Lewis Hamilton claimed pole for Sunday’s F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix but his celebrations were more subdued than normal because Nico Rosberg is the overwhelming title favouriteLewis Hamilton snared pole for Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix but there was still a glint of destiny in the eyes of Nico Rosberg. Hamilton’s celebrations were more subdued than normal. Rosberg is the overwhelming championship favourite – the German needs to finish in the top three to secure his first title, as he has a lead of 12 points going into the last race of the year.Rain is unusual in these desert parts so the X factor that spiced up the last race in Brazil two weeks ago is unlikely to play a...
The F1 title contenders were teenage friends but on the track theirs has become one of the sport’s spikiest duels, comparable to Prost-Senna or Mansell-PiquetThe destination of the 2016 Formula One world championship has already been decided in the uncompromising mind of Lewis Hamilton. The final, title-deciding race of the season here on Sunday, which has brought an international media circus to this gaudy oasis in the desert of the United Arab Emirates, is but a backdrop to his remarkable self-belief.Whatever happens here – and Rosberg, with a 12-point lead, has only to finish in the top three to secure his first world crown – Hamilton will still be champion in his own unfaltering eyes. “Maybe I should keep this...
The story of Peter Collins and Juan Manuel Fangio in 1956, when F1 drivers fought just as fiercely but behaved on and off the track shows how much the sport has changedTo see how much Formula One has changed, you could go back 60 years, to the finale of the 1956 season, when a 24-year-old Englishman voluntarily gave up his chance of the world championship to an Argentinian rival old enough to be his father. It was a race in which the two early leaders fought each other so hard that they both had to come in for new tyres after only four laps, and in which the eventual winner, having run out of petrol with a handful of laps...
From ‘the flying tea-tray’ to a Smurf tribute, we pick half a dozen of the more unlikely looking vehicles to grace a Formula One Grand PrixIn May 1969 Jochen Rindt wrote a letter to his team owner, Colin Chapman, about the Lotus he was driving that season, with which he was some way from chuffed. “I can only drive a car in which I have some confidence,” he wrote, “and I feel the point of no confidence is quite near.” Related: The Joy of Six: formula one season finales Jacques Laffite - 1976 - Ligier JS5 #oldschoolf1 pic.twitter.com/oLLeNPwsrC Related: The Forgotten Story of ... Jochen Rindt The 1979 Ensign N179. Those were radiators if you were wondering. To keep the...
Interlagos provided an overdue reminder of how F1 used to be but the chances of a repeat in Abu Dhabi for the grand prix season’s finale are slim at bestAs they peered anxiously through the spray and narrowly avoided rivals bouncing off the barriers at 170mph, the current crop of Formula One drivers proved their worth in São Paulo last Sunday. Heavy rain turned the Brazilian Grand Prix into a proper race, full of the kind of excitement and unpredictability that have been virtually banished from modern Formula One.If only F1 were like that all the time. Or even half the time. Instead the circus pitches up in Abu Dhabi next week with the world drivers’ championship still in the...