Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen showed Red Bull can be a force while Fernando Alonso gave McLaren reason to be cheerful Related: Australian Grand Prix: Sebastian Vettel wins F1 opener with Lewis Hamilton second Continue reading...
This week’s roundup also features an Australian Grand Prix washout, the best of Gigi Buffon and an outrageous rally move1) Formula One 2018 is go, go, go – starting with Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix. Since moving to Melbourne Park, the race has become a regular curtain-raiser, but it used to end the season when held on the streets of Adelaide. Here’s a potted history of the race, and Ralf Schumacher taking off on the first lap in 2002. The 1991 edition was the shortest race in F1 history, abandoned after 24 wild and wacky minutes in a torrential downpour: Continue reading...
Limiting the danger to suit changing attitudes and modern sensibilities is fine as long as the measures taken do not devalue a sport so profoundly that its meaning disappearsAs grand prix drivers go, Tony Brooks was one of the best produced by Britain. He was also among the bravest of the brave, at a time when the sport was at its most dangerous and he could expect to lose friends and rivals almost every week.When his BRM overturned and burst into flames after hitting a bank at full speed at Silverstone in 1956, he was fortunate to be thrown out of the cockpit and escape with nothing worse than a broken jaw. A year later he was lying trapped under...
Mercedes look like being the team to beat again, while Ferrari and McLaren both have much work to doThe dominant force in F1 for the past four years, Mercedes appear to show no sign of relinquishing their stranglehold. Last year’s championship-winning car, which was quick but temperamental, has undergone an evolution over the winter that looks alarming for their rivals. They clocked the most laps with 1,040 and, although only seventh on the time sheets, their pace in race simulations was relentlessly good, half a second a lap up on Ferrari and eight-tenths on Red Bull. The team chose not to run the car on the fastest hyper‑soft rubber, unconcerned about setting a single lap marker, and Lewis Hamilton, who...
Chucking out press releases about ending the practices of grid girls and swimsuit-wearing promotions workers to claim some sort of moral high ground should ring a few alarm bellsTo the list of Great Woke‑ings of our time, we must formally add the gambling industry. This year has seen the disbandment of the Presidents’ Club, Formula One’s pious announcement that it was ending the practice of grid girls and now the Gambling Commission demanding the industry’s biggest conference stops expecting female promotions workers to wear swimsuits on the basis that it is “a significant stain on the industry’s reputation”.Can you imagine how disgusting and depraved the practice must have been to significantly stain the gambling industry’s “reputation”? This is a business...