Formula One Features

Hispania Racing Team lent new meaning to the term last minute. The first lap driven in anger by Karun Chandhok was not in practice for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, it was in qualifying!

If anything was predictable about the 2010 F1 season it was that the three new teams were going to be in a separate championship. Virgin Racing was born at a time when Max Mosley was talking about a 30m pounds budget cap and the very future sustainability of F1.

Kamui Kobayashi,for many, was F1's rookie of the year in 2010. The exciting 24-year-old Japanese looked back on his first full season in the top flight.

Truly great drivers, it is said, have spare mental capacity. The concentration they need to find the limit is not all-consuming and they have brainpower left to devise tactics or pester the pit wall for information about action elsewhere. Such ability will be crucial for the 2010 title challengers in Abu Dhabi this weekend. But Ayrton Senna took it a step further.

Co-owner Patrick Head talks about how Williams took the team's first pole for 100 races and Cosworth's first since Magny Cours 1999.

Jenson Button talks about his near escape yesterday in a carjacking incident in Sao Paulo.

Lewis Hamilton brought up the subject himself before Korea. Kimi Raikkonen was 17 points back with two races to go in 2007 and he still won the title. Hamilton didn't mention it was his own generosity that ushered the Finn back into the hunt, but his point is clear. In today's money, anyone now heading to the final Brazil/Abu Dhabi double-header within 42 points can still turn it around.

As the championship battle heats up with the last four races of the season, we talk with Mark Webber.

After Fernando Alonso's Singapore triumph reshuffled the five cards on top of the F1 deck yet again, Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali stated that the championship is now a mental battle. He's right - but success in this unprecedented five-way contest will hinge not on doing the most thinking but the least...

As a classic title finale nears, the simmering furore over team orders will surely boil over again as McLaren and Red Bull opt if and when to follow Ferrari's lead. But the Monza duel between Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button showed one honourable aspect of F1 teamwork could yet prove more important than ever: the pit stop.

Jarno Trulli won his only Grand Prix at Monaco six years ago. Although an F1 veteran of 14 seasons, he took the Lotus Racing drive with a view to the long term. At Monza, his home race, he gave his views on the season and his hopes for the team.

Monza imposes great demands on engines, and Cosworth had a highly encouraging showing with Nico Hulkenberg finishing seventh after spending his day racing with the championship-contending Red Bulls. Group chief executive Tim Routsis was on hand in Monza to give his thoughts on the company's return to F1 and on discussions about greener 2013 F1 engines.

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner admitted before the weekend that the team viewed Monza as its weakest remaining circuit on the 2010 F1 calendar. And so, with Sebastian Vettel fourth in the Italian GP and Mark Webber sixth, he was able to look back on a final race of the European season in which Red Bull unexpectedly outscored major championship rivals McLaren.

If there remains any doubt that grand prix motor racing is primarily a mental contest, the Belgian Grand Prix provided the perfect illustration. In the most trying of circumstances - a mixture of wet and drying conditions round Spa's legendary mix of corners - not one of the protagonists made it through the race without some kind of hiccup.

Mark Webber is 34 years old tomorrow. Red Bull Racing team mate Sebastian Vettel has not brought him a present. "Who knows, maybe I can get him some of those free soaps and shampoos you get in the hotel..." he joked. With F1 back on parade at Spa after the summer break, Webber took time to offer his thoughts on Sunday's race and the state of the championship

True colours seem increasingly hard to camouflage in Formula 1 this year. One week after F1's most successful team reminded us how they tarnished their mystique, F1's most successful driver reminds us why he so lacked such mystique in the first place.

There were no surprises in the New Kids on the Block group with Lotus ending up with the two best placed cars at the end of the race - Heikki Kovalainen holding off Jarno Trulli - and all six newcomers making the finish as well.

Heikki Kovalainen went from the architectural splendour of the Sir Norman Foster-designed McLaren Technology Centre to Lotus's empty shell factory containing Mike Gascoyne and a telephone. He talks about his first six months with Lotus Racing.

Timo Glock emerged as the best placed of the New Kids on the Block at the end of the German Grand Prix, a race that marked a complete contrast to the previous Grand Prix. Whereas in Silverstone Glock had battled it out with both Lotus drivers all the way to the last lap, in Hockenheim the German saw all his rivals fall by the wayside to inherit the lead of the group with just ten laps to go.

"I am a sportsman. I love sport. I love the fans. But I don't consider Formula 1 any more a sport." These were Fernando Alonso's words on the morning of the 2006 Italian Grand Prix. Hours earlier he'd been given a five-place grid penalty for 'blocking' Ferrari's Felipe Massa in qualifying - though Massa was 100 metres away.

The three new teams that have joined the F1 fraternity this year were faced with the daunting task of putting together a package capable of making them race at a respectable level in a very short period of time. They've been taking some stick from people like Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, who'd rather field a third car for Valentino Rossi than to have six cars racing together in the back of the field...

Sauber Motorsport celebrates 40 years of racing at Hockenheim next week. Peter Sauber took time out to reflect.

Sebastian Vettel spent his early F1 career fending off comparisons with his illustrious compatriot Michael Schumacher. The standard retort for any rising star is always 'No, I'm not the second X, I'm the first Y.' But Red Bull's Silverstone antics have brought the associations flooding back - sadly not with bright young Schu but with Schu the pantomime villain.

The British GP marked the 31st anniversary of Williams Grand Prix Engineering's first F1 win. There was no repeat on Sunday but fifth place from Rubens Barrichello has signalled an upturn in form. Sir Frank chose the weekend to hand over the chairmanship to Adam Parr, but insists that thoughts of retirement are not in his mind...