Left field

I survived the Nuerburgring Nordschleife!

The Nordschleife. Just the word sends shivers down the spine of even the best motor racing driver. Sir Jackie Stewart nicknamed the old track in western Germany the “Green Hell” and although it is extremely dangerous, they all loved racing it really.

Talks about exhilarating. I was lucky enough to be driven round the fearsome circuit by a specialist driver in a Mercedes two-seat sportscar ahead of this weekend’s German Grand Prix at the adjacent Nuerburgring.

It was wet, so we only went half pace but my heart was still beating faster than I can ever remember. Given the conditions, the driver did remarkably well and dealt admirably but a couple of inevitable skids on a track deemed too dangerous in 1976 to continue racing F1 there.

“If we hit that kerb, we’d fly straight into the wall,” he said twice as we topped 120 mph in places.

“That’s where Niki Lauda crashed,” he added at a relatively easy turn on the mammoth 14 mile circuit which winds its way thuogh the forest in the German countryside.

In truth it is more like a roller coaster than a race track. The changes in altitude are immense, with huge dips and climbs never seen now in F1 where cars can actually fly off jumps for a few seconds. The banked corners, like on NASCAR tracks, are also from a bygone age of F1 and danger really does lurk at every corner.

Most of the current Formula One drivers have been giddily having a go on the Nordschleife before taking to the more modern and much safer Nuerburgring.

Formula One’s youngest world champion was always a man in a hurry

From the very first moment he arrived in Formula One as a curly-haired teenager, new world champion Sebastian Vettel was a young man in a hurry.

The 23-year-old Red Bull Driver, who became the youngest winner of the drivers’ championship with victory in Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, has set records from day one.

Within seconds of his debut in Friday practice at the 2006 Turkish Grand Prix, he had been fined for speeding in the pit lane. The youngest driver to take part in a practice session, in quick succession he became the youngest to score a point, youngest to secure pole position and youngest to win a grand prix.

Born in the same year that Red Bull sold their first can of energy drink, the race ace with the look of a tousled schoolboy and cheeky grin has always seemed a marketing match made in heaven for the newly crowned Formula One constructors’ champions.

Irreverent, with a penchant for British humour and the Beatles, there has never been any doubt that Vettel is Austrian-owned Red Bull’s blue-eyed boy.

Helmut Marko, the former grand prix racer who is a close advisor to Red Bull’s billionaire owner Dietrich Mateschitz, has championed his cause from an early age and was on the podium, showered in champagne, as Vettel celebrated the biggest win of his life on Sunday.

Vettel, only the second man to win the title for Germany after Michael Schumacher, has also saved the best for last, for the moment when it truly mattered.

Schumi returns as if he’d never left

When Germany’s best-selling tabloid Bild sends two reporters to an overseas Formula One test in the depths of February, you know something big is brewing.

The return of Michael Schumacher, and the seven times world champion’s first drive of the new Mercedes W01, in Valencia on Monday triggered scenes reminiscent of the glory days when the German was so dominant with Ferrari.

Reporters and television crews pushed, shoved and elbowed each other to get a Schumacher soundbite at the end of the session.

His first lap was echoing around the blogosphere before he had even crossed the finish line.

Schumacher had earlier shown a fair turn of speed out on the racetrack — so fast that he bamboozled the timing system into putting him out front by a massive margin until it became obvious he had taken one of Bernie Ecclestone’s recommended short cuts — and ended the day third fastest.

Times do not mean a lot in testing, with the new fuel regulations leaving plenty of scope for teams to run light and impress would-be backers while others run through programmes with a full tank, but this all looked pretty good nonetheless.

“He was very enthusiastic. It was good to see the enthusiasm,” said team principal Ross Brawn. It would have been more of a surprise for me if he hadn’t been where he is today – so it was just confirmation really of what we both thought, that Michael should be competitive. One thing that came through was Michael’s precision about what is going on in the car. He has great clarity of reasoning in what he does and that is nice to work with again. It was a bit like old days but not as far back as ’91.”

Vlog-Schumacher shadow still hangs over Ferrari’s Maranello

Maranello is the spiritual home of Formula One glamour team Ferrari, but there is very little glitz in the working class northern Italian town.

Mark Meadows was there for the launch of Ferrari’s new 2010 car, which will have to go up against former favourite Michael Schumacher this season. Click on the video to hear more.

Schumacher becomes a contender again

Formula One has moved on since Michael Schumacher retired in 2006, even if the German will be eager to roll back the years when he makes his comeback with Mercedes next season.

Despite turning 41 next month, the seven times world champion can be expected to show the same passion for racing, the same hunger for winning and the same ruthless determination.

“I was tired of Formula One by the end of 2006…but after three years of absence I am sort of getting back all the energy and I’m feeling strong right now,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “I played around with motorbikes, and I feel ready for some serious stuff.”

Age will be against him, another foe to overcome for a driver who always prided himself on being one of the fittest and most professional on the grid, but nobody should rule out what would be a remarkable return to the top.

He is teaming up again with close friend Ross Brawn, the technical director who guided him to all his titles with Benetton and Ferrari, and that won eight of the 17 races last season as well as both championships.

Mercedes will also feel like home, the future champion having started out in sportscars with the German carmaker.

Silverstone deal a triumph for commonsense

It is not by any means something that can be taken for granted in Formula One, but commonsense seems to have prevailed at last.

Silverstone’s deal with Bernie Ecclestone for the circuit to host the British Grand Prix for the next 17 years makes sense on so many levels and yet has been tougher to resolve than any of the controversies and scandals of recent years.

It is to be hoped that one of the longest running, and most tedious, sagas has now ended although that is probably too much to hope in a sport constantly making headlines.

“Bernie’s a driven man, he always wants better,” said Damon Hill, 1996 champion and president of the circuit-owning BRDC, with a resigned smile after announcing the deal on Monday. ”So I’m sure he will be looking to keep us on our toes”.

Ecclestone’s decision last year to do a similar 17-year deal with Donington Park from 2010 seemed to fly in the face of reason — not least because it meant a much-loved motorcycling venue taking over the Formula One and the MotoGP heading to Silverstone instead — and appeared unlikely from the very outset.  

Silverstone had the road access sorted, unlike Donington where getting in and out on a race weekend can be nightmarish, and the track itself is a part of the sport’s fabric and history as the first to host a championship race.

The end result was as many had predicted, with Donington’s promoters unable to provide the cash to match their ambitions and a return to square one.

Schumacher – The Comeback Part II (or not?)

A lot of people are getting quite excited about the possibility of Michael Schumacher coming out of retirement to race for the new Mercedes F1 team (formerly known as champions Brawn) at the age of 41.

The German’s spokeswoman Sabine Kehm feels it is highly unlikely while Mercedes said at the weekend that “some speculations are nothing but dreams which will not come true” (although note the carmaker did not specifically say this particular piece of speculation was one of them).

Team principal Ross Brawn, who is currently on holiday, has been quoted by Germany’s Bild newspaper as saying that “the media are trying to put together a dream. Michael would have returned to the cockpit for Ferrari, but only temporarily. He has no ambitions to start a new career.”

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone told the BBC on Sunday that he was “very doubtful” about any such comeback, however appealing it might be.

On the other hand, Kehm told Britain’s Times newspaper on Monday that “I can see a lot of tempting things in it for Michael, but I can also see a lot of non-tempting things. I don’t know.

“It is as it was in August when you couldn’t tell what was going to happen. Then I was convinced Michael would never come back and suddenly all the circumstances were right for him,” she added, referring to the champion’s abortive attempt to return as a stand-in for injured Brazilian Felipe Massa at Ferrari.

A Schumacher comeback has a lot of media appeal — witness all the stories — and not least because McLaren will have two British world champions next season in Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton.

When will F1 have a Middle Eastern driver?

 Abu Dhabi’s new Formula One circuit has given the Middle East seemingly unbeatable bragging rights as home to the world’s most modern and lavish track.

“No one is going to top this,” commented Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone on his arrival at Yas Marina and he may well be right.

Spending billions of dollars cannot buy atmosphere, of course, and Abu Dhabi is a long way from Silverstone, Spa and Monza, but the signs so far are that the locals are pretty passionate about their motorsport.

“Monaco, Montreal and Singapore do different things fantastically,” Khaldoon al Mubarak, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi government’s business development company as well as Manchester City soccer club, told the National newspaper.

“Our hope is Abu Dhabi can take it to a whole new level.”

The circuit is an obvious sign of that intention but it is not built in isolation.

Cosy in the cockpit with a Formula One champ

Mika Hakkinen has the air of a man who has seen it all before.

He stared death in the face when only an emergency trackside tracheotomy saved his life after a crash at the Australian Grand Prix.

He returned to Formula One to win the drivers’ title in 1998 and 1999. He enjoys homes in Monte Carlo, France and his native Finland.

And he is sitting on my knee.

Well, almost.

Terry Dolphin has been building, servicing and fine-tuning high-performance racing cars for 30 years. He paints this picture best.

“This is the same technology that won the World Championship in the mid-90s,” he smiles genially, glancing admiringly at the sleek, black Supercar baking in the Singapore sun while Hakkinen gets into his racing gear in a tent next door.

Suspended sentence for Renault — does the punishment fit the crime?

The news has just come in from Paris, where Renault have been handed a suspended ban from Formula One, while their former boss Flavio Briatore has been banned from all F1 activities, including driver management, and ex-technical chief Pat Symonds is barred for five years.

So the immediate result of the inquiry into race-rigging at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix is that Renault can stay in the sport, provided they stay on their best behaviour for the next couple of years, even though the offence was described by the FIA as one of “unparalleled severity”.

Does that punishment fit the crime, would you say?

It’s well worth reading the FIA media release on this in full. It confirms that Renault admitted conspiring with Nelson Piquet Jr to cause the crash. Here’s a section of the statement:

The World Motor Sport Council considers Renault F1’s breaches relating to the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to be of unparalleled severity. 

Renault F1’s breaches not only compromised the integrity of the sport but also endangered the lives of spectators, officials, other competitors and Nelson Piquet Jr. himself. 

The World Motor Sport Council considers that offences of this severity merit permanent disqualification from the FIA Formula One World Championship.