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Archives for July 2011

Jenson Button produces Hungarian masterclass

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Andrew Benson | 17:19 UK time, Sunday, 31 July 2011

On Saturday evening in Hungary, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso were two of the luminaries who joined Jenson Button to celebrate the occasion of his 200th grand prix. Twenty-four hours later they stood either side of the driver as he celebrated another superb win in the tricky wet-dry conditions in which he excels.

Every one of 's four wins since he joined McLaren at the start of last season has come in wet-dry races, conditions which reward the deftness of touch and exquisite feel for grip levels that the 31-year-old has displayed from the very beginning of his Formula 1 career.

"I'm always pretty lucky in these conditions," Button said in the news conference after the race, but it has absolutely nothing to do with good fortune. It is about skill and judgement.

It was a drive as perfect as the symmetry that saw him take his second win of the year at his 200th grand prix and at the same track where five years ago he finally took his first victory at the 113th attempt, also in mixed conditions.

Button has something of a sixth sense, a way of feeling the limits of what is possible in conditions where the track is damp but not soaking wet, that goes beyond that of nearly all his rivals, and he .

Perhaps only Button's team-mate has the same deftness and certainty of touch in rainy conditions - the younger McLaren man also has a clutch of brilliant wet wins on his CV. But even he was caught out by the tricky combination of a low-grip track surface and a sprinkling of mid-race rain.

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Felipe Massa - classic F1

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Andrew Benson | 07:25 UK time, Wednesday, 27 July 2011

's is the latest driver to choose his five all-time favourite grands prix for 91Èȱ¬ Sport's classic Formula 1 series. The idea of this series is to whet your appetites for the race coming up. And, for better or worse, the Brazilian will always be linked with the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Massa produced one of his best performances at the Hungaroring in 2008. An intense battle with ended when the Englishman's McLaren suffered a puncture, seemingly handing victory to Massa. But, with only three laps to go, the engine in his Ferrari failed. The points from that win would have made the Brazilian world champion that year, rather than Hamilton.

The following year, Massa suffered a He was hit on the head by an errant spring from the car of his friend, , and taken to hospital in, what doctors called, a "life-threatening but stable condition". Amazingly, he made a full recovery, returning to Ferrari for the start of the 2010 season.

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Resurgent Hamilton worries Red Bull

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Andrew Benson | 17:41 UK time, Sunday, 24 July 2011

A , capped by a superb drive to victory by , confirmed the growing impression that this Formula 1 season has a lot of life left in it.
retains a massive 77-point lead in the championship after salvaging a difficult afternoon with a fourth place snatched from Ferrari's in a between the two teams.

But have lost the performance advantage they enjoyed at the start of the season. They have won only once in four grands prix and, far more tellingly than that, they have been outpaced in the last two races.

At , 's Ferrari was faster than the Red Bull. At the Nurburgring on Sunday the Spaniard retained that position, and leapfrogged both of them.

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Jaime Alguersuari - classic F1

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Andrew Benson | 06:00 UK time, Wednesday, 20 July 2011

's is the latest grand prix driver to pick his five all-time favourite races for 91Èȱ¬ Sport's classic Formula 1 series.

The 21-year-old Spaniard has been impressing on the track in recent races, putting to one side speculation about his future with strong drives into the points in the last three races - Canada, Valencia and Silverstone.

Alguersuari is a singular character - outspoken and interesting, with a particularly idiosyncratic approach to .

He has applied that uniqueness to his choice of races for this feature, which we use to whet your appetites for the action to come at this weekend's German Grand Prix.

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Red Bull's wounds reopen as Alonso shines

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Andrew Benson | 20:13 UK time, Sunday, 10 July 2011

At Silverstone

A week before the British Grand Prix, I sat down with Mark Webber to talk to him for .

Silverstone is a track he adores and always goes well on. So, expecting him to be more of a threat to Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel at Silverstone than he had been so far this season, I asked him if he would be allowed to race and beat the German if the circumstances arose.

He was momentarily taken aback. "Well, yeah, I hope so, yeah," he said. "I don't see any reason why we can't."

Given that Vettel headed into the race in complete control of the season having utterly dominated the championship so far, it is easy to see why Webber would be of that opinion.

As it turned out, though, his team principal Christian Horner was not.

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Tempers blow hot in F1's latest engine dispute

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Andrew Benson | 18:34 UK time, Friday, 8 July 2011

A dreary Friday at the British Grand Prix, with limited on-track running because of the wet weather, was enlivened by between the bosses of Formula 1's leading two teams.

McLaren's Martin Whitmarsh and Red Bull's Christian Horner disputed the rights and wrongs of the latest ruling from on off-throttle blowing of diffusers.

If that sounds technical, it's because it is - very. But it's also very important, so please bear with me while I explain the complicated bit as simply as possible.

Over the last year, this technology, which was pioneered by Red Bull last summer, has been increasingly prevalent in F1 because of the dramatic effects it has on improving a car's aerodynamics, and therefore its cornering speed and lap time.

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How do you beat Vettel?

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Andrew Benson | 21:57 UK time, Thursday, 7 July 2011

At Silverstone

Sebastian Vettel surveys Formula 1 serenely from a dominant position at the top of the world championship as he heads into this weekend's British Grand Prix, where the Red Bull driver is the hot favourite to win for what would be the seventh time in nine races.

The German's record has been rooted in the dominance of the Red Bull car and it is expected to be as tough to beat as ever at Silverstone, where the track layout could have been designed to suit its superb aerodynamics.

But Vettel is not unbeatable - as McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button have already proved this year. If the German is going to be stopped this weekend, or at any other race this year, this is how it is likely to happen.

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Lewis Hamilton - classic F1 2011

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Andrew Benson | 06:00 UK time, Wednesday, 6 July 2011

picks his five all-time favourite races ahead of the British Grand Prix, in the latest instalment of 91Èȱ¬ Sport's classic Formula 1 series.

This year, we have asked all the drivers to make such a choice, and we are serialising them before each race to whet your appetites for the action ahead.

The drivers have taken different approaches to this task so far.

Multiple world champions Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, for example, chose a mixture of their own races and events that resonated with them from before their own time in F1.

Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg, by contrast, did not take his own races into account at all.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Hamilton - like reigning champion Sebastian Vettel before him - has gone for his five favourite races from his own F1 career. And what a selection it is.

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Will Hamilton frustration prompt Red Bull move?

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Andrew Benson | 11:20 UK time, Monday, 4 July 2011

Lewis Hamilton's frustration with life as a McLaren driver has been palpable in recent weeks.

There was his outburst after finishing sixth at Monaco, the result of a messy weekend at a race

There was the , a matter of hours after qualifying a disappointing fifth for another race he was hoping to win.

There were the messages over the team radio as he laboured in fourth place, struggling with tyre wear, during the European Grand Prix. "I can't go any slower," he said to his engineer after being asked to look after his tyres. And a few laps later: "I can't go any faster," when asked to try to make up some ground.

So will Hamilton still be a McLaren driver in 2012?

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