian GP has again focused attention on the need to ensure that race officials and spectators enjoy the same levels of protection as the drivers at F1 races. The death of track marshal Graham Beveridge during the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne has once again placed sharp focus on the safety repercussions when wheels become detached from racing cars.

Juan Pablo Montoya got all the pre-race ink, but arguably Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso made more impressive debuts. In F1 the first man you have to beat is your team-mate, and while the arrival of the much-touted Colombian, Juan Pablo Montoya, has clearly had an unsettling effect on Michael Schumacher's younger brother Ralf, the German won hands down when the two BMW Williams drivers had their first moment of truth, in Melbourne. When the chips were down on Saturday afternoon in Albert Park, Schumacher did the business and left his rookie partner a full second behind.

When Keke Rosberg surged to pole position for the 1985 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, he lapped the former RAF aerodrome track at a stunning average of 160mph. Forget the fact that he'd just stubbed out a stogie before hopping into the cockpit of his 1000bhp Williams-Honda FW10 turbo, or that he was suffering from a minor setback in the form of a slow puncture in one of his rear tires. He just got out there. And got stuck in. Job done.

Predicting the trajectory and velocity of a racing car when it is driven at the limit within the confines of a racing track, is now the subject of a great deal of analytical work by almost all teams involved in racing at all levels. However, predicting the trajectory and velocity of a car once the driver has lost control of it has not been something the teams have devoted a great deal of time to.

Luca di Montezemolo is more than just the public face of Ferrari. He is a distinguished personality in his own right in Italian sporting circles, his two spells at Ferrari from 1974 to 76 and from 1992 to the present day, sandwiching jobs with Fiat, Cinzano and running both Italy's first America's Cup yachting challenge in addition to the 1990 World Cup.

They each looked strong at times in 2000, but ultimately both were blown off by their respective team-mates. After a winter of self-analysis, can McLaren and Ferrari number two drivers David Coulthard and Rubens Barrichello raise their game sufficiently to mount a genuine challenge for number one status?

Formula 1 digital television is about to enter a new phase - and that could bring millions more dollars tumbling into the business.

Sir Frank Williams is an inspirational figure within the motor racing community. American racer Sam Schmidt, who was paralyzed in a testing accident at Florida's Walt Disney Speedway last year, admits that his decision to start up as a team owner in this season's Indy Racing League was prompted by meeting Frank Williams.

F1 is notoriously impatient. If a driver doesn't make it in his first year, it can be the end of the road. But Nick Heidfeld smiled broadly as he faced the media during the launch of the new Red Bull Sauber Petronas C20. It was a sign that he is safe from such problems for at least another season, probably more.

This time last year Jenson Button was still reeling from his selection by Sir Frank Williams to be Ralf Schumacher's partner at BMW Williams. Now, a year on and already halfway to being a seasoned pro, Britain's great new hope isn't getting carried away by the pre-season hype.

When it comes to F1 sponsorship, nobody has ever come close to matching the hefty impact made by the Philip Morris cigarette brand, Marlboro. Reports reverberate around the F1 world that Marlboro's time in F1 may be finite. That's a real thought provoker, when you consider it has been a sponsor longer than Arrows, Benetton, Jordan, Sauber, Prost, Minardi, Jaguar and BAR have been in business.