Autosport

Lewis Hamilton won the 2019 Formula 1 World Championship pretty comfortably, but there were plenty of interesting storylines, dramatic races and fine performances. We delve into all of them – and some of the more problematic elements of the season –

New Renault Formula 1 signing Esteban Ocon got the day he had been waiting “months” for when he drove the team’s 2019 car in the post-season Abu Dhabi test last week, an outing he called “crucial” ahead of his racing return. Ocon, who replaces Nico H

Louis Deletraz set the fastest time of the Formula 2 post-season test in Abu Dhabi last week as the driver merry-go-round continued for the 2020 season. Deletraz (above) has driven for Carlin in 2019 but is evaluating whether to stay in F2 for next s

P64 KUBICA’S F1 RETURN Williams Formula 1 refugee Robert Kubica is driving for BMW in this week’s DTM rookie test at Jerez. Following a difficult F1 comeback season, Kubica has already outlined his ambition to combine an F1 simulator role with a raci

Peugeot told us that it would reveal more details of its 2022-23 World Endurance Championship entry in the new year. It jumped the gun last week when it announced that it will be forging a relationship with top WEC privateer Rebellion Racing for its

Two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Timo Bernhard is hanging up his helmet at the age of 38. The long-time Porsche driver will move into an ambassadorial role with the marque as he concentrates on building up the Team 75 Bernhard squad he runs with his

You usually have to wait until well into the new year for the Japanese manufacturers to unveil their motorsport programmes and driver line-ups for the season ahead, but December’s so-called Rookie Test at Suzuka for Super Formula always lets a few ca

Can anyone remember when next year’s driver line-up was fixed before the last race of the year? Wait, I’m talking to Autosport readers, of course someone will! However, my point is, isn’t it odd, and slightly depressing? Where’s the excitement, the s

World Rally champion Ott Tanak began his bid for a second successive title last week, when he drove a Hyundai i20 Coupe for the first time in the French Alps. Tanak joined his new team-mates Thierry Neuville and Sebastien Loeb in their preparations f

The shock loss of Charlie Whiting on the eve of the Australian Grand Prix weekend cast a long shadow over the 2019 season. F1 lost not only a race director, safety delegate, head of the technical department and permanent starter, but also a universal

How can a driver who consistently ran at or near the front, finished fifth in the world championship and won a race be ranked so low? The answer is simple. In 2019, Vettel made too many mistakes – five significant race-ruining ones – and was outperfo

Alex Albon impressed in 2019 and is unlucky not to make the top 10, squeezed out thanks to too many crashes and the fact that he lagged just over four tenths behind Verstappen on pace in the second half of the season. But he proved he has the makings

The facts of the 2019 Formula 1 season were substantially the same as the previous five in the V6-turbo-hybrid era. Mercedes won both championships with Lewis Hamilton its star, Ferrari flattered to deceive, and Red Bull sniped for victories without

After two years under the same ruleset, Formula 1 enjoyed a slight shake-up of the regulations in a bid to undo some of the wrongs that the 2017 changes provided. In pursuit of pure performance, the 2017 formula created a byproduct of turgid racing,

Sebastian Vettel started 2019 as Ferrari’s de facto number one driver, but ended it finishing behind Charles Leclerc in the championship. In between, Ferrari’s season rocketed between poor performance, reliability problems, stunning Leclerc highs, co

1 Bottas 2 Hamilton 3 Verstappen Hamilton and Bottas lock out the front row for Mercedes, with the lead Ferrari of Vettel a massive seven tenths down. Bottas takes the lead at the start and wins comfortably, as Hamilton’s challenge is stymied by floo

Sebastian Vettel gives a downbeat assessment of his Formula 1 season. The four-time world champion won just one grand prix in 2019 and finished fifth in the drivers’ championship, his worst result since joining Ferrari in 2015, and fronted up with an

When McLaren targeted a return to Formula 1 domination with Honda ahead of the revival of its famous partnership in 2015, it would have been inconceivable that the Japanese manufacturer would have to wait until 2019 to taste victory again. Oh, and it

The focus on Red Bull’s season was undeniably its performance with Honda, but a mid-year driver swap cannot be ignored. And no matter how well Alex Albon did in Pierre Gasly’s place, Red Bull would rather have never found out how that change would wo

The 2001 Formula 1 season saw the debuts of three drivers who would go on to play a key role in shaping grand prix racing over the following seasons. Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Juan Pablo Montoya went on to win 60 grands prix and three world

McLaren’s nightmare finally came to an end in 2019. Its comfortable fourth place in the constructors’ championship represented the best-possible result considering where the team was coming from. New driver line-up Carlos Sainz Jr and Lando Norris ex

Renault’s objective this year was to finish, as team principal Cyril Abiteboul put it over the winter, “a better fourth”. It failed in that objective, finishing well behind McLaren and only just holding off Toro Rosso to retain fifth place in the con

Daniel Ricciardo knew his first season with Renault in Formula 1 would pass without a podium, let alone a victory. However, he expected more than scraping his way into the top 10 in the drivers’ championship and watching his team get comprehensively

Missing out on a point in potentially his last Formula 1 race serves as a sad microcosm for Nico Hulkenberg’s career: he did a good job in underwhelming machinery, but ended without the result his ability and effort deserved. When the Renault driver

Since the glory days of Sebastian Vettel, Toro Rosso has been a bit-part player in Formula 1. But in 2019 it had its most successful season since that famous year, matching its 2008 best of sixth in the constructors’ championship and twice claiming p

Haas led the midfield during pre-season testing. In Australia, Kevin Magnussen finished a ‘Class B’-winning sixth and only a loose wheel after a pitstop stopped Romain Grosjean following him home. At the second race in Bahrain, Haas qualified at the

There were two Robert Kubicas in Formula 1 in 2019. One was the underachiever, obliterated by rookie team-mate George Russell, regularly hinting at dark forces working against him. The other was the sensational comeback story after an injury that lef

The Williams FW42 was late, off the pace, and produced the worst season in the illustrious team’s history in terms of deficit to the front. Its sole point, courtesy of Robert Kubica’s 10th place in July’s German Grand Prix, came in a chaotic race aft

One subject dominated Formula 1’s political landscape this year and will continue to do so as we head into next season. Since Liberty Media took over as commercial rights holder in January 2017, the focus of the new management has been on 2021 and th

Following Nico Rosberg’s appraisal of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, in which the 2016 Formula 1 world champion also said Lewis Hamilton was “certainly already on a little bit of a decline in his natural human abilities”, Hamilton hit back in reply to hi

The Autosport Awards has an outstanding pedigree when it comes to attracting the biggest names in motorsport to Grosvenor House on Park Lane each year. But having three-time Formula 1 world champion Sir Jackie Stewart present an award to Albert II, P

The life of the late Jim Russell will be celebrated in a new two-day Historic Sports Car Club meeting at Snetterton next spring. Russell, who died in March aged 98, started racing at Snetterton in 1952. He won the BRSCC National Formula 3 Championshi

A brand-new team called Student Motorsport will enter the Clio Cup UK for the first time next year, plotting a two-car entry. The team will be the racing arm of Student Motorsport, which runs an online network to connect students and graduates with e

Clubmans Sports Prototype Championship organisers have decided to end the category’s long association with the British Automobile Racing Club to run with MotorSport Vision Racing next year. The Clubmans Register investigated buying track time from ot

McLaren Automotive has announced four new drivers for its Driver Development Programme who will be placed with McLaren partner team Tolman Motorsport in British GT next year. The sole British driver, Ginetta GT5 Challenge graduate Katie Milner, will

WHEN DRIVERS CROP UP IN UNEXPECTED PLACES Versatility across various racing categories has once more become a fashionable trait among top-flight drivers, typified by Fernando Alonso winning the Le Mans 24 Hours for Toyota in 2018 and again this year.

This free-spirited joker could tame the biggest beasts the sport had to offer. A late starter by modern standards, he washed off the soap and was soon taking aim at the big time. When the colours united, he was rewarded in style and a call from a dow