A WALK IN THE PARCOIT’S ALL ABOUT THE PASSION

ITALIAN GP, Issue 1109 September 2012

The award-winning Formula 1 e-magazine is brought to you by:David Tremayne | Joe Saward | Peter Nygaard

with additional material from Mike Doodson | Michael Stirnberg

Leader 3On The Grid by JOe Saward 4SnapShOTS 5aLex Zanardi winS GOLd 13narain KarThiKeyan 21F1 aT The MOvieS 26The hacK LOOKS bacK 34MOnZa - QuaLiFyinG repOrT 37MOnZa- race repOrT 54The LaST Lap by david TreMayne 74parTinG ShOT 77

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ITALIAN GRAND PRIX Issue 110

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WHAT WE THINK

Luca Montezemolo can be a little eccentric on occasion, but he is no fool and when he talks, the Formula 1 world needs to listen. On Friday he met Bernie Ecclestone and Jean Todt at Maranello for discussions about the future of the sport. Afterwards Luca told the Italian media that F1 needs to consider shorter races, held later in the day, in order to attract a younger audience. He's absolutely right, the sport is not appealing to the youth of today. One may scoff at shorter attention spans and a generation that is constantly wired to the Internet, but if F1 wants to remain relevant, it needs to adapt and embrace the future, rather than trying to ignore the fact that this is the way the world is going...

BeING oPeN To New IDeAs

DAVID TReMAYNe is a freelance motorsport writer whose clients include The Independent and The Independent on Sunday newspapers. A former editor and executive editor of Motoring News and Motor Sport, he is a veteran of 25 years of Grands Prix reportage, and the author of more than 40 books on motorsport. He is the only three-time winner of the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Timo Makinen and Renault Awards for his books. His writing, on both current and historic issues, is notable for its soul and passion, together with a deep understanding of the sport and an encyclopaedic knowledge of its history. David is also acknowledged as the world expert on the history of land and water speed record breaking and is also passionate about Unlimited hydroplanes. He is the British representative on the FIA Records Commission, and the driving force behind the STAY GOLD speed record jetcar programme.

Joe sAwARD has been a motorsport writer for 29 years. He began his career travelling around Europe, living in a tent. He became Grand Prix Editor of Autosport, chronicling his adventures in the celebrated “Globetrotter” column. His wide-ranging experience of the sport resulted in the commission to write the best-selling “The World Atlas of Motor Racing” before he moved on to become the pioneer of electronic media in motorsport, launching the award-winning Business of Motorsport e-newsletter in 1994, followed by www.grandprix.com. He has since moved on to GP+ and his F1 blog. Trained as an historian, Joe is also an acknowledged expert on the Special Operations Executive (SOE). His 2007 book “The Grand Prix Saboteurs”, the untold story of Grand Prix drivers who became SOE agents, resulted in him winning the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Renault Author of the Year Award. Joe continues to work on non-F1 book projects, his latest being “The Man who Caught Crippen”.

PeTeR NYGAARD began taking photographs at Grands Prix while studying law at Copenhagen University. After graduation in 1982 he established the Grand Prix Photo company and has since attended more than 350 Grands Prix. Today he not only takes photographs but also writes and commentates about F1.The company covers every Grand Prix and many other events and with contacts all over the world can supply photos from almost any motor race. In addition to current photography the Grand Prix Photo archive is one of the biggest in the world, Nygaard having acquired the archives of a number of F1 photographers, notably Italian photo-journalist Giancarlo Cevenini and France’s Dominique Leroy plus a portion of Australian Nigel Snowdon’s collection. Grand Prix Photo has 25,000 photographs on its website and millions more in its offices, which are decorated with a Tyrrell 021, which Peter acquired from Ken Tyrrell in the 1990s.

vJoe and David are non-executive directors of Caterham Cars Group Ltd. They are not involved in the operations or management of the F1 team.

ON THE GRId by Joe Saward

The PRoBLeM wITh MoNzAWhen you die and go to Heaven - if you’ve been a good boy or girl - you may find yourself being dropped off outside the Pearly Gates by the Grim Reaper’s bus. You will follow the happy crowd, as you do at Disneyland, except that there will not be a security check. And when you get to the turnstile you will meet an angel with a clipboard and a knowing smile. She will ask you if you have any questions about Elysium. “Yes,” you will say. “I am a Formula 1 fan and I’m really rather keen to know if there is a racing circuit in Heaven. “Oh,” the angel will say. “I’ll have to check. I am not a fan myself. I am sure that my supervisor will know.” St Peter will appear (instantly) and smiling will explain that there are a lot of race fans in Heaven, but not many motor racing people. “I am afraid we have rather a lot of DNQs,” he will say, with an almost straight face. “I am told that there is a very competitive Other World Championship in warmer climes, but I don’t suppose you want to go down there, do you?” You will look a little crestfallen and St Peter will notice and he will try to ease your pain.

“The Celestial Motor Speedway is just a few miles away. If you get on bus number 4 it will take you there. If you get lost just ask for Monza.” You will raise an eyebrow and St Peter will explain: “We tried to build something better, but it was a waste of energy. So we copied Monza instead. Is that a sin?” You may notice when you get there that the people are more polite than at the real Monza, and you will probably spot that the girls at the Celestial Motor Speedway are not nearly as naughty as they are at Monza. Otherwise the place will be the same and although you may feel a little put out to be dead, you will find yourself wrapped up in the contagious enthusiasm of the race fans. You will quickly realise that Monza reminds you what it was that first attracted you to the sport. My first visit to the Autodromo - a while ago now - was miserable. I arrived from Milan on a train and caught a bus to get there. I ended up carrying my backpack, complete with tent, for a very long way. It was March and it was raining. I pitched my tent in a field behind the paddock, in a place that was long ago paved over and is today

the GP2 Paddock. I was as miserable as miserable can be. And yet as I walked around the woods and watched the cars I caught the magic of the place. It was love at first sight. I have come to Monza at various time of year since then - from the baking midsummer to chilly winter - but somehow Monza is always linked in my mind to early September, when the trees change colour, the leaves begin to fall and there is a slight chill in the evenings. When I am asked what my favourite race is, I might say Melbourne or Montreal, but that is not because of the race track, it is because of the nearby city. I have often thought it a shame that Grand Prix racing does not have its own resident poet, if indeed one can be resident in a village that it is constantly on the move. The sport has so many elements that might inspire great poetry, with its “half a league onward” dashes down towards the carnage of a tight first corner; with its light, its colour, its noise and smells. And, of course, its emotional highs and lows. But I want someone who can describe Monza in all of its glory. I have tried many times and am never really satisfied... v

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So, where do you start writing about Alex? Just his name evokes so many memories, not the least of which was the phone call when I was driving on the M23 and this cheery voice came down the phone: “Ey, Johnny Tramaline, ‘ow are you?” Phone calls from Alex are as rare of hen’s teeth, but this was a particularly special one - our first conversation since his accident on September 15 2001. All he wanted to talk about was how we all were, not about the fortitude of his remarkable recovery. Looking further back, there was the man in the yellow Benetton overalls in the pit lane at Silverstone early in 1993 who denied that he was about to race for Castrol Team Lotus until I told him I was speaking to him as the guy who was about to write the press release about it, rather than as a journalist, and whose face then creased into the smile of a young kid who knew he was about get a lovely present and was secretly dying to share the news. We first became really close in Portugal in 1994, when that little wiener Philippe Adams had taken his ride and we watched practice from a rickety tower out in the infield. His father was terminally ill, and his own career was in dire jeopardy, but his dignity in that tight situation was impressive. That weekend he walked by our table

Losing his legs at Lausitzring 11 years ago just made Alex Zanardi stand even taller…

ALEx zANARdI by David Tremayne

soGNI D’oRo

on the street in downtown Estoril and stopped for a few moments to exchange gracious and friendly greetings. “Who was that guy?” my dining companions asked, bemused yet charmed at the same time.

I was stoked when Frank Williams signed him for 1999, for what would sadly prove to be his final season in F1. I would have bet the farm that he and Patrick Head would have become bosom buddies, bound by mutual respect and

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appreciation of engineering. But the team was in decline and it never happened. Alex would rather have run faster than Blondin across the tightrope he walked all that season. Instead he only managed to edge his way across it inch by painful inch, knowing as he completed the hazardous crossing that just one downward glance, one ill-timed breath of wind, would send him crashing. He knew better than all the people who kept reminding him of it all season, just how precarious the balance of F1 could be.

It was so hard to reconcile the articulate man with the haunted expression with the laughing guy who could do anything in a ChampCar in the previous three seasons. In Long Beach in 1998 he came from a massive delay during a pile-up at the hairpin, to snatch victory. In Cleveland he came back from 24th to win in such devastating style that open-mouthed rivals nearly swallowed their cigars and just kept saying, ‘How did he do that? How did that guy do that?’ It was the kind of drive you’d witness, but not be able to believe you had

seen. If Michael Schumacher had gone ChampCar racing, that’s how he would have driven there. Alex just missed the 1996 title, and made the next two his own. But in 1999 he was like a dragon whose flame had gone out. He’d listen to your questions about what was going wrong with his habitual equanimity, the dark eyes flashing momentarily as he acknowledged their thrust. His critics said that his very equanimity was part of his problem, that he hadn’t brought the same level of motivation to F1 that he did to his three-year reign of terror in ChampCars. That he didn’t seem to care any more since his son Niccolo had come along, and had resigned himself to whatever fate Sir Frank Williams, Patrick Head or BMW dish up. That was all nonsense, of course, but ultimately he was replaced by Jenson Button. “You know,” he would say with just a trace of edge in his voice, “if I knew the answers there would not be a problem.” He hated the F1 cars of that era, which favoured styles far less polished than his. “For me it’s just against my instinct,” he admitted, “because I have always tried to develop a particular driving style that was smooth and balanced. The classic style. Unfortunately, with these cars my style doesn’t seem to work…” His car-sorting ability and the quality of his feedback had become legendary, as a story from Monza back in his F3000 days illustrates to perfection. He had a problem in the Curva Grande, then came in and suggested to his engineer Damon Chandler that it might be rooted in the rear suspension set-up. How on earth could he know

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that, Damon asked him. “Because I saw it in the mirror that the left rear tyre was changing colour,” he replied. He was cornering at 180 mph… A guy doesn’t leave that sort of ability in the overhead locker in BA Club Class just because he crosses the Atlantic and switches race series. Nothing summarised that sad last season better than Monza. He stayed away from the kerbs and was running on target for a morale-boosting second place when his floor detached itself. The beneficiary was… team-mate Ralf Schumacher. “I hate it because it hurts me to hear myself speaking like that,” he’d say whenever he was prompted to offer an excuse. As a winner, losing sucked. “It’s something that hurts me, because I’ve always been known as a driver who - without discussing the ability of putting the fantastic lap together - was certainly capable of giving the engineers the right feedback and the information that it takes to set the car up,” he admitted. He soldiered on with a return to ChampCars and then came that fateful day at the Lausitzring. Finally, it seemed that he and Mo Nunn had recaptured the light from their glory days after months of struggle. He was leading when he spun exiting the pits and was left broadside across the track as the pack approached at 200 mph… The doctors in the Klinikum Berlin-Marzahn left it to Daniela Zanardi to break the news to her husband that he had lost both legs, as they eventually brought him out of a medically induced coma. “It was something I had already figured out for myself,” he said. “I was still heavily medicated so I was still really high, but I knew before she told

me. “There was a doctor with her, just in case I reacted badly. He told me I was not gonna die, and that was all that really mattered to me. So when Daniela broke the news, I only asked one question: ‘Is it true, I’m really not gonna die?’ The doctor gave me the assurance I needed.” “The Klinikum Berlin-Marzahn hospital in Berlin was the only reasonably close hospital capable of handling such an injury,” CART medic Dr Steve Olvey said. “It contained all of the

ancillary services needed to deal with massive life-threatening injuries. Even though the hospital in Dresden was only 10 minutes away, I knew Alex would die there. I was sending him to Berlin, 35 minutes away. I thought to myself; what if he doesn’t make it to Berlin?” On the track, rescuers had slipped and slithered in the mixture of blood and racing fluids. Alex reached the clinic with 10 minutes to spare. Now here he was, awake, defying the odds, already beginning his extraordinary comeback.

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Not quite two years later he went back to the Lausitzring, intent on driving an identical, hand-controlled Reynard to the one which he had spun, thus presenting himself as a sideways, stationary target as the hapless Alex Tagliani bore down on him. He was ready to finish the missing 13 laps of his 2001 race. As spectators and team crews wept in admiration he reeled the laps off with metronomic consistency, and at speeds which would have qualified him fifth for that year’s race. “It was just fantastic,” he recalls. “Obviously it was something that I’d been doing all my racing career. But in the preceding year and a half I’d

never even got close to drive a proper racing car. So just for that reason it was great again to feel the speed, to feel the downforce. Most of all, what made it particularly enjoyable was the love of all the people in the CART community, in particular the drivers, and certainly the fans. It was just awesome. “It was a very good day, you know? It was flat out, wide open. I can’t say pedal to the metal, because I didn’t have a pedal. I just had a little knob, but that was all I had in the car. “I was really surprised how rapidly it came back to me. I was really surprised. It felt like I was

doing the same thing the day before and the day before that. I didn’t feel like I was out of the car for one and a half years. Especially if you consider that in this one and a half years, all I’d been doing was adjusting my prosthetical [sic] legs and spending time with my son Niccolo, and the fastest thing I’d driven was my road car.” Though he is a man of deep passion, he is also a pragmatist. As he talks his dark eyes sparkle, the ever-present smile curves his mouth and his voice comes out in a distinctive sing-song nasal tone, like the actor Scott Glenn playing astronaut Alan Shepherd and mimicking hapless Mexican spaceman ‘Jose Jimenez’ in the film The Right Stuff. He admits that he had conflicting feelings when that run finally ended. “I was kind of disappointed that it was over. But, nevertheless, I have great memories from racing. I’ve enjoyed beautiful satisfactions. And certainly from a sporting point of view, this was not the highlight of my life. I had races that for me personally were by far more important than those 13 laps. “But this was something that was very symbolic, if you like, very emotional for the people that saw me taken away in the helicopter, leaving a big trace of blood, and then when I went back there and I drove the same speed I was driving the last time I was there. So certainly this was surprising. It looks like a miracle. But for me, that I’ve lived through day to day, it wasn’t a miracle.” When he was fighting back to mobility back then, he involved himself in the administration of the Alex Zanardi Foundation, which he set up to manage the donations and money that so unexpectedly came flowing his way in the wake of the accident. A large portion of it financed the

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final phase of construction for a school for poor children in Madagascar. Then, almost matter-of-factly, he went back to racing, driving Touring Cars for BMW. “My old engineer and friend Roberto Trevisan asked me if I was interested if he got me the car. I said, ‘Does the cat like the mouse?’” He won races in 2005, and again in 2006, usually running close to the front. “You know,” he said, with another laugh, “in some ways I am stronger than the other drivers. If I should break my leg, all I need is a four millimetre spanner and it will be repaired in no time!” Ah, memories. In Valencia 2006 he drove a BMW Sauber. I watched the Sauber mechanics adjusting the car. “We’ll just adjust the pedals, Alex. It’ll only take a few minutes.” “No,” he said. “Adjust my legs. That’ll be much quicker.” He barely fitted the car, and said “I was a bit too big for the cockpit, and in the end I was just driving it with one limb.” Later, Sebastian Vettel was only a fraction faster in the same car that day. “It was fantastic, the mixture of emotions for me as I left the pit lane,” he continued. “When you’ve had as long a career as me you know how to control these emotions, but this was the pure joy and having this opportunity to try this fantastic car. Then the rest was just focusing on keeping it on the black bit and not letting my desire overrule me. I could see speed in front of me, but I couldn’t catch it.” Last week at Brands Hatch, Alex found all the speed he wanted, winning the H4 men’s Paralympics handbike time trial and later the road race.

It was while he was in New York with his friend and sponsor Paolo Barilla that he first took up competitive handbiking, on behalf of the pasta magnate, figuring that he might as well compete in the New York Marathon while he was there. He finished fourth. As many other successes followed, including winning the marathon and then the Italian championship, he set his heart on a Paralympic place. On September 3rd, almost 11 years after the Lausitzring accident, he led Germany’s Norbert Mosandl across the finish line at Brands by 27 seconds after 16 kilometres of tough racing in the H4 class to claim the gold, using a carbon fibre trike that he’d had a hand in

designing. “I’m Alex Zanardi,” he joked afterwards as he did a handstand on his wheelchair. “I always have to come up with something at the end of a race - I have a bit of a big head. “I only collected a second place and a third place before at Brands Hatch. To win I had to come back with a hand-cycle. It’s an amazing feeling. I’m really, really happy for the result, but I knew that this moment was going to bring a little bit of sadness as well. This is almost the last day of a great adventure and from Monday I will have to find something different, otherwise life will become a little boring.

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“This is at the top of the scale with many other great moments I’ve been lucky enough to live.” Two days later he led the men’s H4 road race, before becoming embroiled in an eight-man fight for victory. A final burst took him a second clear of South Africa’s Eric van Dyk as he won his second gold. Like wartime fighter ace Douglas Bader, Alex became an even bigger man after losing his legs. Yet he insists cheerfully, “I have seen too many small children in the clinics, coping far better than I did with my problems, to believe I am anything special. Some of these kids, they are the real heroes. “To me this is a fantastic story, not just for disabled people but for those not stubborn enough to keep moving to overcome adversity. I have driven cars since my accident with technology that can help humans, but it will always be passive. It can’t solve all problems, you have to move your butt yourself. It’s all about the fantasy and what comes of out your head and your heart. A man loses his legs, people expect that he will just go home and change the channels on the tv with the remote control. I have shown that this guy can come back after that accident and have the same life. That is the great thing.” And he isn’t finished yet. A whole new chapter awaits. “My great friend Jimmy Vasser called me last night and said if you win a gold medal I’m going to put you in a car for the Indy 500,” he said last Wednesday. “So I will have to call him back tonight.” Vasser and Alex’s old entrant Chip Ganassi

have offered to enter a car for him in the great race in which he never competed as his time in ChampCars fell in the middle of the war with Tony George and the IRL. It’s unfinished business for him. “When I opened my eyes I felt gifted with a great opportunity to carry on but first I took the

time needed to clear out my past list of priorities,” he told a journalist last week, as he spoke of the start of his lengthy new journey. “After my accident I was not self sufficient and I couldn’t consider driving racing cars. But mentally I was ready to do something. “I don’t think of myself as superman. I

always knew something like this could happen. Life is like this. The simple fact of living our life puts us in some sort of danger. You may be going in one direction in life but then all of a sudden something can dramatically change the direction you were heading in. If you do not accept this you are looking at a miserable life but if you say, ‘Okay,

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that’s it,’ you can look for a new horizon. “I have got so far in this new life of mine that the things I like now are strongly related to my condition. It would be hard to go back. If a genie came up and granted me my legs back for sure I would take them but it would take some time to accept.” I don’t know anyone in F1 who isn’t

massively proud if they can call Alex Zanardi a friend. “Anybody can be an inspiration for each other,” he once said. But some people are a lot more inspirational than others. Assuredly he’s right at the top of the list, the embodiment of everything there is to celebrate about the resilience, courage and empowerment of the human spirit. v

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Formula 1 tends to concentrate on the stars at the front of the grid. But what it is

like down at the back? And how do drivers measure whether they have had a good

season or a poor one.

NARAIN KARTHIKEyAN by Joe Saward

NARAIN’s ADVeNTURes

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Narain Karthikeyan is no newcomer to Formula 1. At 35 years of age he is one of the oldest drivers in Grand Prix racing today behind only Mercedes's Michael Schumacher (43); his own HRT team-mate Pedro de la Rosa (41) and Red Bull Racing's Mark Webber (36). His F1 career dates back to 2005 when he first appeared in a Jordan. At the time the team was in a state of flux. Eddie Jordan had sold the organisation to the Midland Group. Colin Kolles was appointed managing-director and Trevor

Carlin was named as sporting director. The latter played a key role in the appointment of the two drivers, both of whom had driven for his teams in the junior formulae. Both had to find some sponsorship but Karthikeyan was able to raise some cash from Tata. It was not an easy year as both drivers had a lot to learn, but things began well when Karthikeyan qualified 12th on his debut in Melbourne. He would later go one better than that with 11th on the grid in Japan, but when it came to

scoring points, it was rather more difficult, except in Indianapolis where the two Jordans finished third and fourth after most of the teams retired before the start because of arguments over tyres and other political shenanigans. Narain was quick but gained a bit of a reputation for wildness because of a number of accidents - not unusual in a first year in F1. The bad news was that there was no drive for him in 2006 and he spent the next two years working as the reserve driver for Williams F1, as part

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of a deal with Tata. At the same time he competed in the A1GP Series and won a race in China. He stayed in A1GP in 2008 and was a race winner again, but in the years that followed he found hismelf racing in an Audi sports car at Le Mans, driving for Colin Kolles, and then in 2010 decided to go the United States to try his hand in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. He competed in nine events with Starbeast Motorsports and made a good impression, while also returning to single-seaters with the Superleague Series, where he was a winner again. It was something of a surprise however when he returned to F1 in 2011 with HRT, in part thanks to Colin Kolles, in part because the first Indian Grand Prix was scheduled for later that year and in part as a result of Tata sponsorship. By June however the team needed money and with Red Bull willing to pay for Daniel Ricciardo, Karthikeyan was ousted, returning for the Indian GP only, where he replaced Tonio Liuzzi. Over the winter Narain was able to put together another deal with HRT and was confirmed as Pedro de la Rosa's team-mate. Oddly enough, he was one of the few elements in the team that were not changed by the new owners at HRT. "The change haa been a big one but also a progressive one," Narain says. "Now the entire team is under the same roof and the facilities are really fantastic; anyone who visits them will see the intentions of a very serious Formula 1 team. I give full marks to the management who put this together and I feel very fortunate to form a part of this team which is growing. We’ve still got a lot to do but we’re making steady progress." It has not been easy.

"We knew the car would be pretty basic," Narain explains, "but I’ve been surprised by its reliability and I think it has potential to improve. And the team has surprised me even more because renewing almost 85 percent of the staff isn’t easy and I think that we have a very good combination of people with a lot of experience in F1 and young people with a lot of hunger. But everyone is very professional and it’s a real pleasure working with them."

The start of the year was difficult. "We all know that the start should have been better in normal circumstances, but with the changes that had to be made and other things we inherited, it wasn’t possible," he says. "To make it to Australia with the car on time was an achievement in itself. We’ve moved on from that and have progressed a lot." Working with Pedro de la Rosa has been a positive experience.

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"Pedro is a fantastic driver with a lot of experience," Narain says. "He’s very consistent but also quick. We’re a small united family and we really enjoy working together." Thus far, Karthikeyan has been pretty happy with his race performances. "I think that my race performance has been very strong, with my 15th place in Monaco standing out, but in qualifying I’ve been a bit weaker,"he says. "Right now I’m about three

tenths behind Pedro and that’s something I have to improve in this second half of the season, no doubt about it. The tyres have been quite difficult to get used to and Pedro has a lot of experience with Pirelli and McLaren. He’s a very good driver who hardly makes mistakes and I must learn from him to improve." Karthikeyan says that Monaco is defeinitely the high point so far. "Pedro had a very good qualifying session

and I had a very good race, finishing 15th. I think that, from the team’s perspective, Monaco has been the best race so far. From where we are now, it would be great to match and beat Pedro who has been a good benchmark." The primary goal, however, is to try to finish ahead of Marussia in the Constructors' Championship. "That would be a successful sesason," he says.

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Narain hopes as well to be able to show well in front of his home crowd in India. "The car will have evolved a bit more come the Indian Grand Prix so I think I will put in a better performance than last year," he says. "It’s obviously my favourite race and we will try to do our best there. My expectations are always high and we will aim to improve on last year’s 17th position."

He expects the race itself to be more popular than ever. "After last year’s success, everyone that missed the spectacle is eager to come this time round," he explains. "Promotions for the race have started early this year and I’ll do my bit to help out. The Jaypee Group have done a tremendous job putting all of this together and it’s going to be a complete success again."

Karthikeyan will always be remembered as the first Indian to race in F1 but he is not about to give way to a new generation of drivers, unless any of them are good enough to beat him. The cynics might say that fighting at the back in F1 when you are in your mid-thirties is a waste of time but Karthikeyan does not see it that way. His role is to inspire Indian youngsters who might one day become F1 drivers. v

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F1 ANd THE MOVIES by Joe Saward

Back in 1966 John Frankenheimer made a great movie about F1. It is time that F1 and cinema got together again...

The Autodromo Nazionale at Monza in Italy is a place which every racing enthusiast should visit at least once, preferably early in September when the first hints of autumn are coming on. They should wander out along the muddy paths through the woods all the way to the Lesmo Corners, by way of the old banking. There is a reason that back in the 1960s John Frankenheimer set the climax of his movie "Grand Prix" at Monza and why it was that the film ends with James Garner walking down the main straight in the early morning on the day after the race, wondering if it was really all worthwhile. Frankenheimer understood. Monza is motor racing in all of its purity. It is a place where legends competed, where magic happened and where many died. The autodromo has witnessed the high and the lows of the sport. There really is nowhere like it. They call it "La Pista Magica" (the magic track) and when you go there, you understand. Frankenheimer caught that feeling and in celluloid and there is no doubt that his movie helped to build up the popularity of F1 and took it from being a backwater sport into the mainstream, where television coverage took over. Since then the sport has effectively ignored the cinema, and has been slow to understand the changing habits of the younger generations. The youth of today are not excited about Formula 1, and yet the cinema operators will tell you that their core market remains 10-24 year olds. Despite the recent recession cinema-going is still booming

The wAsTeD PoTeNTIAL oF FoRMULA 1 AT The MoVIes

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and, according to surveys, would increase still further if the prices were further reduced or there were better packaging deals available online. Yet Formula 1 does not want to know. Those in power understand the potential that exists to use movies to promote the sport, but because movie companies do not want to pay the kind of money that Formula One Management demands to allow them to use the show, nothing happens. This is a fairly short-sighted approach but the Formula One group argues that if the movie business wishes to exploit the sport for its commercial gain, it should be willing to share some of that revenue with the racing world. The cinema, on the other hand, believes that the publicity that the sport will gain is sufficient payback. So nothing happens. One thing is clear. The sport has all the elements that a successful movie needs: there is drama, danger, beautiful people in glamorous locations. There is skullduggery, money, treachery and a there is already a huge fan base around the world. On paper F1 is made for the movies. In the 1990s Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone came along with a plan to make an F1 movie, but he gave up when it became clear that the Formula One group wanted too much money. He switched the focus of his film to Indycar racing and produced a movie called "Driven", which has long been nicknamed "Drivel" in F1 circles. The screenplay, written by Stallone himself, is the story of a retired World Champion being called back to coach a rookie driver (right). “I wanted to make this movie about F1," Stallone said. "I spent two years jetting to Grands

Prix and getting to know Bernie. I think he was up for it in the beginning, he was incredibly enthusiastic. But he wanted tens and tens of millions for the rights to F1. He was way off the mark. So, in the end, we went to CART and did a deal in a matter of hours. I apologise to fans of Formula 1, but there is a certain individual there who runs the sport that has his own agenda. F1 is very formal, and it's very hard to get to know people. CART is much more open."

That may have been so, but the movie was not very good. It cost $72 million to make and made only $32 million at the box office. It may have helped the sport to attract a few more fans across the United States, but its impact was limited. Yet, as "Grand Prix" proved it is not impossible to make a profitable film about F1. Frankenheimer more than doubled the money that the film cost, proving that the subject matter is not the problem.

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There have been a number of other successful racing movies in the United States since then, but F1 scared away Hollywood. In the 197os there was a movie called "Bobby Deerfield", starring a young Al Pacino (above). This was set against a background of Formula 1 and based in a novel called Heaven Has No Favorites by Erich Maria Remarque, who had enjoyed much success with his All Quiet on the Western Front. The film is more about death than about racing as Pacino becomes involved with a character played by Marthe Keller,

who is dying of cancer. Pacino was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actor, but the film was not a huge money spinner. In recent times there has been a little more interest thanks to the Senna documentary and the shooting of Ron Howard's Rush, which is due to be released a year from now, but both of these are historical films, rather than pure cinema. All this means that "Grand Prix" remains the outstanding F1 movie, despite the fact that it was released 46 years ago.

At the time John Frankenheimer (above) was one of the biggest directors in Hollywood. He was still only 36, but had started his career as a TV director in the 1950s before making his first real impact in the film world in 1962 with "The Birdman of Alcatraz". The film was nominated for four Oscars. He followed up with "The Manchurian Candidate", which was nominated for two Oscars, followed by a political thriller called "Seven Days in May". It too received Oscar nominations. With such a successful director, the film was able to attract some popular stars, notably 38-year-old James Garner, who had begun his career in

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television with hit cowboy series "Maverick" before moving into the cinema in action movies and romantic comedies, including The Great Escape. In "Grand Prix" he was cast alongside Yves Montand, the 44-year-old French actor and singer who had broken into Hollywood in 1960 with George Cukor's "Let's Make Love", who had gone on to make the classic "Is Paris Burning?" The female lead was 42-year-old American Eve Marie Saint, who had been a star for more than 10 years after hitting the big time playing alongside

Marlon Brando in "On The Waterfront" in 1954, a performance for which she had won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress. She had followed up with Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" and has worked with Frankenheimer in "All Fall Down" in 1962 and with Garner in "36 Hours" in 1964. The supporting cast for the movie included clean-cut 31-year-old Englishman Brian Bedford, Italy's Antonio Sabàto (23) and the stunning French starlet Françoise Hardy (22). It was a good cast.

Frankenheimer planned for "Grand Prix" to be the most technically-advanced movie up to that point and it was packed with new ideas and technical innovation. Rather than using the traditional 35mm film, Frankenheimer decided to use Super Panavision 70 cameras that used 65mm film, believing that this would create a stronger visual experience. Rather than using the rear projection techniques, he developed ways to film the actors actually in the cars, and travelling at speed.

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While Garner was a decent driver (and later started racing as a result of the experience) the others were only vaguely competent and Bedford did not drive at all. This meant that they were more comfortable when they were being towed, although Garner did some of his own work at high speed. A Ford GT40 Le Mans sports car, driven by former World Champion Phil Hill, was employed for some of the filming, with cameras mounted front and rear, as required. This was used because

it was one of the few cars that were quick enough to keep up with the cars being filmed. Some shots were filmed from helicopters. The cars used were mostly Formula 3 cars that were modified to look like F1 cars, which was rather easier than it would be today, but some of the footage was also filmed in the actual races, with cameras being fitted to a number of cars at some point. The actors used the same helmets as some of the racing stars, so that the images could

be edited together. He even staged his own start at Monaco, an hour before the main race was due to begin, in order to capture the crowds and atmosphere of Monaco. As part of this process, a car was crashed into Monaco harbour, an accident which mirrored a real crash the previous year when Paul Hawkins ended up in the water. In order to add to its authenticity, the director also had the racing stars such as Graham

Brian BedfordFrancoise Hardy with Antonio Sabato

Hill, Jochen Rindt, Jim Clark and Jack Brabham making cameo appearances. The script followed the adventures of four Grand Prix drivers through the season of racing with Montand playing a veteran called Jean-Pierre Sarti, who is coming to the end of his career; Garner playing Pete Aron, who is making a comeback after being dropped; Scott Stoddart, played by Bedford (above), who is getting over a big accident and Nino Barlini (played by Sabàto) , who is a rising star. There was filming at Monaco, Clermont-Ferrand, Spa, Zandvoort, Brands Hatch and Monza. There was nothing from the Nürburgring because

of a contractual dispute. Another innovation was showing moviegoers multiple panels on the screen, aiming to overload the emotions and generate the same kind of awe as first-time spectators at motor races often have. It is often said that it is very difficult to come up with a believable plot in Grand Prix racing because the reality of often so unbelievable, but Frankenheimer avoided outlandish plot themes and concentrated on the relationships of the four men and their love lives, adding a liitle to the spice of the racing. Some critics reckoned that there were a few too many clichés in the storylines.

In the end the film did not win any major Academy Awards, competition that year was very tough with movies such as "A Man for All Seasons". "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", "The Fortune Cookie", "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" and "Alfie". The film was however one of the top 10 earning films of the year and did collect three Academy Awards for technical achievements: for editing, sound and sound effects. Given the technology available today and the dramatic nature of Formula 1, it is interesting to imagine what might be possible if Formula 1 would embrace the movie industry today.

Right: Brian Bedford and Francoise Hardy

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We will see some of the tricks when "Rush" comes out, but it seems that the F1 world is going to have to wait for the departure of Bernie Ecclestone before there can be any real discussion about doing an updated version of "Grand Prix". There is no doubt that cars remain popular with cinema audiences and that the potential is there to generate new racing fans from the cinema. What kind of impact could an F1 movie

have today? That is not an easy question to answer, although if one looks at the effect of movies such as "Top Gun" as possible parallels, one can get an idea. That film was released in 1986 and although the plot was nothing special, the film went on to make $350 million at the box office and many more millions in home video sales. The US military reported that "Top Gun" had a clear effect of boosting recruiting and they even set up booths at some cinemas. Parts of

the movie have passed into popular culture and even 25 years after its launch "Top Gun" still gives military aviation a glamorous image. One can only hope that one day a film director will be let loose at Monaco, Monza, Spa and Suzuka. One hopes that we might even see the lead character walking down the track at Monza, as a nod to Frankenheimer's genius and in recognition of the circuit's special place in the amazing world of Formula 1. v

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A MEETING OF OLD FRIENDSOn Wednesday last, to the Williams factory at Grove, there to attend a gathering of the Mechanics' Charitable Trust and to catch up with a bunch of outstanding guys, some of whom I hadn't seen for 30 years. Before the lunch buffet opened for business, we were addressed (harangued?) by a three-times World Champion and knight of the realm - yes, Jackie Stewart at his most persuasive. He told us of the fine work done by the Trust and lamented the fact that its cash reserves amount to no more than £2 million, which used to be a lot of money but doesn't amount to much in 2012. I think he wants me, and my press colleagues, to bang the drum in pursuit of augmenting those funds, so here goes. While I would never belittle the skills of the modern F1 racing mechanic, he has it pretty easy compared with his forebears. FIA rules actually restrict the hours which a modern mechanic can work, while the leading teams make generous insurance and pension provisions which ensure that their employees past and present will be able live out their days in comfort. Compare that with the days when a mechanic's duties included hauling the cars to the races on an open trailer, with

installed "personally by Adolf Hitler." It was most kind of Jackie to invite me and several other hacks along for last week's speech-making, and I look forward to the day when someone makes similar provision for freelance motor-noters. Meanwhile, I promise that one of the first cheques I write when I win the Euro-Millions will be one to Sir Jackie's Trust. In fact the persistent Scot chose to illustrate the work of motor trade charities by revealing in his address that Denis Jenkinson (left), the eccentrically bearded mullah of the paddock, a man whose writing enlightened and informed the racing-starved F1 fans of my generation, was being cared for by such a charity after he suffered a series of strokes as he approached his 75th year. Although Jenks and JYS had bitterly opposing views, and regularly crossed swords on the matter of racing safety, I am sure that the Scottish knight did not deliberately draw attention to the circumstances of the hard-line hack's misfortunes out of a sense of revenge. Jenks, who died in 1996, cared little for money, and didn't help himself at the end of his life when he cut his links with Motor Sport magazine

THE HACK LOOKS BACK by Mike Doodson

no guarantee even of covered facilities when they arrived at the circuit. Even if there was a proper garage, it would be cramped and ill-lit. I will always cherish the memory of Lotus manager Peter Warr ranting at a Nürburgring official about the dingy lock-up allocated to the team and its single 40-watt bulb which Peter improbably claimed had been

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which had employed him for nearly 50 years [actually, he was callously and unceremoniously fired by the senile proprietor Wesley J Tee – DT], but as the elder statesman of the writing profession he should surely have been able to afford to live out his days in more dignity than he did. Nevertheless, Wednesday's gathering could hardly have been a more appropriate occasion to mention Jenks, if only because I can't help reflecting on the somewhat curious fact that one of the few subjects on which he and his Scottish nemesis could have agreed would have been the value of the much put-upon mechanics who looked after the cars we all loved and kept them as safe as the nature of fragile machinery allowed, often under inhuman conditions. When the Mechanics' Trust was established almost 30 years ago, Jackie decided that the best way to publicise it would be a high-profile promotion involving the British motorsporting press and their wives, together with a representative group of mechanics and their better halves. Back in 1987 he somehow persuaded the management at Gleneagles in Scotland to host the shindig, admittedly in the depths of winter, which was great for the handful of us who play golf, which is not many. There was an open bar each evening, which led to certain mechanics making unguarded confessions about their travels which would otherwise never have emerged, certainly not in public. One such exchange started when a bachelor mechanic was regaling the wife of one of his team buddies with tales of his adventures with foreign ladies in between fettling F1 machinery in far-distant lands. The wife light-heartedly shouted to her husband across the bar, "Hey, Roly, how many

times was you unfaithful to me last year?" In an attempt to be equally humorous, the husband turned to his mate and asked, in a jovial tone, "Hey, Pete, how many Grands Prix were there?" Instead of the laughter he'd anticipated, the room suddenly went deathly quiet. We all went silently into dinner and I suspect that some uncomfortable interrogation took place upstairs later. Gleneagles was fun, and we did it twice. Indeed, I still have the green Hunter wellies and waxed Barbour jacket that were bestowed on us free of charge thanks to Jackie's pestering of their makers. Although the first Mrs Hack and I didn't play golf, we got some useful coaching from the great man in his original sport of trap shooting. However, it became evident on the morning after a Burns Night dinner just how difficult it had been

for the kitchen staff to cater for so many people. I'll draw a veil over the details and observe that only a few of us were able to struggle down to breakfast, the remainder being, er, fully occupied in their en-suite bathrooms. Last Wednesday there must have been at least 200 guests present at Williams, the vast majority of them mechanics and ex-mechanics. After lunch it fell to James Allen to host a discussion involving John Watson and Jo Ramirez, the fabled Mexican-turned-Englishman who served several illustrious drivers at Tyrrell and McLaren. In a parallel stroke of genius, Jackie had also organised a big screen, a cameraman and an interviewer to track down a few indiscretions among the tables. To do this job he had chosen my old friend Andrew Marriott, who homed in on some big names to elicit confessions.

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a different mechanic whose friendships with various Brazilian ladies up in São Paulo a couple of weeks earlier had been conducted on an openly commercial basis. Arriving in Cordoba, he had unwisely told his room mate about a change in his state of health, whereupon the word went round the entire paddock. It was when he gingerly set foot on the diving board that he realised his uncomfortable secret was now common knowledge, because before he even hit the water, every single one of us was climbing out of the pool. You can't catch it from lavatory seats. And the cure, I believe, is penicillin.

Patrick Head revealed that he can't stand watching GPs all the way through on TV "because otherwise I'd be throwing things at the screen," while McLaren paint wizard George Langford couldn't bring himself to mention the name of the Swiss driver whose foolishness had sent him clattering into Lewis Hamilton's car at the start of last week's Belgian GP, atomising its bodywork. I've known George almost since the days of the Ron Dennis take-over at McLaren in 1980, when the paint department was a strictly one-man affair. Today, George has more people working under him than Ken Tyrrell employed to build and race two cars back in 1970. Rather foolishly, I asked him just how he achieved that amazing chrome effect on the bodywork of the McLarens, and he told me, in detail, including the gauge of the spray nozzle required to lay on the chrome finish. George hasn't travelled to races for many years now, insisting that, "painting a car is an art form, not an engineering solution." Oh, and don't worry, Ron, I didn't make any notes of all those secret techniques. Later I was accosted by an ex-Brabham mechanic, one of the few who chose not to join the happy gang (e.g. ex-chief wrench Charlie Whiting) who continue to serve F1 as employees either of the FIA or Bernie Ecclestone's high-tech TV-to-electronic-timing business. He wanted to remind me of the time in the old F2 days when he'd tipped me into a swimming pool in Cordoba, Argentina, a memory which almost persuaded me to ask him if he was now ready to reimburse me for the cost of the wrist watch which had stopped working following its immersion. In fact I remember that swimming pool for a completely different reason, which involved

To my knowledge, the Mechanics' Trust has yet to be asked to cope with social diseases, specialising instead in more spectacular infirmities, as another of my ex-Brabham mates reminded me last week. Born and brought up in New Zealand, my friend had broken his back as a child, and the treatment he'd received, such as it was, had been to immobilise him for several weeks while the bones knitted together. With his spine noticeably S-shaped, he had suffered serious back pains as an adult until one evening, driving home from work, he had literally seized up, and had only been able to bring his car to a halt by steering it into the kerb. At this point the Mechanics' Trust stepped in. The situation called for drastic surgery, whereupon Professor Sid Watkins responded. In an operation which lasted many hours, the Prof removed one of my mate's ribs and used it to reinforce his spine, as I understand it, from the inside. The patient spent several weeks recovering from the effects of the procedure (which, as an engineer, he greatly admired) and returned to work feeling better than ever. He's still involved on the fringes of motor racing, fit as a fiddle, and I was able to renew our friendship over lunch. No wonder Mr Watkins commands such respect and affection. If the Williams staff had not started gently herding us out of the premises, I suspect that many of us would have stayed chatting well into the night. One of the subjects that wouldn't go away was that first-corner bingle at Spa and the general feeling that Monsieur Grosjean had not been sufficiently punished. As Patrick Head observed, "People tell me I should come back to F1 and give the drivers a good bollocking." I'll drink to that. v

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Lewis Hamilton was the man in the news all weekend at Monza. Following the rumours that Lewis might switch from McLaren to Mercedes in 2013, Hamilton went out and gave the Woking team pole position. Jenson Button was on his tail.

LewIs seNDs McLAReN A MessAGe

qUALIFyING REPORT by Joe Saward

When the dust began to settle after the qualifying sessions in Monza, Lewis Hamilton said that the McLaren team had done a fantastic job to give him a competitive car - and that he managed to get "a half-decent lap" in the final Q3 session. It was clear that while Lewis could hardly complain about the situation, he knew that there was more time in the car. "I had much, much better laps in practice," he explained later, "but I can’t complain. Generally I didn’t think that lap was anywhere near good enough and I was up, I think, a couple of tenths on my second lap, but I was in a train of cars: Kimi and two Ferraris in front. So, I wasn’t really able to better my lap." After his early demise at Spa, Hamilton was hoping on Saturday night that the race at Monza would bring him a good haul of points to get him back into the running for the Drivers' Championship. Although Lewis did not say it, the performance was undoubtedly the best way to respond to the suggestions that McLaren wants to cut his salary in 2013. Proving his worth to the team is, in fact, much more important than playing negotiating games with the team - and at this time of year such things begin to really matter. It was interesting to note that Jenson Button, the hero of Spa, was right with Lewis, and the result had been achieved with the two McLaren drivers playing with slipstreaming and trying to win time by towing one another around the fast Monza circuit. "We didn’t consider trying to tow each other around as some of the others did," said Jenson. "It's a difficult thing to get right and if you get it wrong

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you end up being compromised elsewhere around the lap." For the team the 1-2 gave some more encouragement after wins for Hamilton in Hungary and Button in Spa.

"Both Lewis and Jenson drove immaculately," said Martin Whitmarsh, "capitalising on our car’s impressive pace in Sectors One and Two, and optimising its capabilities in Sector Three, where it was slightly less competitive relative to our

opposition. Doing that may have looked easy for them, but it wasn’t." The man they had feared in qualifying was Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, but the Spaniard, who had been quick in the early part of qualifying, but

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disappeared without trace in the Q3 session. He ended up 10th on the grid, a big surprise. “We are very disappointed with what happened to Fernando’s car this afternoon, explained technical director Pat Fry. "A problem with the rear anti-roll bar was spotted at the start of Q3 and cost him dear, as he never really managed

to put together a proper timed lap. It's a real shame because Felipe (Massa)'s third place, a few tenths off pole, showed that we had the potential. He drove an excellent qualifying and deserves the result. "We need to look into exactly what happened, but clearly, problems like these cannot

occur if one wants to fight for the targets we have set ourselves," Fry continued. Alonso has been around long enough to not let the disappointment get to him. "I reckon I could have got pole today," he said. "It's a real shame because the car was very strong, but these things happen. It’s maybe 15

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years since something like this has happened, but it has! There’s no point in crying over it. The problem will be fixed for tomorrow, but of course this result changes everything as far as the race is concerned: we had the chance to increase our lead over our

closest rivals, but now, it’s likely that at least some of them will make up ground on me." For once Massa was in the spotlight - and very pleased to be there. "This is a very important race for Ferrari and

I will do my best to get a good result," he said. "I feel sorry for Fernando. He had been very strong all weekend. We still have a chance of beating McLaren, even if they are very strong. For me, getting back on the podium, here in front of our

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fans, would be wonderful!" If there were hard luck stories to be heard at Ferrari, it was a very similar story at Force India. The team had high hopes of pulling off a big result at Monza, after Nico Hulkenberg's strong showing at Spa, but things did not work as planned for the team. To begin with Paul di Resta's efforts were hobbled by a five-place grid penalty, caused by the need to change of gearbox.

"That was frustrating," the Scotsman said. His goal was to stay in the top 10 despite the penalty and that meant a top 5 run in Q3. In the end he was fourth (and so would start ninth). "The car has been working well all weekend so I knew we were in good shape going into qualifying," he said. "We were in the top five of free practice and the car has got better and better with each run as the track evolved. I’m very happy with

my Q3 lap. We maximised the performance when it mattered." If things were frustrating for di Resta it was much worse for Hulkenberg as he headed out for the Q1 session and was about to start his first flying lap when the car suddenly lost its drive. "I pulled over at the first chicane and the team told me to switch off the car," he said. He walked back to the pits and was able to watch the

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action unfolding around him. "It’s a shame this happened on a day when the car looks so competitive," he said. "Starting so far back will be tough." Tough indeed. Di Resta's penalty and the early disappearance for Hulkenberg played into the

hands of Michael Schumacher, who qualified fifth but would start fourth in his Mercedes. "I think we can be satisfied with our qualifying performance," he said. "We have performed consistently all weekend. Our car clearly suits this circuit more than at the last races, but we've had a couple of hiccups along the way

in practice. Nico Rosberg also moved up a placed and would start the race from sixth, directly behind his Mercedes team-mate. "It is a decent result from a tricky qualifying session," he said. "I wasn't happy with the balance of my car by Q3 and, although it started well, I then lost the right balance so I couldn't improve my time." Team boss Ross Brawn called it "a pretty solid session" which sounded a little like a pot calling a kettle black.

1 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:25.4222 J Button McLaren 1:25.7233 N Rosberg Mercedes 1:25.7624 F Alonso Ferrari 1:25.8005 F Massa Ferrari 1:25.8616 L Hamilton McLaren 1:25.9447 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:26.046 8 S Perez Sauber 1:26.3239 M Webber Red Bull 1:26.39010 P Maldonado Williams 1:26.50411 S Vettel Red Bull 1:26.50812 N Hulkenberg Force India 1:26.51813 V Bottas Williams 1:26.64114 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:26.74615 J D’Ambrosio Lotus 1:27.180 16 J Bianchi Force India 1:27.19217 D Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:27.37318 J Vergne Toro Rosso 1:27.78919 H Kovalainen Caterham 1:27.855 20 V Petrov Caterham 1:28.57821 C Pic Marussia 1:28.75122 T Glock Marussia 1:29.20723 P de la Rosa HRT 1:29.33124 Q Ma HRT 1:31.239

FRIdAy - FREE PRACTICE 1

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"The key to the session was using the tyres in the correct way and getting them at their best for the timed laps," he said. "Perhaps we could perhaps have squeezed a little more out of our package today in terms of pure performance, but

our positions are close to our maximum at this circuit. For the first time in a number of races, the race preparation was untroubled by poor weather so we were able to achieve a lot of good work on various fuel loads. Now, we will see how that

translates into tomorrow's race." It was perhaps worth noting that there were five Mercedes-engined cars in the top seven on the timesheets, before di Resta was bounced back with his penalty.

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All this meant that the Renault teams were further back that one has come to expect, with the best of them group being Sebastian Vettel in his Red Bull in fifth place on the grid, after di Resta's penalty had been applied. "I'm pretty happy with the result," he said. "My last lap should have been a bit quicker, but

whether it would have made a difference or not is hard to say. If you look from us to the front, the gaps are too big. All weekend we were not quick enough, so this is a very good place to be." Mark Webber missed out on getting into the Q3 session and ended up 11th on the grid, which, he said, was "pretty much what we expected

today". Team boss Christian Horner blamed the team's lack of performance on the fact that Monza is "a fairly unique track". The next team in the pecking order was Lotus, with Kimi Räikkönen seventh and Jérôme d'Ambrosio 15th, after all penalties had been

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applied. The team said that it hoped that the lack of dazzle in qualifying would not be repeated in the race and that the E20 would be much stronger on Sunday. “We didn’t have the speed today, but at least we are in the top 10," said the Finn. "We’ve been in more or less the same position all weekend so today’s pace was not a big surprise. It’s a long race and usually we are a bit stronger in race conditions." For d'Ambrosio, drafted in to replace bad boy Romain Grosjean, it was a tough baptism of

FRIdAy - FREE PRACTICE 21 L Hamilton McLaren 1:25.2902 J Button McLaren 1:25.3283 F Alonso Ferrari 1:25.3484 F Massa Ferrari 1:25.4305 N Rosberg Mercedes 1:25.4466 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:25.504 7 P Di Resta Force India 1:25.5468 N Hulkenberg Force India 1:25.5479 S Perez Sauber 1:26.06810 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:26.09411 M Webber Red Bull 1:26.10412 J D’Ambrosio Lotus 1:26.157 13 S Vettel Red Bull 1:26.39414 P Maldonado Williams 1:26.40415 D Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:26.72416 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:26.73017 B Senna Williams 1:26.78318 H Kovalainen Caterham 1:26.841 19 J Vergne Toro Rosso 1:26.86420 V Petrov Caterham 1:27.222 21 T Glock Marussia 1:27.94422 C Pic Marussia 1:27.96823 P de la Rosa HRT 1:28.575 24 N Karthikeyan HRT 1:28.779

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fire in a top team. "I have mixed feelings really to be honest," he said. "I progressed through to Q2 but it’s frustrating not to have done a bit better as I’m really close in the second and third sectors but I’ve struggling a bit in the first. I lose about 60-70 percent of time to Kimi there, so there's a lot of

time to be found in just two corners. There’s a lot for me to take in this weekend so it’s not too bad, but I would have liked a bit more." The team's Alan Permane reckoned that d'Ambrosio had done a good job and hoped that his progress would continue in the race. Sauber was not as competitive as the team

had hoped it might be, with Kmui Kobayashi eighth and Sergio Perez 13th "We don’t have the same pace here as we did last week in Spa, which made it a tough qualifying," said the Japanese driver. "Having said this, I am happy to have reached the first target which was to get through to Q3. Friday was pretty

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difficult because a mechanical problem prevented me from doing the mileage I would have wanted, and this is also why I cannot really make any predictions on how the race will go. I lack the experience of proper long runs. After the third free practice session this morning we changed the car’s settings quite a lot and this paid off in qualifying, I got confidence in the car back. My lap time in Q2 was really good - half a second quicker than in Q3 - and to me this was the maximum possible."

SATURdAy - FREE PRACTICE 31 L Hamilton McLaren 1:24.5782 F Alonso Ferrari 1:24.5793 P Di Resta Force India 1:24.8494 F Massa Ferrari 1:24.9095 J Button McLaren 1:24.9946 N Rosberg Mercedes 1:25.0367 S Perez Sauber 1:25.1608 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:25.255 9 N Hulkenberg Force India 1:25.28910 P Maldonado Williams 1:25.38311 M Webber Red Bull 1:25.38912 S Vettel Red Bull 1:25.40613 B Senna Williams 1:25.46114 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:25.56315 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:25.68916 D Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:25.70617 J D’Ambrosio Lotus 1:25.973 18 J Vergne Toro Rosso 1:26.00319 H Kovalainen Caterham 1:26.657 20 V Petrov Caterham 1:27.26721 C Pic Marussia 1:27.45422 T Glock Marussia 1:27.72823 N Karthikeyan HRT 1:28.03524 P de la Rosa HRT 1:28.384

Perez was less happy. "We knew it would be tight to make it into the top 10 today, but I was fighting hard," he said. " We are clearly not as quick here as we were in Belgium. On my last attempt in Q2 unfortunately I was driving too close behind Bruno Senna and could not improve my lap time. I lost two tenths of a second in the first sector. I didn’t want to back off to make a bigger gap because I didn’t want to compromise the warm up of my tyres. The tyre

compounds here are quite similar and we don’t expect high degradation, but in the end, given the high temperatures, you never really know." The Williamses lacked pace as well, although the drivers had hoped to get into the Q3 session. Pastor Maldonado was always going to be in trouble having two five-place grid penalties to serve after his adventures at Spa, so he was on a hiding to nothing. He ended up 12th on the timesheets and so would start 22nd on the grid, while Bruno Senna would line up 14th. "We were struggling a bit for pace," said

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Pastor, "and then in the last Q2 lap I didn't quite put everything together. Everything is so close here though." He was confident that all would be well, despite some mechanical trouble in free practice. Senna reckoned that the Williams was faster on the harder of the two tyre Pirelli compounds available. "For some reason we didn't seem to pick up a lot of grip on the medium tyres, so we need to look into that further," he said. "We have the race pace and the track does allow for some overtaking so I think we could both have a chance of scoring points." The two Toro Rossos were 15th and 17th with Daniel Ricciardo ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne. The Australian described the performance as "so-so". "Realistically, I don't think we could have got to Q3 today, so we have to settle for this as Senna is around three tenths in front and even putting my best sector times together, I don't believe it would have been good enough to match tha," he said. "It's not been a bad day and with the set-up we have chosen I think we could be in a strong position to overtake other cars tomorrow. With a good race pace and two DRS zones, it should make for an interesting afternoon." Vergne was less satsified. "Honestly, I have not felt comfortable in the car most of the weekend as we never really found the best set-up," he said. "Actually, qualifying was the best of all the sessions so far. On top of that, I am to blame for a small mistake on my quick lap which cost me about two tenths, after I went over a bump just as I was changing gear."

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The team had new technical leadership at Monza, having finally got round to announcing that James Key has joined the team. There was nothing to write home about from the Caterham team, with Heikki Kovalainen in his inevitbale 18th place and Vitlay Petrov playing the wing-man role as ever. "A pretty straightforward qualifying for me today," Heikki said. "The car felt well balanced all

day and even though we were ahead of one of the Lotus cars after the first run we knew it would be difficult to push into Q2. On the second set of tyres I wasn't quite able to get the most out of them so I think the time today is probably as much as I could have got out of it." Petrov said that he was happy with his car despite some worries about his brakes. "The brakes felt good in FP3 but in qualifying

I couldn't attack into the braking zones as hard as I was able to in third practice so maybe that's where we lost a bit of lap time. " There was not much to report at Marussia either with Timo Glock 20th and Charles Pic 21st. The cars have been improived in recent weeks with new parts but the slog onwards in pursuit of Caterham has been a long grind. It is a similar story at HRT where the only

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way forward is in little steps, week by week. There was some good news for Narain Karthikeyan who managed to outqualify Pedro de la Rosa, celebrating his 100th Grand Prix - a fascinating statistic given how many years Pedro has been around the sport. He's a popular guy and there was

a huge and impressive turn out for the celebration that the HRT team put together. There was also the first appearance in an official race weekend session for China's Ma Qing Hua (above), the first Chinese-born driver to take part at this level. The team hopes that Ma's arrival

will attract the attention of Chinese money, this being the most important missing element in the team's planning. There's no money to be found in Spain these days, but with an Indian and a Chinese driver on the books, the team hopes to pull in cash from Asia. v

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1 F Alonso Ferrari 1:24.1752 L Hamilton McLaren 1:24.2113 J Button McLaren 1:24.6724 N Rosberg Mercedes 1:24.6895 P di Resta Force India 1:24.8756 F Massa Ferrari 1:24.8827 S Vettel Red Bull 1:25.0118 P Maldonado Williams 1:25.1039 B Senna Williams 1:25.13510 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:25.151 11 S Perez Sauber 1:25.30012 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:25.30213 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:25.31714 M Webber Red Bull 1:25.55615 J Vergne Toro Rosso 1:25.64916 d Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:25.72817 J d’Ambrosio Lotus 1:25.84318 H Kovalainen Caterham 1:26.441 19 V Petrov Caterham 1:26.88720 T Glock Marussia 1:27.03923 C Pic Marussia 1:27.07321 N Karthikeyan HRT 1:27.44122 P de la Rosa HRT 1:27.62924 N Hulkenberg Force India No time

qUALIFyING 1 qUALIFyING 21 F Alonso Ferrari 1:24.2422 J Button McLaren 1:24.2553 P di Resta Force India 1:24.3454 L Hamilton McLaren 1:24.394 5 F Massa Ferrari 1:24.5056 N Rosberg Mercedes 1:24.5157 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:24.6758 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:24.6839 S Vettel Red Bull 1:24.68710 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:24.742 11 M Webber Red Bull 1:24.80912 P Maldonado ** Williams 1:24.82013 S Perez Sauber 1:24.90114 B Senna Williams 1:25.04215 d Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:25.312 16 J d’Ambrosio Lotus 1:25.40817 J Vergne Toro Rosso 1:25.441

qUALIFyING 31 L Hamilton McLaren 1:24.010 2 J Button McLaren 1:24.1333 F Massa Ferrari 1:24.2479 P di Resta * Force India 1:24.3044 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:24.5405 S Vettel Red Bull 1:24.8026 N Rosberg Mercedes 1:24.8337 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:24.855 8 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:25.10910 F Alonso Ferrari 1:25.678

Grid positions appear in blue

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RACE REPORT by David Tremayne

Lewis Hamilton came, he saw, and for the first time at Monza, he conquered

TUTTo BeNe, ITALIA

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To the outside world he was being hounded by the super-impressive Sergio Perez in the final stages of an Italian Grand Prix he had dominated at Monza, motorsport’s cathedral of speed. But Lewis, who had painted an Italian flag on his helmet especially for the tifosi, said he had different thoughts in his

mind in the closing laps. “In the final laps I was driving round thinking just what a great circuit this is, and about all the greats who have won here,” he disclosed. It was the first time he’d stood on the top step of Formula 1’s oldest circuit, which first opened its gates in 1922,

and he was savouring every moment. “It’s an incredible experience to come to Italy, a place that I love. I’ve been here many years since I was 13 in karting, and I genuinely love the people, the culture and the food. I put the flag on my helmet as a sign of respect.

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“I was cruising for the last 20 laps. I knew that Felipe was going slower than me, then I heard that Fernando had passed him and was pushing, so I started to match his time. Then I heard that Sergio was catching me by a second a lap so over the last four I started pushing a little more just to maintain the gap. To finally get a win here is the icing on the cake. Very, very special.” Despite Sergio’s fight, Lewis made it look like a walk in the park as he took an immediate lead from pole position as Felipe separated him from fellow front-row man Jenson Button. As the three of then began to pull away, Fernando lost little time scrabbling scrabbled past Paul di Resta, Kamui Kobayashi, Kimi Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher to take the fight for fourth place to Sebastian Vettel. “The start was good, enough to overtake two or three cars,” Ferdy said. “Those first two laps made the difference, to overtake di Resta, Kimi and Michael very quickly gave us the chance to chase Sebastian. Then the race improved a lot.” From the sixth lap the two enemies from the 2011 race, where Seb accused Ferdy of putting him off the road, duked it out. Back then it was the Spaniard who had obliged the German to put two wheels on the grass exiting the Curva Grande; this time it was Alonso who got the bouncy ride on the green stuff. And he wasn’t happy. “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” he said over the radio, “he needs a penalty now.” “Okay, everybody saw what happened, he is destroying our race,” an engineer replied. The stewards, already keen to crack down on driving discipline after the first-corner debacle at Spa seven days earlier, handed down a drive-

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through penalty to Sebastian, who thus dropped out of the picture before dropping out of the race altogether with an imminent Renault engine failure. Vettel barely mentioned the incident with Alonso, but said: “The drive-through incident was

decided and happened, so there’s not so much to say about that. “We lost some points today; but we did the best we could – you could see that our pace was not as strong as the leaders. I found out I had a problem roughly 300 metres before I stopped the

car. It was an alternator problem, similar to the one we had yesterday morning. “It had been a good race for us given the lack of pace. There are not so many long straights at the next couple of circuits, so we can challenge there.”

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As the sole pit stops for the main runners left Lewis and Jenson clear of Felipe, the road was clear for Alonso to close in on his team-mate. On the 40th lap the hapless Brazilian duly capitulated to team suggestions that he should “manage his tyres,” which was clearly euphemistic as soon after the switch had been made he was told to pick up the pace in a vain effort to stave off Perez. He had been troubled earlier as the team lost all of its telemetry. "They lost us completely from the beginning of the race to the end, so they couldn't see us on the track,” he said. “But everything they were telling me, I was doing on the steering wheel. "The biggest problem was the tyre degradation, which was unfortunate. Today we were completely in a difficult situation with it. It was really massive on our cars, and I had expected better. I think, putting that on the table, it was a good result for the team. For sure my own personal race was very important, but also helping Fernando as well to be in the condition to fight for the championship, which we know is very important for the team. I think both came together during the race." The the gods of Monza handed Fernando a present on the 33rd lap when Jenson’s McLaren glided to a silent halt down the back straight, with fuel pick-up problems. “I had too much wheelspin at the start, and that dropped me to third and caused me to lose a lot of time behind Felipe,” Jenson said. “But it was nice to get past him, put some clear air between us, and then start chasing down Lewis. I was never

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FASTEST RACE LAPS1 N Rosberg Mercedes 1:27.2392 S Perez Sauber 1:27.5623 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:27.7184 P Maldonado Williams 1:28.0535 L Hamilton McLaren 1:28.4276 N Hulkenberg Force India 1:28.5787 D Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:28.6218 J D’Ambrosio Lotus 1:28.677 9 S Vettel Red Bull 1:28.71310 B Senna Williams 1:28.74211 F Alonso Ferrari 1:28.83512 F Massa Ferrari 1:28.91413 J Button McLaren 1:28.92614 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:29.03215 V Petrov Caterham 1:29.06616 P Di Resta Force India 1:29.06817 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:29.109 18 M Webber Red Bull 1:29.20219 H Kovalainen Caterham 1:29.399 20 C Pic Marussia 1:29.75321 T Glock Marussia 1:29.888 22 P de la Rosa HRT 1:30.398 23 N Karthikeyan HRT 1:31.086 24 J Vergne Toro Rosso 1:31.962

going to challenge him for the win, but it would have been great for the team if we could have finished first and second. But it wasn’t to be. “I don’t entirely know what caused my car to stop – I’m told it was a fuel system problem that we’re still investigating. The engine cut out and I had to coast to a stop. These things happen. But, looking for the positives, I want to offer my congratulations to the whole team. We’ve proven over the past few races that we’re very strong in both qualifying trim and race trim. That consistency is really key, and we haven’t seen that form from

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any team all season, so that’s very encouraging indeed.” Jens’ demise elevated Fernando to second place and suddenly things were looking very rosy for Maranello. For a while he chipped away at

Lewis’s lead (though, it transpired, not enough to cause the Englishman to break into a sweat), but soon it became clear that Sergio, who had led the 24th to 28th laps after Lewis’s pit stop, was flying. Sauber had cleverly reversed everyone

else’s strategy, starting its man on the harder Pirelli tyres. The Mexican had done well to get them to last until the 29th lap (though the team had hoped for another two laps), and now he had a definite advantage in a fuel-light car on the gripper

Nico Rosberg was one of the few to make two pit stops. Then, as Seb served his drive-through on lap 34, he overtook Felipe without any problem. By the 46th lap Fernando could see the Ferrari-powered Sauber in his mirrors, until Sergio swept majestically ahead before the Ascari chicane. But could he close down Lewis?

In the end the answer was no, as Lewis still had 4.3s in hand by the flag, but it was a superb performance from Ferrari’s customer team and a man widely tipped as a future Ferrari driver. “It was great strategy from my team,” Checo grinned, “and really enjoyable, one of those races where you have the pace and were the one

medium compound. First he dealt with Kimi Raikkonen, but the Lotus driver was certainly no pushover as they swapped places several times before Sergio could finally make it stick. In retrospect, that delay might have cost him his chance of challenging Lewis. Then he passed Michael, who like Mercedes stablemate

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attacking. It was crucial that my first stint went so long but it wasn’t easy at all. Then in the second stint I managed to go maximum attack and was able to have an advantage with the tyres. “I’ve had second and third places this year,” the hero of the Malaysian GP added, “and I am

really determined to win before the end of the season.” Don’t rule it out. The C31, created by James Key and Matt Morris, is a pretty decent car. Actually, on some tracks it’s a lot more than that, and towards the end at Monza it was in a class of

its own thanks to the team’s strategy. Fernando was very happy with a podium finish, after starting so far back due to suspension trouble in qualifying, even if he was very disingenuous in disguising the tyre degradation that stopped him following Sergio through and

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mounting a challenge to Lewis. He still leads the World Championship with a 37-point advantage over Lewis, who bounced back to second ahead of Kimi, Sebastian and Mark Webber. “It was a perfect Sunday for us,” the Spaniard declared. “The win was not in reach because when

you are starting 10th is not easy to think of victory. If you cannot win, a podium is the next target. Today was much better than I expected, once Jenson and the two Red Bulls were out of the race.” Ah yes, this was indeed a bad day for the Milton Keynes team. It had started well for Webber,

when his protégé Mitch Evans won the GP3 Championship after a very tense final race, but his own was a nightmare. He made a bad start, and never featured above sixth during the pit stops. Later he had a curious half spin exiting Ascari which sent him swooping over to the left-hand

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side of the track before he was able to gather it all up and creep round to the pits with flat-spotted Pirellis to retire. “Towards the end I had no rear tyres left and I was pushing reasonably hard. Nico was coming on his fresh two-stop tyres, so I had to keep pushing and staying on it. For the sake of getting a couple of points, maybe I shouldn’t have pushed as hard, but I was trying to stay on it. The rear tyres were completely finished, so I dropped it out of the Ascari chicane; I managed to keep it off the wall, but then the tyres were so heavily flat-spotted I was worried about damaging the car. We do 330 km/h round here, I couldn’t see the track, so we decided to retire.” Kimi battled superbly with Sergio before conceding defeat in a Lotus that again wasn’t as quick as it might have been expected to be, but was lucky to hold on to fifth as two-stopping Schumie was only 0.3s behind at the end, while Nico in the other two-stopping Mercedes disposed of Paul to take seventh. The Scot was eighth, like the majority of front runners relying on a single stop, with Kamui making it a good day for Sauber with ninth after a steady run on a different strategy to Sergio’s. "It’s good to go into third position in the Drivers’ Championship but we lost some points to Fernando which is not ideal,” the Kimster said. “It was a difficult weekend as we were too slow in a straight line, making it very difficult to hold off anyone and even with the DRS it was difficult to overtake the cars in front. We did the one stop strategy and the tyres were fine. We came into the race looking for sixth or seventh, so fifth is the maximum we could have done here this

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weekend.” “It was a fun race today, although I must admit that, following our performance on Friday, I had secretly hoped we would be able to move up the field,” Michael confessed. “But we had a tricky first stint. After that, everything went really well, we were on the pace and I think we showed

a clear upwards trend today. I kind of ran out of laps this afternoon and, if the race had been a bit longer, I'd have been able to battle even further forward. Overall, though, we got everything out of it today.” Nico was equally upbeat. “Seventh place is an improvement on my recent finishes so I'm

satisfied with that today, although there may have been potential for more. I had no grip on my option tyres in the first stint, which were the same set that gave me problems in Q3. After the first stop, I had very good pace and was able to set a few fastest race laps and move up the field with some nice overtakes.”

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“Coming into this weekend I probably would have settled for eighth place,” di Resta said, “but when you consider the pace we showed in qualifying yesterday we certainly had high hopes for the race. I struggled at the start with the heavy fuel load and didn’t really have the race pace on

the medium tyres. Things improved after my stop when I was running the hard compound and our pace was much stronger towards the end. But there was no way I could keep the Mercedes behind me and with their two-stop strategy they had a bit more speed than us. It’s good to extend

our lead over Williams with a few more points, but obviously Sauber look strong and outperformed a lot of people.” Bruno Senna took the final point after an adventurous race which saw him having to make trips over chicane kerbs after both Rosberg and di

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Jerome d’Ambrosio in the second Lotus. “It was very tough to try to make the one-stop strategy work, but we did it and were also lucky with a few cars that were forced to retire,” Bruno said. “It was a great effort from the team

today to make it into the points. Now we look forward to the next few races where we run higher downforce on the car which should suit us better.” Maldonado also thought he;d had a hard

Resta gave him a hard time. He dived past Daniel Ricciardo’s Toro Rosso on the final lap, as did team-mate Pastor Maldonado who was only 0.5s behind him at the finish line. The unfortunate Australian was thus 12th from Romain Grosjean stand-in

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afternoon. “It was tough starting from the back, but the car showed good pace and was consistent. We just missed out on the points but I was happy to have made up 11 places.” Ricciardo’s Toro Rosso failed to pick up its last dregs of fuel exiting the final corner. Added

to Jean-Eric Vergne’s early exit on the ninth lap when a rear brake disc exploded and sent his STR7 aviating violently over the first chicane kerbs. It was a highly frustrating afternoon for the Faenza team. "I was 10th until the last corner on the very

last lap,” Daniel said. "At that point, I accelerated to exit Parabolica and nothing happened. To miss out on a point by a few hundred metres is bitterly disappointing." A lap down, the Caterham drivers had a fabulous race-long fight, with Heikki Kovalainen

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leading Vitaly Petrov over the line by a tenth of a second as they took valuable 14th and 15th positions. At Marussia, it was Charles Pic’s turn to beat Timo Glock, as they finished in 16th and 17th places. “A bitter shame on my side really,” Timo

said. “I got through Turn 1 okay, but into Turn 2 there was a bit of a queue in front of me and Petrov moved to the outside, where I was. I couldn’t avoid him and he just clipped my front wing, which was damaged as a result. From there I couldn’t really do much as we had lost a bit of performance and

the car was just ‘okay’ to drive. Worse than that, as I stopped so early I was out of sequence. I had to stay out longer and had more degradation at the end as the stints were quite long for me. Then blue flags cost us at the end. “But overall I think we have to be quite

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pleased as we weren’t really running with the traditional Monza downforce specification.” Finally, Pedro de la Rosa’s 100th race saw him catch and pass HRT team-mate Narain Karthikeyan for an eventual 18th.

Besides Webber, Vettel, Button and Vergne, Nico Hulkenberg dropped out right at the end with brake problems on his Force India when he was in the fight for bottom-end points. The last two weeks have seen fortunes ebb

and flow, and it was noteworthy if only for ironic reasons that the three people who stood on the podium here as McLaren celebrated its 180th victory were the three that a non-combatant Romain Grosjean had taken out at Spa… v

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Sebastian VettelStart tyre : Option used14:33:51 : Lap 20 Prime new Pitlane time : 22.714:55:13 : Lap 34 Prime used Pitlane time : 15.0

Mark WebberStart tyre : Option new14:35:36 : Lap 21 Prime used Pitlane time : 21.4

Jenson ButtonStart tyre : Option used14:36:49 : Lap 22 Prime new Pitlane time : 23.4

Lewis HamiltonStart tyre : Option used14:38:13 : Lap 23 Prime new Pitlane time : 20.8

Fernando AlonsoStart tyre : Option used14:33:52 : Lap 20 Prime new Pitlane time : 21.4

Felipe MassaStart tyre : Option used14:32:20 : Lap 19 Prime new Pitlane time : 21.8

Michael SchumacherStart tyre : Option used14:26:25 : Lap 15 Prime new Pitlane time : 22.514:59:47 : Lap 37 Prime new Pitlane time : 21.1

Nico RosbergStart tyre : Option used14:25:03 : Lap 14 Prime new Pitlane time : 22.515:01:21 : Lap 38 Prime new Pitlane time : 22.0

Kimi RaikkonenStart tyre : Option used14:29:28 : Lap 17 Prime new Pitlane time : 21.2

Jerome d’AmbrosioStart tyre : Prime new14:45:13 : Lap 27 Option new Pitlane time : 22.0

Paul di RestaStart tyre : Option used14:35:40 : Lap 21 Prime new Pitlane time : 21.9

Nico HulkenbergStart tyre : Prime new14:44:55 : Lap 27 Option new Pitlane time : 22.1

Kamui KobayashiStart tyre : Option used14:34:09 : Lap 20 Prime new Pitlane time : 23.0

Sergio PerezStart tyre : Prime new14:47:33 : Lap 29 Option new Pitlane time : 22.4

Daniel RicciardoStart tyre : Option new14:40:20 : Lap 24 Prime new Pitlane time : 21.4

Jean-Eric VergneStart tyre : Option used

Pastor MaldonadoStart tyre : Prime new14:23:38 : Lap 13 Option new Pitlane time : 23.014:57:06 : Lap 35 Option new Pitlane time : 21.5

Bruno SennaStart tyre : Option new14:40:21 : Lap 24 Prime new Pitlane time : 22.9

Heikki KovalainenStart tyre : Option new14:29:52 : Lap 17 Prime new Pitlane time : 22.515:03:39 : Lap 39 Option new Pitlane time : 22.1

Vitaly PetrovStart tyre : Option new14:33:00 : Lap 19 Prime new Pitlane time : 22.315:05:11 : Lap 40 Option new Pitlane time : 22.7

Pedro de la RosaStart tyre : Option new14:38:04 : Lap 22 Prime new Pitlane time : 23.6

Narain KarthikeyanStart tyre : Option new14:39:31 : Lap 23 Prime new Pit lane time : 31.9

Timo GlockStart tyre : Option new14:14:33 : Lap 7 Prime new Pitlane time : 28.614:53:27 : Lap 32 Prime new Pitlane time : 22.7

Charles PicStart tyre : Option new14:31:33 : Lap 18 Prime new Pitlane time : 23.114:57:49 : Lap 35 Prime new Pitlane time : 22.1

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ITALIAN GRANd PRIx, MONZA, 9 SEPTEMBER 2012

dRIVERS1 F Alonso Ferrari 1792 L Hamilton McLaren 1423 K Raikkonen Lotus 1414 S Vettel Red Bull 1405 M Webber Red Bull 1326 J Button McLaren 1017 N Rosberg Mercedes 838 R Grosjean Lotus 769 S Perez Sauber 6510 F Massa Ferrari 4711 M Schumacher Mercedes 4312 K Kobayashi Sauber 3513 P di Resta Force India 3214 N Hulkenberg Force India 3115 P Maldonado Williams 2916 B Senna Williams 2517 J Vergne Toro Rosso 818 d Ricciardo Toro Rosso 4

1 L Hamilton McLaren 1:19.41.221 - 230.943 km/h2 S Perez Sauber 1:19.45.577 - 4.3563 F Alonso Ferrari 1:20.01.815 - 20.5944 F Massa Ferrari 1:20.10.888 - 29.6675 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:20.12.102 - 30.8816 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:20.12.480 - 31.2597 N Rosberg Mercedes 1:20.14.771 - 33.5508 P di Resta Force India 1:20.22.278 - 41.0579 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:20.25.119 - 43.89810 B Senna Williams 1:20.29.365 - 48.14411 P Maldonado Williams 1:20.29.903 - 48.68212 d Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:20.31.537 - 50.31613 J d’Ambrosio Lotus 1:20.57.082 - 75.861 14 H Kovalainen Caterham - 52 laps15 V Petrov Caterham - 52 laps16 C Pic Marussia - 52 laps 17 T Glock Marussia - 52 laps18 P de la Rosa HRT - 52 laps19 N Karthikeyan HRT - 52 lapsR M Webber Red Bull Engine - 51 lapsR N Hulkenberg Force India Brakes - 50 lapsR S Vettel Red Bull Engine - 47 lapsR J Button McLaren Fuel pick-up - 32 laps R J Vergne Toro Rosso Brakes - 8 laps

RACE DISTANCE: 53 laps - 306.720 km

CONSTRUCTORS1 Red Bull Racing 2722 Vodafone McLaren Mercedes 2433 Scuderia Ferrari 2264 Lotus F1 Team 2175 MercedesAMG Petronas 1266 Sauber F1 Team 1007 Sahara Force India F1 63 8 Williams F1 Team 549 Scuderia Toro Rosso 12

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OUR INFINITI INSPIRED PERFORMANCE GOES TO: SERGIO PEREZ

Bar a little organisational stress here and there, the last four weeks or so have been a pretty cool time at Tremayne Towers. I had a little fun myself in late August, driving in the Cotswolds while spending a small fortune during my summer ‘break’, before two people I respect hugely kicked off September by enjoying the sort of success that empowers us all and lifts the human spirit. On September 3rd Prince Andrew, HRH the Duke of York, and Ffion Hague, the British foreign secretary’s wife, grabbed all the headlines when they abseiled 1000 feet down The Shard in London. But my friend Harry Nuttall, the commercial director of Caterham F1 Team, was also hanging on the end of a rope with them, and I was astonished to learn that he was on target to raise an avowed £100,000 for The Outward Bound Trust and The Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund as he did so. His pre-event missives had an amusing lightness of vocabulary. “Harness: Petzl – remember this name. Petzl make the six-point climbing harness that has not been correctly put on until its straps are

THE LAST LAP by David Tremayne

The PoweR oF hUMAN CoURAGe

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tight enough to prevent one from fully standing up. Trussed isn’t quite the right word to describe the feeling of being so enwrapped, but ‘ablutary’ is very much the position the seasoned abseilor adopts prior to departure. Thank you Mr Petzl. “Rope: About the thickness of a middle finger and will only break if we weigh 10 times more than we do. Good. “Rack: It sounds beastly, painful and reminiscent of Torquemada, but happily is a long way from the Spanish Inquisition, whom no one expects to show up on Monday! Instead the rack is our throttle and brake. It looks a bit like a chunkier version of the bath rack. It sits right in front of our faces; is suspended from our Petzl harnesses and through its horizontal bars passes the abseil rope. One tends to watch the rope’s passage with a high degree of alertness…” But there was nothing remotely amusing about the challenge. “Looking back on quite the most extraordinary and uplifting of Monday mornings, one word kept on coming back to me,” he related when it was all over. “Training. “Training is what allows inner city children to overcome a lack of self-confidence and pursue a stronger version of themselves having gone Outward Bound. And constant training provides the bedrock of the modern day Royal Marine. I can’t tell you how immensely impressed everyone who abseiled down The Shard was with the training that we had received from Outward Bound’s Mountain Leaders and the Commandos’ Artic Warfare Specialists. “It takes you way beyond a simple set of instructions to a place where you have complete

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confidence in your equipment and an unwavering belief in the team. A quiet word of encouragement here, a bit of banter there, and all the while, continual checking and rechecking of harnesses, karabiners, ropes and racks.” As ever, his knightship made light of his achievement, but it took balls and a lot of commitment and faith and he came through it brilliantly. Some people in this life – yes, even those who work in Formula 1 and thus should understand these things and know better – seem to protect themselves by ignoring them as that way they don’t have to feel bad about their own lack of moxie, but I want to go on record here to say how proud I am of H. The boy didn’t just do good, he done superb, even if his penchant for hanging around must have been a great help to him in his descent. Then, two days later, prayers were answered as Alex Zanardi became a gold medal-winning Paralympian. I don’t mind admitting that there were a few more tears for him chez Tremayne after he finished 27 seconds ahead of his closest rival in the H4 handbike men’s trials at Brands Hatch. Two days later he did it again, winning the men’s road race by a second. There can’t be a single motor racing fan on the planet who doesn’t know Alex’s story – but just in case there’s some of it on page 13 – but I was stoked when he hit the world headlines with

his brilliant successes. The Getty Images photo of him, sitting on the tarmac holding his bike aloft with a single hand, is one of those iconic sporting images that will stay in the mind forever. I cannot adequately express just how immensely proud I am of him, for his courage, fortitude and sheer determination. Fortissima mente, they call it in Italy. I have never forgotten that awful day back in September 2001 when I was at Monza and first heard of his accident at Lausitzring - the initial reports suggested he was very close to death - and how we tried to console ourselves by imagining him one day sitting down with doctors to redesign his ‘prosthetical legs,’ as he calls them. Well, he’s done an awful lot more than that in the intervening 11 years, from symbolically completing the final 13 laps of that fateful Lausitzring race only two years later to winning races for BMW in the World Touring Car Championship, becoming the Italian handbike champ and winning the handbike class in the New York Marathon, before the golden successes at Brands. Somebody asked me only recently who were the most charismatic and the bravest drivers that I’d ever met. The answer required no prolonged thought: Alex was both. There are some blessings in life that you really savour. Having a mate like him is surely one of the sweetest. v

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