Left field

Remembering Bruce McLaren

Ferrari made much of their 800th Formula One grand prix in Turkey last Sunday, throwing a party in Istanbul and racing with the number 800 on their cars’ engine covers.

It was just a shame their performance on the track was nothing to shout about.

Over at McLaren, a more poignant milestone was being marked more discretely — one fittingly capped by Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button finishing one-two in the race while the sport’s only Antipodean driver, Mark Webber, joined them on the podium.

Wednesday, June 2, will be the 40th anniversary of team founder Bruce McLaren’s death in a testing accident at the Goodwood circuit in southern England.

The New Zealander, whose team would ultimately go on to become one of the sport’s most successful, was only 32 years old.

Throughout the weekend, inside the team hospitality, a rolling series of images from yesteryear were projected on television screens as a backdrop to the team’s regular activities.

Who do you think you are? Lewis Hamilton?

An irresistible story from Melbourne, where Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton was stopped by the police for “over-exuberant” driving on the road.

Hamilton was fastest in practice for the Australian Grand Prix on Friday and apparently struggled to make the adjustment to his road car. Here’s the story from Ian Ransom in Melbourne and Alan Baldwin in London:

Lewis Hamilton was stopped by police for behaving like a boy racer on Friday only hours after he had wowed a Melbourne crowd with the fastest lap in Australian Grand Prix practice.

The McLaren driver, who in 2008 became Formula One’s youngest ever world champion, found himself having to make a public apology about his behaviour in Australia for the second year in a row.

“This evening, I was driving in an over-exuberant manner and, as a result, was stopped by the police,” the 25-year-old Briton said in a McLaren statement.

“What I did was silly, and I want to apologise for it.”

Senior police constable Scott Woodford told Reuters that a 25-year-old male, resident in Switzerland, was stopped at 9.15pm in the St. Kilda neighbourhood at the wheel of a brand new Mercedes.

The paying F1 driver is back (but not you, Jenson)

Jenson Button has earned his rewards but he is still one of the lucky ones.

While the Formula One world champion faces the difficult decision of whether to go to McLaren on six million pounds a year or stay with Brawn/Mercedes for what still amounts to a salary of lottery proportions, other drivers are not so fortunate.

With the departure of leading manufacturers and the effects of the global credit crunch, next year’s starting grid will see the return in numbers of a once familiar species that has been almost extinct in recent years — the paying driver.

They may not be obvious, and all will have the mandatory super-licences, but they will be there nonetheless.

Brazilian Bruno Senna, nephew of the late triple champion Ayrton, has the name and the personality to get plenty of attention next year when he races for the new Campos Meta team.

He was also runner-up in GP2 last year.

Despite his attributes, he will still not be getting a salary from the team.

Button to McLaren – the real deal or just pretend?

Jenson Button’s eye-catching visit to McLaren on Friday is of obvious benefit to both parties, whatever the reality behind the headlines.

If a deal is done, the new Formula One champion gets the bigger salary that Brawn are reluctant or unable to pay as well as a potentially winning car for next season.

McLaren would get a line-up of champions that will appeal to global sponsors like Vodafone and show that they remain, along with Ferrari, a big hitting team that can always pull in the top talent.

At the very least, Button is able to send a clear message to Brawn that he has other, viable and possibly more lucrative, options and that they cannot assume he will just stay out of loyalty.

McLaren are similarly able to remind Kimi Raikkonen, until now widely considered the main choice to partner Lewis Hamilton, that they too have alternatives and that he should consider reducing his wage demands.

Raikkonen, their former driver who won the 2007 title with Ferrari and has now left the Italian team, was seen at the factory on Wednesday with his management.

But what if Brawn don’t blink, Raikkonen refuses to accept McLaren’s terms and Button signs up to join Hamilton?

Peace breaks out in Formula One

Formula One stepped back from the brink on Wednesday as FIA president Max Mosley agreed a compromise with FOTA, the Teams’ Association, to save the sport from a rival breakaway series.

The disagreement, which centred on Mosley’s plans to introduce a budget cap for the 2010 season, had threatened to end Formula One’s 60-year existence with eight teams including champions Ferrari prepared to walk away for good.

To the relief of Formula One fans and teams including McLaren, Red Bull and Brawn GP who all faced having to start again in what would have been a hastily arranged rival championship, Wednesday’s world motor sport council meeting in Paris has finally ended that threat.

The compromise comes about as Mosley also announced that he would not stand for re-election as FIA president, something many thought would have to happen for any agreement to be reached.

The controversy of a possible split has overshadowed the sport in recent weeks but hopefully attention can now return to a season which promises a championship showdown between Jenson Button’s Brawn GP and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel.

Roll on Germany’s Nuerburgring.

Formula One on the brink as eight teams threaten split

Formula One plunged into its biggest crisis in 60 years on Friday with eight of the 10 teams announcing plans to set up their own championship.

The teams association FOTA said BMW-Sauber, Brawn, Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, Renault, Toro Rosso and Toyota were united in a decision that would split the sport in two if carried through.

“The teams cannot continue to compromise on the fundamental values of the sport and have declined to alter their original conditional entries to the 2010 world championship,” said a statement.

“These teams therefore have no alternative other than to commence the preparation for a new championship which reflects the values of its participants and partners.”

Click here for the full story, and check back for more news as it happens on a decisive day for Formula One.

Talking Turkey with Lewis Hamilton

Of all the corners in Formula One this season, turn eight at the Istanbul Park Circuit subjects drivers to the highest G-forces (around 5G, or five times their body weight).

It is a long, sweeping multi-apex corner that yearns to be taken flat out (270kph+) but that will see only a handful — probably only the Brawns, Red Bulls and Ferraris — manage to do it this weekend.

We strolled around it with McLaren’s world champion Lewis Hamilton to get the inside track. Here’s what he had to say:

“The entrance is very straightforward but if you turn in too early and cook the first apex (the peak of the perfect racing line), you will miss the second and third so there is a certain point where you have to turn in.

You have to miss the first curve by something like two or three metres. Then you clip the next two apexes. The speed which you are going into this corner, it looks quite tight already and we are in sixth gear and doing about 270 kph. it’s flat and you keep going.” - – - - Istanbul is one of only three anti-clockwise circuits on the Formula One calendar, which puts an additional strain on drivers’ necks as they wrestle the G-forces. Hamilton had already walked the length of the 5.338km trac klong before Friday’s first practice, just as he has done at every track the 24-year-old Briton has competed at since 2005.

The walk is more a part of his pre-race routine, a time to talk calmly with his race engineer away from the cramped confines of trucks and motorhomes and to breathe in the atmosphere. He may not learn much that he does not know already, but the effect of walking is more sub-conscious. - – - - “It’s easy to arrive at the weekend and just get in and drive and get a good or bad result,” he says. “If you get a bad result, you just wish you had prepared better so we prepare the best way we possibly can and make sure we cover every area and feel comfortable that even if we have a bad weekend, we did everything we needed to.” - – - That means paying special to turn eight. Last year he had to make three stops, costing him a potential victory, triggered by concern about tyre wear brought on by his aggressive approach. - – - -

Interviewing Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton is resigned to the fact that his formula 1 world title defence could last only a handful more races and the McLaren driver has anointed fellow-Briton Jenson Button as his heir apparent.

“I think Jenson’s got a great chance, a great shot at it so I wish him all the best,” Hamilton told Reuters in an interview at the McLaren factory when asked who was going to win the championship.

“I think if I were to wish anyone (else) to win, it would be him.”

Click here for the full text interview, or see the rough cut video above.

The focus is on Hamilton now

McLaren’s suspended suspension (also known as a slap on the wrists) for lying to stewards allows Lewis Hamilton to get on with what he does best and that is fighting for the championship.

A three-race ban would have just about ended the 24-year-old’s chances, which had not been looking too good anyway even without any sanction.

He is seventh overall and 22 points behind compatriot Jenson Button with 13 races remaining and, with Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel also in the form of his short career, the Briton faces a tough challenge to catch up.

Do not rule him out, however.

Both Mercedes-powered McLaren and Hamilton can now focus all their efforts on making the car faster after being distracted since the Australian season-opener by talk of lies, apologies, and possible expulsion.

FIA president Max Mosley, who made clear on Wednesday that he was ready to draw a line under the whole sorry saga, certainly believes Hamilton has everything to play for.

“It may not be a dream,” the Briton told reporters when asked about Hamilton’s chances of defending his title.

Have McLaren been punished enough already?

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh celebrates his 51st birthday on Wednesday and it doesn’t look like being much fun.

You can bet he would rather be anywhere else than appearing before Formula One’s governing body in Paris to take the rap for his team ‘deliberately misleading’ race stewards.

Any naughty schoolboy caught lying to a teacher will know how he will feel.

Whitmarsh has put his hand up, apologised and accepted that he (or his team) has erred. Now all he has to do is step into the headmaster’s study (alone) and take the punishment.

Will it be a metaphorical slap on the wrists, a fine, six of the best (not perhaps the most felicitous of analogies given FIA president Max Mosley’s past involvement in a sado-masochistic orgy) or expulsion?

British bookmakers William Hill are offering odds on at 1/2 that the team will get a points deduction, with a suspension at 7/4. “We are confident that McLaren will not get off Scot free,” said spokesman Rupert Adams.

Their other odds: 10/1 no further punishment and, most intriguingly, 12/1 McLaren to win the constructors’ championship.