Peugeot’s old record of 9:01.338 is in the bin. The new benchmark is 7:47.794. To put it in perspective, the official lap record for any car round the Nordschleife is 6:11.13.

It is not difficult to guess what Toyota’s goal might be with this project. As their press release says:

Such performance shows TMG’s electric powertrain is ideal to power any future single-make electric motorsport series…

With the FIA planning its Formula E Championship for electric cars, due to start in 2013, who can bet against Toyota playing a role?

Many wonder if the lack of noise would be a turn-off to motorsport fans. But I think the sounds of electric cars are fascinating. Everything is not drowned out by the engine sound. There are new sounds to be mesmerised by. Listen to tyres squeal. The wind rushing past! To my ears, it sounds more dangerous and exciting.

And what about the crashes?!

GP2 — the ‘official’ way to progress to F1

The most well-known by a long way is GP2. Backed by Bernie Ecclestone, GP2 is the closest thing there is to an ‘official’ feeder series to the pinnacle of motorsport.

Since its inception in 2005, GP2 has been a stepping stone for some of F1′s biggest names. With a solid F1-style car and a unique status as the support race to almost every European grand prix (thereby giving drivers vital experience at many F1 circuits), there is no doubt that GP2 is a strong category.

The main alternative: World Series by Renault

But beyond the ‘official’ routes to F1, World Series by Renault (sometimes known as Formula Renault 3.5) has established itself as a series to take seriously.

No fewer than 18 F1 drivers have raced in World Series by Renault or one of its earlier incarnations. Among them are Robert Kubica, Heikki Kovalainen and Kamui Kobayashi. In 1999, World Champion Fernando Alonso also won what was then the Euro Open by Nissan series.

Most impressively, in 2007 Sebastian Vettel was leading the championship when he became an F1 driver mid-season. We all know how that story ends.

Strong drivers in World Series by Renault

This year’s World Series by Renault field has some very strong drivers in the field. Two of the favourites for the championship, Daniel Ricciardo and Robert Wickens, are currently already F1 test drivers, for Toro Rosso and Virgin respectively. These drivers are so hotly tipped that both have been rumoured to become race drivers before this season is even finished. I will certainly eat my hat if they are not racing in F1 in 2012.

The pair put on a wet weather masterclass in Race 1 at the Nürburgring two weekends ago. In changeable conditions, they had the measure of the rest of the field while engaging in a tense battle for the lead.

The talent doesn’t end there. Other current F1 test drivers participating in World Series by Renault include Fairuz Fauzy and Jan Charouz (both for Renault F1).

Meanwhile, Jean-Eric Vergne is next in the queue behind Daniel Ricciardo in the Red Bull Young Driver sausage factory, and rightly so. His performances at Spa-Francorchamps were at times jaw-dropping.

Young Estonian Kevin Korjus (Race 2 winner at the Nürburgring) has also turned heads in his rookie World Series by Renault season.

Scrappy driving in GP2

When you compare it with this year’s GP2 field, the ‘official’ feeder series seems to lack that edge slightly. No driver has managed to take full control of the championship — nor has anyone shown signs that they deserve to.

Romain Grosjean has come the closest. But you could argue that he ought to be. He is highly experienced compared to most of his competitors, and even has some F1 races under his belt. He is this year’s Giorgio Pantano. He has been involved in some questionable incidents. He managed to crash into his teammate at Barcelona. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then climbed all over him as part of the truly farcical scenes in the qualifying session at Monaco.

Meanwhile, the hotly-tipped Jules Bianchi (who is a Ferrari test driver) has been surprisingly clumsy, lurching from needless crash to avoidable gaffe. After a promising (albiet curtailed) GP2 Asia campaign last winter, Bianchi currently languishes in 15th in the championship, having managed to score points in just two of the eight races so far.

Giedo van der Garde has arguably been the most consistent, but still manages to make needless errors. In Valencia, he was penalised for overtaking under yellow flags.

Beyond this, it is difficult to see where the F1 stars of the future are in this year’s GP2 field.

A good alternative for both viewers and drivers

Moreover, the World Series by Renault season has been more action-packed for my money. This season’s calendar visits seven current Formula 1 venues, including some of the best circuits in the world. Spa, Monza, Silverstone and even Monaco all have slots in World Series by Renault. The calendar is refreshingly light on Tilke designs.

The Formula Renault 3.5 cars themselves are impressive, providing an ideal bridge between the well-established Formula Renault 2.0 cars. They typically run just a few seconds a lap slower than GP2 cars.

From next season, the car will step up a gear with a more powerful engine and greater downforce. But most eye-catching is the introduction DRS-style moveable aerodynamics. It could well be that the new Formula Renault 3.5 cars will prepare drivers for F1 better than a GP2 car can.

The combination of superb F1-style cars, excellent circuits and promising drivers is creating great entertainment. For me, it is the feeder series to watch.

Here is the official lap chart for this year’s Belgian Grand Prix, as published by the FIA. Do you spot anything unusual about it?

Despite the fact that he was last of the classified runners, Badoer was only 102.1 seconds behind the race winner, Kimi Räikkönen. “Only?”, I hear you say. But he was still on the lead lap. In fact, the lap chart reveals that there was no lapped traffic for the entire race.

I wonder if this is a first. There are a few things that lead me to believe this is the case. First of all, it is commonly believed that Formula 1 cars have never been as close in terms of performance. Surely the amazing speed of the Force India in Belgium is testament to the idea that there are no longer backmarkers in F1 like there used to be.

Luca Badoer, the slowest man in qualifying, was around 2.5 seconds off the quickest time. Although in F1-2009 style this invites derision, even five years ago this would have been a creditable performance. Read a grid from the 1990s, and it is routine to see cars a dozen seconds or more off the pace.

Furthermore, Spa-Francorchamps also has the longest laptime of any circuit currently in use in F1, which in itself makes it less likely that cars will be lapped during the race. I have checked some previous Belgian Grands Prix to check, but all have had lapped cars, apart from this year’s. For this reason, it is also possible that some races at longer circuits used in history (notably the Nordschleife) may not have seen any lapped traffic, but with more reliability problems and poorer driving standards back then, I wouldn’t count on it.

(Update: I have checked all Formula 1 Grands Prix to have been held at the Nordschleife, and each race had classified runners not on the lead lap according to Wikipedia.)

Against that argument is the fact that since 2007, lapped cars have been able to join the lead lap behind the Safety Car. This makes it much less likely that there will be lapped cars at the end of the race — but there will still have been lapped cars during the race.

I asked on Twitter if this was the first time none of the classified runners had been lapped. Amazingly, Alianora La Canta set to work and used her awesome research skills to find out that the last time all the classified runners finished on the lead lap was at the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix.

However, this was one instance where a Safety Car allowed lapped cars to join the lead lap. The official lap chart (PDF) reminds us that there was indeed lapped traffic during the race.

So it looks like I may be right in my hunch that Badoer is the only person ever to finish in last place, yet not have been lapped during the race. So does anyone know if Badoer’s achievement truly is a first? I would love to know.

As ever, Keith at F1 Fanatic provides us with a list of interesting facts about the race. I wonder if Badoer’s fast last place is one to add to that list.

Little wonder it has been known to induce sickness. Drivers are advised that they may want to close eyes if they spin in order to avoid reacquainting themselves with their lunch. Apparently drivers have been known to be sick all over the place while driving the simulator. Come to think of it, I’m slightly suspicious because I remember that the cleaner was leaving the room just as we were entering it. We were told, though, that Kazuki Nakajima is amazing in the simulator and can spend all day in it with no ill effects.

The circuit models are said to be very accurate indeed, albeit some more accurate than others. For instance, someone else has exclusive rights to the best map of the Nürburgring. The maps are constructed using lasers. A van drives slowly around the circuit emitting laser beams at multiple angles, creating a map of millions of dots. This means that every bump on the circuit is accounted for.

An aerial image of the circuit is then overlaid on top of these dots to create the environment. But if you look at the circuit, some of the landmarks are not very accurately reproduced. In fact, some of it looks like bad virtual reality graphics. The idea is to reduce any confusion that might be caused by too many cues. If they don’t think something will give a driver an accurate cue, they won’t implement it.

Some teams have more sophisticated simulators. In some simulators the car will be on a moving platform to give the impression of movement — something clearly lacking from the still Williams cockpit. It is said that some simulators even have belts that tighten up to give you some impression of g-forces. Williams shun such devices, which they regard as off-putting.

I have to confess that I have been slightly sceptical about the Williams simulator in the past. McLaren’s is said to be amazing, but it is jealously kept under wraps from outsiders. Williams have no such qualms however. It is the only simulator that I have seen on television. See, for instance, this ITV video with Mark Blundell and this BBC video.

We were lucky enough to be in the room when occasional Williams tester Daniel Clos was driving it. He was there to acquaint himself with the Hungaroring in preparation for the GP2 races which were being held just a few days later. I have to say he didn’t look very good while we were there, and he even spun at one point. But those must have been his very first laps round the circuit and of course I am in no position to pass comment. In the real thing, he finished 11th in both races.

It is presumably a service that Williams are happy to offer young drivers in the hope of developing them into a Formula 1 star of the future. Whether Daniel Clos is one remains to be seen. But surely on his way to F1 stardom is another Williams tester, Nico Hülkenberg. Simulator Engineer Jeff Calam is adamant that the simulator is a worthwhile piece of equipment to invest in, pointing at Hülkenberg’s highly impressive GP2 results at circuits he hasn’t driven at before. This fact puts to bed my doubts about the quality of the Williams simulator.

Once the factory tour was over, we had a Q&A with Sam Michael. He was largely very open in his responses, and came across very well to me. I was impressed that he took the time out of his schedule to talk to a bunch of bloggers. You can hear audio of the Q&A session over at Brits on Pole once again.

After that, we went for a tour of the fabulous Williams museum. Here, we were expertly guided by Scott Garrett from Synergy, the company that arranged our visit on behalf of Philips. Although he now works for Synergy, he was previously Head of Marketing at Williams and now has links with a number of F1 teams. This makes him a highly knowledgeable speaker on Formula 1, and Williams in particular. It was a real pleasure to have this sort of insight.

For obvious reasons, photography was strictly forbidden in the factory, but we were free to take as many photographs as we wanted in the museum. And boy did we take the opportunity!

The museum is impressive, with a range of cars from the full history of the Williams team’s existence. The first car you see is Alan Jones’s FW06 with its Ford Cosworth engine peering out the back. Cars are displayed, more or less a car for every year, right up to 2007′s FW29 — the very car that the competition winner will be driving.

All-in-all, the museum contains over forty cars. We are told that Frank Williams is a hoarder. The team still owns 106 chassis, while it only makes around six per year. Most of these cars are well looked after and can theoretically still be driven. The main exception is the Honda-powered cars, because they asked for the engines back!

For the most part, the cars are laid out in chronological order, and as you make your way through the museum videos are played telling us about Williams during the period of the cars in the vicinity. The relevant cars are lit up while the video is playing.

Unfortunately, this means that they are plunged into darkness once the video is finished, and you are supposed to move along to the next section. It is a pretty clever device to get us to keep moving and get rid of us quickly, but quite annoying for those of us who would have liked to have done it at our own pace. One person sarcastically remarked under his breath, “you have a lot of great cars, then put them in the dark.” It is for this reason that the lighting is not very good in some of the photographs.

Despite the chronological layout of the museum, there is still a fairly clear centrepiece. Two cars in particular are displayed on a higher plinth — the FW18 and the FW19, the team’s latest two championship-winning cars from 1996 and 1997 driven by Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.

A great moment of F1 geekery occurred when Mr Garrett pointed out that the FW19 on display is the actual car which Michael Schumacher famously crashed into at Jerez in 1997. Everyone went “oooh” and inquisitively gathered to look at this particularly historic Williams F1 car. The damage is still evident. I had heard that Patrick Head liked the car to be displayed with the tyre mark still there, but it has since been restored and now just looks like a couple of holes have been punched in the corner of the sidepod.

“We never got on very well with Michael Schumacher,” Scott Garrett noted, just in case we didn’t get the clue. This prompted a cheeky question from someone else, “How did you get on with Ralf?”

There is a notable omission. The most distinctive F1 car in the team’s history, the FW26 with the “walrus nose” is nowhere to be seen. It is perhaps not the team’s proudest design.

One unusual design does proudly feature though. Williams were never able to race with their FW08B six-wheeler. It was banned by the FIA before the season started over fears that it would be too dominant.

Go up the stairs, and you will see two cars that are clearly very special to the team. One is Ayrton Senna’s test car from 1994. The other is the record-breaking FW10, in which Keke Rosberg was the first person ever to set a lap at a speed of 160mph in 1985. The record was set at Silverstone and remarkably stayed in place until 2002!

All-in-all, it was an absolutely fantastic day. Although Williams are not among my favourite teams, they have got to be admired for being so accommodating to us. If you ever get the chance to attend such an event, I would highly recommend it. A massive thank you to those who organised it and invited me.

Below is the full slideshow of photographs from my visit to Williams.

In the intervening period I have received an email asking me what I think of Renault’s ban from the European Grand Prix. Now I have been accosted in the comments by Becken for failing to review the Hungarian Grand Prix. So I’d better do it then!

First of all, you have to give massive amounts of praise to McLaren for their stunning comeback. It was clear at the Nürburgring that this was a team very much on the comeback trail. At the time I said that they could be challenging for wins in the second half of the season. But I didn’t expect it to be so soon, or so emphatic when it happened.

I am not Lewis Hamilton’s biggest fan, but I was delighted to see him winning in Hungary. It is a testament to the huge amount of effort that the McLaren team has put into developing their car — what quite frankly looked like a hopeless task just a couple of months ago. The achievement is all the more incredible when you consider that testing is banned, removing a vital tool to track how the car is developing.

Hamilton’s run at the front was not down to luck. Nor was it with someone climbing all over his gearbox. Indeed, who could even have predicted that the second-placed car running 11.5s behind would be the Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen? Are McLaren and Ferrari now once again the front-runners? It could be that kers has come of age.

At times, the grand prix had a very retro feel about it. This season has been all about a new order. But for the first phase of the race the leaders were Alonso and Hamilton, with Räikkönen in 4th. Three names we should be familiar with seeing at the front, but it was most bizarre to see it happening this year.

I can’t help but notice at the same time that the unusual stewards’ decisions have come back just as the old guard have returned to the front. During the first half of this season, the stewards were noticeably quiet (with the exception, of course, of Australia). Not now. Is there something about McLaren, Ferrari and Renault that makes the stewards just lose their minds?

As you might be able to tell, I am not very impressed with the decision to ban Renault from the European Grand Prix for Fernando Alonso’s wheel coming off. On one hand, you can understand why they did it. In the week which saw the awful death of Henry Surtees in a Formula Two race after he was hit by a wheel, and a day after Felipe Massa was hospitalised after driving into a piece of debris, seeing a wheel bouncing around the track was absolutely the last thing anyone wanted to see.

But the decision to ban the entire team from the next race feels like a complete overreaction, leading to the suspicion that it was a knee-jerk reaction. I could have understood a heavy fine, or some kind of suspended ban. But the FIA’s justification for the ban seems quite odd to me. They say that the Renault team “knowingly” released Alonso from his pit box with the wheel not securely in place. Seems a bit odd to me. Which would deliberately release their car in such a state?

Nonetheless, the fact is that the team apparently took no action after that. They neglected to inform Alonso — who thought he had a puncture — what the problem was. That seems pretty incompetent to me, if not downright negligent.

That is why I think a fine would be justified. But to ban them from the race, when we have seen countless instances of wheels falling off cars going unpunished (including a similar incident involving Alonso driving a Renault in Hungary in 2006!), is over the top in my view. That’s especially the case when you consider that the next race is in Valencia, where much of the crowd will be wanting to see Fernando Alonso in action. Sometimes you think Formula 1 likes to shoot itself in the foot.

Meanwhile, both of the teams that are battling for this season’s championship will be worried for different reasons. Brawn must now be worried about the drop in their car’s performance. There is no hiding behind explanations about the temperature. Jenson Button’s bewildered radio transmission, “How — HOW? — can this car be so BAD?” sums it up. Brawn have put something on their car to destabilise what was an awesome package.

It is not a complete disaster situation. Jenson Button finished 7th. But it now looks like Brawn are behind at least five teams: McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, Williams and Toyota. Their journey is the opposite to McLaren’s, and their challenge will be all the more difficult with testing banned.

Button actually only lost four points of his lead, which is still 18.5 points. And that is the reason why Red Bull should be worried. Because if they are to have a hope of challenging for the Championship, they need to stay at the sharp end, and they can’t afford to have the third fastest car. They need to be at the front, collecting 18, 16, 15 points when they can. Their tally from Budapest was just six.

It must be remembered that Hungaroring is a rather unique circuit, and many of the following circuits are very different indeed. But if McLaren and Ferrari are able to leapfrog Red Bull in the long run, Red Bull need to rely on staying ahead of Williams, Toyota and Brawn if their championship battle is to come to anything.

In this sense, despite only scoring two points, Jenson Button now looks like even more of a shoe-in for the championship. I’m sure he doesn’t feel like it. I can’t wait to find out how the rest of the season unfolds.

Well he now has that win. And it was a truly dominant win at that. His car was clearly majestic at the Nürburgring, but he also comprehensively outclassed Sebastian Vettel all weekend. Not only that, but Webber did this even when his typical bad luck hit him.

Webber’s drive-through penalty did seem a bit harsh. He clearly made a move across into Barrichello’s portion of the track, so there was the potential for there to be a nasty accident. But both drivers were in control of the situation. Plus, Michael Schumacher did this sort of thing on a race-by-race basis without the FIA so much as raising its eyebrows.

You would never have guessed he had a drive-through penalty, because it didn’t seem to affect his race in the slightest. This was helped by the fact that the Red Bull team cleverly kept him out for as long as possibble before he had to serve his penalty, ensuring that he had time to build up more of a gap. This is a signal that Red Bull as a team is maturing too.

It’s worth remembering too that Mark Webber still has a chunk of metal in his right leg from his bicycle accident over the winter. It is easy enough to imagine how much of a hindrance this is in terms of confidence in the cockpit and the physical pain that may be present. But the metal also adds a load of weight to the driver. This is real hindrance particularly to someone like Webber who, being tall, is one of the heaviest drivers on the grid even without lumps of metal in his leg.

All-in-all, this makes it a big, big win for Webber. Despite all the woes that hit the Brawn team over winter, this win was more hard-fought than any of Button’s this year. A straightforward lights-to-flag victory wouldn’t be Webber’s style, but I guess that makes it all the more rewarding.

This makes both Red Bull drivers now major title contenders. If it comes to crunch time towards the end of the season, the team faces a tough choice between which of the two drivers to rely on the most — the ostensibly quicker Vettel, or the more experienced Webber? An internal Red Bull battle will play into Jenson Button’s hands.

After all, it is not difficult to guess which driver Brawn will favour. It might be strange for them to think of that given Barrichello’s extraordinary post-race outburst. I doubt the team is interested in further antagonising a driver who is clearly paranoid. But maybe if they sit him down and give him some more “blah blah blah blah blah”, he will understand that it makes no sense for a team to forfeit Button’s races in favour of a slower driver.

It is true that Barrichello led into the first corner (sort of) but on his light fuel load he was never going to be a favourite for the win here, and neither was Button. A fuel rig problem, outwith the control of the Brawn team, of course did not help matters.

Perhaps a more pressing concern to the Brawn team will be the fact that they now genuinely look like they do not have the best car. Like Britain, the German GP was particularly cool, which favours Red Bull and disadvantages Brawn. But notably, both Brawn cars finished behind a Ferrari and a Williams, two teams that had a pretty torid start to the season. The advantage they had at the start of the season has been whittled away.

It remains to be seen if the warmer races will see the pendulum swing back in Brawn’s favour. But one thing seems certain: the second half of the season won’t be nearly as easy as the first half for them.

Rubens reckons he led into the first corner, although another driver who could claim to have been leading in the first corner is Lewis Hamilton. Unfortunately, in the scramble for the first corner, he was tagged by the front wing of Webber’s car and had to trail round for the whole lap with a puncture before being able to pit. The tyre damaged his car further, meaning that his race was effectively over in turn 1.

I think Hamilton and McLaren can take a lot of heart from the weekend’s events though. Who knows how the race would have unfolded had Hamilton emerged as the leader for the first stint. He did have the third lightest fuel load on the grid, but he was heavier than the Brawns.

Fuel-adjusted, Hamilton was the third fastest in qualifying, 9 tenths ahead of Heikki Kovalainen who didn’t have the upgraded package. It looked so unlikely just a few weeks ago, but McLaren could be challenging for wins in the second half of this season.

The other major surprise up the grid was Adrian Sutil. He managed to qualify 7th which was stunning enough, but my jaw hit the floor when I saw that he had the heaviest car in the top 10! Sadly, it didn’t come together for him during the race with yet another racing incident involving Kimi Räikkönen. These things happen.

You sense that Force India are very close to their first point. In truth, a bucketful of bad luck is the only thing that has prevented them from scoring so far. Even Giancarlo Fisichella is in good form right now. During the first stint he looked very pacey indeed, overtaking a number of cars. All in all he gained nine places before making his first pit stop.

Another driver who had a great first stint was Nico Rosberg. He gained six places on lap one alone (as did Kubica, indeed, not that he could make much of it in that dog of a BMW). Rosberg continued to steadily climb throughout the race, and ultimately finished a very well-deserved fourth. Rosberg continues to impress me this season.

The Hungarian Grand Prix will be an important one, not so much for the racing (which probably won’t be very good on that circuit), but as a signal of what to expect for the rest of the season. Is Brawn’s slump more permanent, or was it a blip caused by cool conditions?

Now, normally such an announcement wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. Ever since I started watching Formula 1 in the mid-1990s, I have watched teams and manufacturers come and go on a regular basis.

I saw Renault withdraw from the sport as engine supplier to Williams and Benetton in 1997, only to return as a fully-fledged constructor when they bought the Benetton team just a few years later in 2000. Ford came to the party when they bought the Stewart team in 1999, only to leave the sport entirely a few years later in 2004. Peugeot left the sport in a huff at their own lack of success in 2000, having only joined the circus in 1994.

I learnt quickly, therefore, that manufacturers’ interest in F1 is almost always transient. For every Mercedes that appears fully committed, there are a handful of Renaults and Hondas who will enter and exit the sport according to the wind direction.

Honda’s announcement was shocking partly because of its suddenness. The speed with which the decision was taken is made clear when you read James Allen’s account. There is also the fact that at the start of this year Honda owned not one but two F1 teams. Now they have dramatically trimmed right back to zero, and will not even offer an engine supply to any teams next season.

There is also the fact that Honda were massive spenders in F1. This appeared to signify a magnificent commitment to the sport, despite the relative lack of success. But the flipside of this is that it made Honda an absolute laughing stock within the sport.

The huge amount of money the Honda F1 team spent also made it more vulnerable to the red pen of the bosses. No other manufacturer will save as much money by axing their F1 team. It may be true that Honda’s withdrawal is for political reasons, as former BAR-Honda driver Jacques Villeneuve posits. But it is Honda’s huge costs, coupled with the utter lack of success, that made it vulnerable to such political manoeuvring.

As such, the withdrawal of Honda is not such a shock when you think about it, even though I wouldn’t have predicted it. Moreover, Honda is not a fixture of Formula 1 like Ferrari, or even Mercedes. The current incarnation of the Honda F1 project only got the nod in 1998, and even then it was quickly reigned in to become a mere engine supply deal with BAR. Honda bought the team when tobacco sponsorship left the sport just a few years ago. Despite having run a team in the 1960s, and the huge success of the corporation as an engine supplier in the 1980s, an F1 institution it is not.

What makes people worried, though, is the economic climate in which this news has come. Whereas Ford found a buyer for Jaguar Racing easily enough in Red Bull in 2003, buyers for Honda will be thin on the ground due to the lack of credit that will be available to interested parties.

Next season’s Formula 1 calendar has already lost two races — Canada and France — and China and both German circuits currently in use have recently warned that they may not hold races for much longer. Again, it all comes down to money, with circuit owners being unable or unwilling to pay Bernie Ecclestone’s fast-increasing costs of staging a grand prix at the same time as attendances are tumbling.

Meanwhile, car sales are in freefall on a global scale, with a number of large car manufacturers seemingly in serious financial danger unless drastic action is taken. In the backdrop of these events, participation in motorsports looks like an extravagance. Even if the old “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” mantra holds true in normal times, right now western consumers are tightening their belts meaning that any increase in sales may be too small to be justifiable.

As such, Honda’s withdrawal is seen as just another sign that Formula 1 faces a crisis. We have a slimmed-down calendar that relies increasingly on flyaway races away from the sport’s European heartland to help pay CVC’s bills, and no races in the vitally important North American market for the first time in five decades.

Now there is a slimmed-down grid of just 18 cars — a number that is getting smaller. When you consider that the 2008 season was originally destined to contain 24 entries, F1 has essentially lost a quarter of its teams in a matter of months. Formula 1 is beginning to look like a shadow of its former self.

Now the question everyone is asking is, “who is next?” Initially the finger pointed at Toyota. Many pointed out that Toyota are only really in F1 because Honda were there. Toyota are also, like Honda, huge spenders with little to show for it.

But Toyota quickly put the lid on the speculation by issuing a statement that appeared to affirm their commitment to F1 — although, as James Allen pointed out, the word “currently” in front of “committed” looks like a carefully worded way to give them an easy exit should things take a turn for the worse. After all, if Honda’s decision was so sudden, why would a decision from Toyota not be?

BMW and Mercedes-Benz have both also affirmed their commitment to F1. But one manufacturer has spoken with a deafening silence.

I always suspected that the first manufacturer to go would be Renault. Its CEO, Carlos Ghosn, is said to be sceptical of motorsport participation, and there has been a question mark over the team’s future ever since he joined Renault in 2005. Besides which, Renault’s history in F1 has shown that it will come and go as it pleases.

Even though some news websites have reported that Renault is committed to F1, I have seen no quotes which the other manufacturers have been happy enough to provide. Was the media palmed off with a stock answer from a Renault spokesperson?

Meanwhile, rumours circulate around Red Bull. Dietrich Mateschitz recently re-bought Gerhard Berger’s 50% stake in Toro Rosso, but many think he did this so that he could sell it more easily. But with billions to play with and no car sales to drop off a cliff, I see little reason why he would pull the plug on both teams.

Williams has been perceived to be in a vulnerable position for a few years now. It is the last brave privateer team that is in it not to sell cars and not to sell drinks, but purely for the love of racing. It has been hit hard, but it doesn’t have to be seen to be reducing costs for political reasons like the manufacturers have to. Ironically, Williams may be safer than some of the manufacturers now.

We will just have to wait and see. It’s clear that Formula 1 is currently undergoing a massive change. Could the ground be being laid for a return to a privateer era? If so, you won’t find me complaining too much, no matter how painful the current events are in the medium-term.

Since the turn of the decade I have watched Formula 1 pretty much as a neutral. Of course, I prefer some teams and drivers more than others. In case you’re wondering, my favoured teams are BMW, Red Bull, Renault and (at a stretch) McLaren. Out of the drivers, I like Räikkönen, Heidfeld, Kubica, Alonso, Coulthard, Webber, Barrichello and (at a stretch) Kovalainen.

When I was younger my attention was grabbed by Stewart Grand Prix. Jackie Stewart’s was a famous name that I could latch onto, and the Scottish iconography appealed to me as a young Scot. I also loved the fact that they were a new team, seemingly with the odds against them, but did a fairly solid job.

Rubens Barrichello’s drive to 2nd in Monaco in 1997 was exciting to watch, and for a second I thought they were going to win when Michael Schumacher briefly ran off the road at Ste Devote. Mostly though 1997 was a year fraught with reliability problems. 1998 brought a further dip in form.

But the 1999 season as a whole was brilliant for Stewart GP as Barrichello once again shone. Who could forget Barrichello leading at the Brazilian Grand Prix? And then Johnny Herbert took a fantastic win at the Nürburgring. This team was only three years old, yet was in a position to fight for good points hauls, finish 4th in the championship and even win a race. That’s more than the team’s subsequent owners, Ford (as Jaguar) and Red Bull can say for themselves.

Besides Stewart, I developed a soft spot for Jordan. I loved the way they came back from a disastrous start to 1998. Halfway through the season they hadn’t even scored a single point. Then things started to look up during the British Grand Prix. I can remember watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Jordan’s 1998 season. Eddie Jordan was nervously pacing around the Jordan pit area mumbling, “I need this feckin’ point… Come on, I need this feckin’ point so much.” He got that feckin’ point.

Just a few races later Jordan Grand Prix scored a magnificent 1–2 in Belgium, with Damon Hill heading Ralf Schumacher. It was the team’s first win and it ushered in a new, though fleeting, era of competitiveness for the team.

The 1999 season was a joy to watch, not only for Stewart but for Jordan and Heinz-Harald Frentzen in particular. The German driver took an amazing six podiums including two wins, particularly memorably in France. For a long while it looked as though Frentzen was a genuine championship contender, though in the end it was not to be.

In retrospect, the work the Jordan team put into the 1999 season diverted their attention away from the future. Ian Phillips said as much in the latest Inside Line podcast — the championship run burnt the team out, and they never recovered.

In subsequent years the Jordan team drifted ever further into mediocrity and it became more and more difficult for me to like the team. 2003 was particularly painful. Giancarlo Fisichella took a flukey win in Brazil, but that disguised a truly awful season in which the team otherwise scored the miserable total of three points. If the previous year’s scoring system would have been in use, the win would have been their one and only points score.

To compound matters, in 2003 Eddie Jordan got into a needless legal fight with Vodafone which he was seemingly never going to win. From then on Jordan struggled financially. That team is now known as Force India and has had four different owners in the past five years.

However, the late 1990s were great Jordan-supporting days. And along with supporting the team comes the merchandise. I had two Jordan caps (one generic Jordan and the other Damon Hill, mimicking the Hills’ famous helmet design). I also had a Damon Hill t-shirt that commemorated the “place in history” that Hill took by taking the first win for the Jordan Grand Prix team. I also have a 1:43 diecast model of Damon Hill’s Jordan 198, the car he drove in 1998 and helped secure Jordan’s famous 1–2 in Belgium.

That is not the only F1 merchandise I bought when I was younger. I also had an Orange Arrows cap. I think I got it because I liked the colours. I am sometimes surprised to see people still wearing Orange Arrows gear from time to time, around six years after the team folded. I also had a rather colourful Ferrari t-shirt commemorating their 1999 Constructors Championship victory. What can I say? The folly of youth.

In addition to the Damon Hill 1:43 diecast, for a period of five years I decided I was going to collect 1:43 scale models of every single Formula 1 world champion. So in 1998 and 1999 I bought two Mika Häkkinen McLarens and from 2000–2002 I bought three Michael Schumacher Ferraris.

To spice things up a bit I bought models of Alberto Ascari’s 1952 Ferrari 500 F2 and Nelson Piquet’s 1981 Brabham BT-49C. But I got bored after that.

Grand Prix Legends were looking for excuses as to why diecast models don’t sell so well nowadays. I think the reality is that 75 quid for a 1:18 model that will only gather dust on a shelf is a bloody rip-off. Back in the day I think I spent around £20 per 1:43 model. I don’t think that’s something I would do today.

Aside from the normal annual purchases of video games (when available) and the season review DVD, I have not bought any Formula 1 merchandise for a while.

Until now.

I have bought this jazzy BMW Sauber t-shirt to express my support for the team. Like many, I have been wooed by the methodical, grounded approach of the team’s principal Mario Theissen and its drivers Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica.

The win was coming for a while, and the fact that it was a 1–2, just like Jordan’s maiden win, was the icing on the cake. The team’s recent dip in form won’t deter me. Now, for the first time for several years, I am not a neutral. I am supporting BMW Sauber.

It’s strange because I was never a supporter of the Sauber team at all. Nor was I keen on BMW when they were in partnership with Williams. But the magical combination of BMW and Sauber under the leadership of Mario Theissen has attracted me to them to the extent that I am a card-carrying, t-shirt wearing fan.

So which teams do you support, and do you buy merchandise to show that support?

But if the vote was designed to assert Max Mosley’s authority, it has surely not worked. There are still the same calls for his resignation, even from people like Luca di Montezemolo (if he could make his mind up about it) and Bernie Ecclestone.

Mosley’s critics can still point out that the countries that voted for Max Mosley were mostly represented by small clubs, some of them caravan clubs who have not the slightest bit of interest in motor racing. The Dutch body, ANWB, went as far as to point out that smaller clubs potentially had a lot to gain financially from voting for Max Mosley.

It is said that the FIA clubs that voted in favour of Max Mosley represented as little as 5% of the FIA clubs’ total membership. This vote has done anything but put a lid on the controversy.

Max Mosley said in his letter a few weeks ago that he intended to stay on as FIA President, implying that he was the only person capable of keeping the FIA together in a time of “crisis”. Well, it looks to me as though if anything his desperation to keep his grubby hands on the steering wheel has exacerbated any crisis there may have been. In fact, it has created a new crisis.

The German body ADAC has already reduced its level of participation in the FIA and the American AAA is hinting that it will do much the same thing. Those are two of the biggest clubs in the FIA and such a split undoubtedly weakens the FIA. Indeed, if the ADAC continues to distance itself from the FIA, the Nürburgring may not return to the F1 calendar.

Way to contain a crisis. Of course, Max Mosley should have done the honourable thing and resigned as soon as the allegations were revealed. Any other public figure would do this. Max Mosley’s ability to hang on to power may have come as a surprise to outsiders who are acquainting themselves with this despicable little man for the first time. But we all know from the many years he has been in charge of F1 that he is not an honourable man.

I can well believe Bernie Ecclestone when he says that Max Mosley’s claim that he will give up the post in 2009 is a bluff. After all, Max Mosley already did resign in 2004 before changing his mind. And do the actions of Max Mosley over the past few months really look like the actions of someone who will be happy to give up the post in a year’s time anyway? Hardly. This man is truly desperate to hang on to his position. Who is to say that Mosley won’t try to remain in his position as FIA President until he dies as Bernie asserts?

As Bernie Ecclestone says, Max Mosley is a man who enjoys conflict. Indeed, we now know rather too much about the kicks he gets out of “robust” dealings and handing out big punishments. How can we take Max Mosley seriously any more? A lot of people thought that last year’s $100 million-sized punishment of McLaren (a value plucked straight out of a cheesy movie dialogue) was completely out of proportion. Well I think we all now suspect some new reasons behind his behaviour last year. How are we to trust the FIA the next time they decide to punish someone? The jokes will write themselves.

Max Mosley has lost all credibility. Since the story broke, the man has been uninvited left, right and centre. Uninvited from Bahrain. Uninvited from Israel. Uninvited from Spain. Unwelcome in Monaco. Meeting after meeting cancelled. This is a man who is patently unfit to do his job any more — and he knows it himself as he has offered to leave all public representation to his deputies.

He might have won the vote, but the FIA is like a banana republic. The credible voices are opposed to him. And no dodgy confidence vote victory will restore Mosley’s credibility. Will governments now be eager to start meeting him again all of a sudden? Will the royal families of Bahrain, Spain and Monaco be willing to shake his hand now? Of course not.

So where now for the FIA? As I have already suggested, it seems clear that Mosley’s decision to hang on at all costs has exacerbated or even created a conflict in F1′s corridors of power. Far from patching up any conflict, Max Mosley has worsened it. I am sure that if he resigned in the first place, a smooth transition would have been much easier to achieve than it will be now.

In Bernie Ecclestone, Max Mosley has created a formidable enemy. Who is to say now that the FIA will retain control over F1? In Clive’s interesting post on the future of the FIA, he suggests that we may be seeing the end of the FIA as governing body of F1. And why not?

I have thought for a very long time now that the FIA was far too strong — that it put far too much power in the hands of just one person. And the recent talks of a split between sporting and touring clubs rather suggests to me that there is no obvious reason why the sporting and road-motoring roles of the FIA really need to be dealt with together in the same organisation.

Does Formula 1 really need to be under the control of the FIA? I think not. Say what you want about Bernie Ecclestone, but if you ask me I would choose Bernie over Max any day. We may complain from time to time about Bernie Ecclestone, but at least he is not malicious in my view. Max Mosley is pure poison from top to bottom.

Bernie Ecclestone must have been spitting feathers. I know I would have been (hell, I was anyway). Furthermore, the whole saga just went to show that Max Mosley does not care about the interests of Formula 1 in general. He is only interested in throwing his weight around and helping out Ferrari.

Now they are engaged in a public war of words through the medium of the letter. After Max Mosley’s stunt last week of sending a letter to the FIA club presidents in a last-ditch bid to save his bacon, Bernie Ecclestone yesterday returned the favour to try and dispel Mosley’s claims.

By now it is pretty clear that Max Mosley’s decision to hold a General Assembly in June was a ploy to buy himself some time. He will be hoping that a combination of the time spent to let the scandal die down a bit and his new conspiracy theories will be enough for him to see off a confidence vote in just over a week’s time.

But Max Mosley is surely mistaken if he thinks his letter will help put him in the clear. Keith Collantine has already cast his eye over the letter, and I have to agree with the points he has made.

Mosley claims that he has received 62 letters of support, and only 13 asking him to resign. But this total represents a small proportion of the 222 votes that are eligible to be cast in the confidence vote. And, as Keith has pointed out, those who want Mosley to stay are more likely to write to him and say so. Mosley’s attempt to demonstrate that he has widespread support falls flat.

He then goes on to suggest that allowing the next FIA President to be chosen democratically would be detrimental to the interests of the FIA. Beautiful. I would have thought that the FIA clubs would find that quite insulting.

In the letter he goes on to bring up some spurious allegations about negotiations between the FIA and the Formula One Commercial Rights Holder (CRH) (who is, to all intents and purposes, Bernie Ecclestone). Mosley reveals that the 100 Year Agreement between the FIA and the CRH is currently under renegotiation. Quite how Max Mosley has got himself into a situation where he needs to renegotiate a “100 Year Agreement” which was supposedly settled back in 2001 is glossed over in the letter.

Mosley alleges that the CRH is angling, “in effect to take over Formula One completely”. This includes giving the CRH the right to determine regulations.

However, as has been pointed out today by Pitpass, such an arrangement would not be allowed by the European Commission anyway. And this fact is the very reason why the FIA and the CRH are separate. Max Mosley seems to be suggesting that Bernie Ecclestone intends not only to ignore the EC’s demands and take over F1, but also that Bernie thinks he will get away with it. Bernie isn’t that stupid. The allegation simply doesn’t add up.

In the next sentence Max Mosley asserts that such an arrangements would be detrimental to the FIA’s ability to protect “traditional Grands Prix”. For one thing, this is clearly an attempt to gain votes from some countries whose Grands Prix are currently under threat. I do wonder exactly what powers the FIA has to protect “traditional Grands Prix”.

If such a power exists, the FIA is surely not doing a very good job of it. Last year the calendar did not contain the German Grand Prix and it will be doing the hokey-cokey with the Nürburgring-based grand prix (whatever it gets called in the end) for the foreseeable future. The Belgian Grand Prix, held at the hugely popular historic Spa-Francorchamps, has been only a semi-permanent fixture in the calendar since the start of this century.

The fact also that the French and British (and now Australian) Grands Prix are constantly operating underneath the Sword of Damocles suggests that this ability to “protect traditional Grands Prix” is a very empty concept.

Sure enough, what exactly constitutes a “traditional Grand Prix” is not defined, and seems to be just a hazy concept present only somewhere in the darkest recesses of Max Mosley’s head. It is a meaningless fig-leaf.

Mosley goes on to point out that “there has been a struggle for control of Formula One that goes back to the original Concorde Agreement in 1981.” Pointing this out is presumably supposed to scare the voters into selecting the status quo option. But this seems like a very odd tactic to me.

Max Mosley has been in charge of the sport for the majority of that period — since 1991. The fact that Max Mosley himself admits that he has been unable to put a lid on this “struggle for control” says it all. Why should the voters be persuaded to keep someone in on the basis that they can see off this “struggle for control” when that person has evidently failed to do so for the past 17 years?

He then undermines these arguments by promising that he will step down in 2009 anyway! What a joke. Max Mosley’s letter seems to be a last-ditch, desperate attempt to save his reputation. The notion that Bernie Ecclestone was somehow involved in the News of the World allegations looks paranoid (especially when there is a rather simpler explanation — News International getting its own back).

The fact is that Max Mosley himself knows that his position is untenable. This is evident from the fact that — despite beating his chest about the fact that he is attending the Monaco Grand Prix — he is spending the entire weekend locked up in his private offices and, on his rare traipses outdoors, refuses to answer any questions from the media. This whole thing stinks of someone who can’t bear to go down without bringing others with him — hence his cack-handed attempt to bring Bernie Ecclestone into the centre of this whole sorry saga.

Yesterday Bernie Ecclestone responded with a letter of his own. In it, Ecclestone asserts his support for the FIA being the “sole body governing international motor sport” and confirms that the CRH “supports and concurs” with the European Commission’s requirements to keep the commercial and regulatory branches of F1 separate. He confirms that the CRH has no interest in controlling regulations, while pointing out that the FIA’s decisions should not be detrimental to the commercial interests of F1.

In fact, there is not anything very controversial in the letter at all — which you would expect, since Bernie Ecclestone had to defend himself. But it does add to the amount of arrows that seem to point to the fact that Max Mosley is not quite telling the whole truth in his letter of last week.

What is interesting about the letter is the constant emphasis on how it is in the interests of F1 for the FIA to be led by a “respected” President. And Max Mosley is anything but respected nowadays.

The sum of these two letters has been pointed out by Clive at F1 Insight: “Max either admits to lying or has to call Bernie a liar.”

Meanwhile, there are suggestions that the Thursday press conference at the Monaco Grand Prix was rigged. The panel was stuffed full of Max Mosley’s cronies, friends and allies. There are suggestions, too, that conference moderator Bob Constanduros was pressured into asking a question about Max Mosley. Funny how all this should happen at the last grand prix before the General Assembly.

Over the course of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, it is becoming clear that Bernie Ecclestone has completely withdrawn any support he had left for Max Mosley. First he pointed out that Mosley’s letter was just “a smokescreen to stop all the other nonsense”.

In the Telegraph he was even stronger:

Everybody’s wrong except him. Everybody was involved in the orgy except him. He is just lashing out at anything he can. If he wants me to be the enemy he should be very careful because if he makes me an enemy I could make sure that he never whips anybody again.

I’m not sure about the bravado at the end there, but Bernie is absolutely right about Max Mosley here. Throughout this whole saga, Max Mosley has been trying to build conspiracies, shift the blame, and try to make out that it’s the News of the World that has brought the sport into disrepute. But no-one forced Max Mosley to whip prostitutes in a basement. Say what you want about the privacy issue (and I certainly have my opinions there), but once the facts are in the open there is nothing you can do about it. And it is no-one’s fault but Max Mosley’s.