´óÏó´«Ã½

Formula 1's power-brokers are close to defining a new type of engine to be used from 2013 - and their decision will help shape the car you drive on the road in the next few years.

F1 currently uses 2.4-litre V8s which broadly reflect the belief that that uses a lot of fuel.

But, under pressure from and , both F1 and road-car manufacturers, even those who make fast sports cars, are now taking a different approach, striving to get power from increasingly efficient, smaller engines.

These new engines - both in F1 cars and on the road - will feature a reduction in fuel consumption of as much as 50%, thus moving from being big and thirsty to being smaller and more frugal. They will be smaller, and combine modern with energy regeneration and other innovative technologies.

Read the rest of this entry

Formula 1's return to Europe means our classic grand prix series can resume normal service - all the selections ahead of the Spanish race come from that country's rich F1 history.

We have an eclectic bunch for you to peruse this time around, with the five choices spanning four decades of F1 on the Iberian peninsula.

Before I run through the options, though, a quick reminder of the rules for those of you who might be unfamiliar with this process.

In an attempt to whet your appetites for the , we have come up with four races from the event's history. Your job is to tell us which one of those you would most like to see highlights of and why.

Read the rest of this entry

was repeatedly asked over last winter to justify his decision to join at .

What are you doing, the suggestion clearly was, voluntarily deciding to go up against the fastest driver in the world in a team that has nurtured him since he was 11 years old?

How stupid do those queries look now after on Sunday, his second brilliant victory in the first four races, after which he now leads the world championship by 10 points?

Read the rest of this entry

We have chosen the 1983 US Grand Prix West as the highlighted race for the fourth edition of our classic grand prix series this year, ahead of this weekend's .

You can make a strong case for any of our choices - 's fightback to victory in Argentina in 1980, 's stunning maiden victory in a torrential downpour in Portugal in 1985, 's brilliant defence of the lead from at Imola in 2005 and 's domination in China last year.

But 's incredible victory for from 23rd on the grid at was the overwhelming choice among respondents to this blog and, while the other races were great options, there is no doubt in my mind it was the right choice.

Watson was always renowned for being a great racer - and the Northern Irishman's overtaking skills were never seen to better effect than in this race. He and McLaren team-mate , who qualified one place ahead of Watson, scythed through the field for one of the most remarkable upturns in F1 history. In fact, this is the furthest back on the grid from which any man has ever won a grand prix.

Read the rest of this entry

The second year of our classic grand prix series has thrown up some awkward issues around some of the newer races.

The Chinese Grand Prix has only been on the calendar since 2004, and we used all of the previous races at the in this series last year - which leaves us with none for 2010!

Our solution to this, just as it was for the season-opener in Bahrain, is to pick as our selection four races from F1's history as well as last year's Chinese race.

Your job, as regular readers of this blog will know, is to tell us which one of them you would most like to see and why. We will use those views to inform our decision as to which one to highlight next week in the run-up to the Chinese Grand Prix.

'Highlight', in this instance, means offer up for you to view the full 'Grand Prix' programme of the time - if the race was during the era when the ´óÏó´«Ã½ last held the TV rights - as well as the shorter highlights we cut for all the races.

And, again just as in Bahrain, we have chosen four races from tracks that are no longer on the F1 calendar to whet your appetites for the forthcoming race at one of F1's newer tracks on 18 April.

Read the rest of this entry

The promised rain did not come, but Formula 1 still delivered an , and after Sebastian Vettel's overdue victory for Red Bull the season is shaping up nicely.

Vettel probably would have won the first two races of the year had reliability problems not intervened, but made amends for those failures by getting both cars to the finish at Sepang in conditions as testing as they come.

Once and had left their drivers at the back of the grid by making such a mess of qualifying, badly misreading the weather and failing to go out when the track was at its driest, this race was an open goal for Red Bull - as long as they could get their cars to the finish.

Read the rest of this entry